PROHIBITION IS WORSE THAN ANY DRUG COULD BE

Re Street drug use is risky, Column, Nov. 10

Anyone who buys drugs from the street deserves what they get. You
wouldn't buy food off of some creepy hobo, so why would you buy
home-made chemicals from them?

But when one considers that junk food will kill many times more
Canadians than all illegal drugs combined, it is difficult to think of
them as the plague that they have been hyped into.

The thing that makes street drugs risky is prohibition. In a climate
of regulation, drugs like meth would be no more dangerous than
alcohol. In the 1800s (a period of time that social conservatives like
to point to as "the good old days"), heroin, cocaine, and a wide
assortment of drugs were available to anyone.

Prohibition is causing more problems than the drugs themselves ever
could. This is not an opinion, it is a scientifically and historically
proven fact.

In the last century, kids were going blind from moonshine, gangsters
got rich and powerful, and government and political corruption was the
norm. Mothers, grandmothers, and teachers called for the repeal of
prohibition - not the alcoholics, speakeasy owners, or distillers.

Today we have the same problems with drugs. The sensible answer is
regulation, but churches, government, police, and many in the media
still seem to think that prohibition will work - somehow - if we
"believe" in it enough. It leads me to wonder exactly who or what they
are trying to protect.

Russell Barth,

Federal Medical Marijuana Licence Holder,

Ottawa