ILLEGAL IS ILLEGAL

I am writing to comment on a letter to the editor published Sat. 18 Nov.
titled "No Excuses":

Whether methamphetamine is dangerous or not (the writer cites no studies to
substantiate his claims), is not a matter for the government. It is the
decision of every human being what they want to put in their own body, not
the State's. The policy of "zero tolerance" of course, could be applied to
the real killers if we were interested in saving lives. In 1990 in the US,
39 percent of preventable deaths were due to tobacco, 28 percent to
diet/activity patterns (mostly heart disease, stroke, etc.), 9 percent to
alcohol, 8 percent to toxic agents, 6 percent to microbial agents, 3
percent to firearms, 3 percent to sexual behavior, 2 percent to motor
vehicles, and 1.9 percent due to use of illegal drugs (mostly overdose
deaths from drugs of unknown purity or adulterated drugs).

The drug war is clearly a political war, waged mostly on poor blacks - an
excuse to throw people in prison to be used as virtual slave labor (large
corporations contract for prison labor, including Microsoft), where no
union organizing can take place, and wages are a fraction of those outside.
It is clearly time to end the blatantly illegal harassment of those who
choose not to use legal killer drugs in favor of safer illegal ones.

Jason Lalancette,
Saanich, BC, Canada