THE WAR ON DRUGS HAS FAILED (1 of 7)

Herald readers believe regulating the illicit drug trade would clean up
crime, overdoses and addictions

Ever since February 1993 when our youngest son, Peter, fell asleep after
ingesting some street heroin, never to wake again, I have read everything I
could about drugs and drug policy, and I don't think I have ever seen such
a relentlessly stupid editorial on the subject as this one.

Your argument for maintaining the prohibition of certain drugs appears to
rest solely on your astoundingly naive belief that only illicit drugs are
"mind-altering." If nicotine and alcohol were not mind altering, if they
did not affect the way we feel, the way we perceive the world around us,
who would ingest them? Try offering a pint of water to a golfer instead of
beer at the nineteenth hole at your local golf course.

As for your apparent belief that users of illegal drugs are unable to live
normal lives, Dr. William Stewart Halsted (1852-1922), one of the greatest
of American surgeons, was a morphine addict from the age of thirty-four
until he died.

All this is trivia though compared to this basic truth: the state does not
have the right to punish people for what they choose to ingest into their
own bodies.

Alan Randell, Victoria, BC