Just once, I would like to see a drug story (New Drug, New Life, Aug.
3) in the media that includes some sort of discussion about why
governments should have the right to prohibit their citizens from
ingesting certain drugs. Seems like a totally bizarre notion to me!

It matters not that marijuana or alcohol or heroin or tobacco or,
indeed, any substance is considered harmful by the state's physicians.
The point is that citizens of a free society have an absolute right to
ingest any damn drug they want. The state has as much right to
prohibit its citizens from ingesting particular drugs as to prohibit
them from eating hamburgers.

Nearly all the harm inflicted by drugs upon users and non-users alike
is caused by the fact that these substances are prohibited. Eliminate
prohibition, and the problems will disappear - along with the careers
of many "addiction experts."

Psychiatrist Thomas Szasz has this to say about methadone and doctors
in his book, Ceremonial Chemistry:

"The drama of the competition between accredited and non-accredited
tempters (priests, healers, drug dealers, etc.) is here writ large:
those who tempt heroin addicts to become methadone addicts by offering
them free methadone, who tempt informers to denounce people as addicts
by offering them bounties, and who tempt doctors to prostitute
themselves as state-salaried addiction mongers - all these are exalted
and deified as `therapists' and as selfless fighters in the `war
against drug abuse.'"

Did we learn nothing from the prohibition of alcohol?

Alan Randell
Victoria, B.C.