REGARDING ADDICTION

re: The Drug Deal-addictions awareness

Dear Editor:

Addiction is an awareness of how we govern ourselves as individuals
and as a country. It is what was not said that concerns me most.

Libertarians like Milton Friedman and Dr. Thomas Szasz makes the
strongest case for a free-market in all drugs based on the
Jeffersonian observation in his Notes On Virginia that "Were the
government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would
be in such keeping as our souls are now. Thus in France the emetic was
once forbidden as a medicine, and the potato as an article of food.

Government is just as infallible,[sic] too, when it fixes systems in
physics. Galileo was sent to the Inquisition for affirming that the
earth was a sphere.... It is error alone which needs the support of
government. Truth can stand by itself." I would like to apply that
Jeffersonian wisdom to Canadian drug policy.

In order to control drugs, the first thing the government had to do
was control the ideals about them. The Controlled Drugs and Substances
Act is based on political demonization and not any scientific facts
about the properties of periodic table substances. By law, alcohol is
class as a food and cannabis is a "dangerous drug." That lies need
legislation and truth stands on its own need no greater evidence than
that mis-classification. Alcohol is the ceremonial and ritual
substance of Christianity which explains our social acceptance. We
toast the bride and our friends with alcohol and it is alcohol in the
Priest's goblet. Opium is the ceremonial/ritual substance of the
Mid-east, Cannabis, a bamboo plant, comes from Asia and has the same
thousand year history of serving as everything from medicine to
ceremonial and ritual substance. Coca has the same reverence in the
South American culture as alcohol does here for the same reason; it is
the ceremonial/ritual substance of their culture.

"Dangerous drug" is a political designation, not an anthropological or
pharmacological fact.

The control of ideas has not served the Canadian public
well.

If Cpl MacKinnon was sex educating the community, no one would take
him seriously. However, when it comes to drugs, agents of the state
somehow become experts on everything from child rearing to
pharmacology. The notion of having the police educate the public was
understood to be propaganda when the Germans did it. The noble cause
of a so-called drug-free world is driven by the same force of moral
righteousness that inspired so many witch hunts of the past. The goal
of the prohibitionists past and present is a 1,000-year sin-free world
that is said will bring about the Second Coming. What is needed is an
anthropologist and a pharmacologist to educate the public, not the
police.

Addiction is another topic that needs a good airing in Canada. The
medical model theory has never been proven. The moral model has stood
the test of time and culture. Spiritual Death is what our ancestors
called addiction. You got there by lusting for vice pleasures and
being a glutton about it. Medicalizing our morals may meet the
intellectual expectations of our age, but moralizing by agents of the
state, especially the police because of the authority they exude, has
no place in a free society. Treatment boils down to a moralizer giving
you a good taking too in order that you reject your gluttonous ways
and adopt morals more in line with the mainstream concerning the
ceremonial and ritual substances of other than the Christian culture.
The theory of addiction finds receptive ears in theologic cultures
conditioned to believe in demonic possession. Demonic possession by
drugs is what addiction defines. The fact of the matter is that all
human beings have free will that can not be destroyed by periodic
table elements no matter the combination. A short read of the Parable
of The fall will clue our leadership into just exactly what it is that
gives drugs their seductive allure; the forbidding of fruit! The even
more powerful lesson of the Parable is to authorities. Lying to your
charges does nothing except unleash powerful serpents to battle
forever. People can help themselves if they want to. In fact only the
individual can channel their own energies so self-help is the only
true help there is. The care of everyman's soul belongs to himself in
Jeffersonian terms.

It is the truth that will set us free. It won't make me any friends on
the prohibition side of the issue but Canadians deserve to hear a
moral argument about what we are doing with the law. There is supposed
to be a separation of church and state in this country. When the
police are leading the moralizing sessions it would be a good time to
stop and have a good think about all of this.

Temptation is the one word that no one will ever see associated with
addiction.

Milton Friedman long ago predicted the failure of the drug war because
he understood that only parents can instill the "right" morals into
their children. Only parents can instill the strength of character it
takes to resist the temptation of pleasure vices. The drug prohibition
law does not make that job any easier and indeed makes it impossible
when give the forbidden fruit allure.

Yielding to the temptation of pleasure vices has never been a disease
or a policing matter. Perhaps a separation of medicine and state will
clear up these matters.

Restoring our natural right to drugs will clear up all the political
lies that turn alcohol to a food and the herb cannabis into a
dangerous drug. An anthropologist and a pharmacologist are badly
needed at these community meetings. We don't need the police there
giving them the evil eye for passing along politically incorrect
truths about drugs, their pharmacological properties and their
ceremonial and ritual uses now do we?

CHRIS BUORS

Winnipeg, Manitoba