LIBERTY ON THE GRASS

I must agree with Herald letter writer Robert Mollot, who argued medical
cannabis is a charade. I believe the medicalization of cannabis is the fatal
compromise in the struggle for drug freedom. The question economist Milton
Friedman has been asking for 40 years is why we have prescription drugs at
all. The pharmaceutical companies would lose an awful lot of money if
Canadians were free to use opium and cannabis products as our ancestors did
in the past. The cost of prescription drugs would be reduced drastically if
the free market forces of competition were unleashed on the pharmaceutical
drug lords.

The idea of prescription drugs is a "devil's deal" between state and
medicine. After outlawing opium for racist reasons in 1908, medicine and the
state produced prescription rights and the therapeutic state. The
therapeutic states seek medical-therapeutic solutions to moral-social
problems. The state is on a fool's errand. We should restore our natural
right to drugs. It is a right owned by mankind since time began. Less than
100 years ago, before we criminalized and medicalized drugs, Canadians were
responsible for their own drug use.

Perhaps if Mollot asked who benefits from turning vice to crime he would
conclude that using state-approved drugs such as Marinol suits the needs of
pharmaceutical druglords a lot more than it suits the needs of taxpaying
Canadians. Those who are ill and would prefer the freedom of
self-medicating, that our ancestors took for granted, to cure whatever it is
that ails them, should not need approval from agents of the state otherwise
know as doctors.

Chris G. J. Buors, Winnipeg