DRUG TAKING IS A VICE, NOT A CRIME

JENNIFER SAUNDERS is wise to decry the waste of human capital expended in
the drug war ("Dealing with crime not simple", Letters, October 2).
However, Jennifer needs to expand her argument to define crime and offence.

Drug taking is a vice, not a crime.

Drug taking fails the John Stuart Mill "freedom" test and the Thomas
Jefferson "break my leg or pick my pocket" argument of what is of
legitimate concern to government. Before the idea of demonisation,
medicalisation and criminalisation was ever thought of, American Lysander
Spooner wrote the essay Vindication of Moral Liberty in 1875.

"Vices are those acts by which a man harms himself or his property. Crimes
are those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another.
"Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own
happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no
interference with their persons or property. "In vices, the very essence of
crime that is, the design to injure the person or property of another is
wanting." Lysander goes on to say that to make vice a crime is to make
falsehood truth.

No matter, the truth was the first casualty when government oversteped the
bounds of good judgment and criminalised the vice of drug taking. Control
language and you control mankind, said George Orwell.

Government has controlled the language for so long, all non-medical drug
use is defined as abuse and the ceremonial aspect of drug taking, which is
as old as mankind, is itself is never discussed.

Restore our natural right to drugs! It is a right mankind has owned since
time began.

When government deals with "crime" and lets the church deals with "vice",
Jennifer Saunders will find the jails are not so full of sinners.

Chris Buors, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada