SENSELESS WASTE OF LIFE

On Parliament Hill in Ottawa, there is a plaque commemorating 729
police officers who died in the line of duty.

The plaque states, "They are our heroes. We shall not forget
them."

It politely refrains from emphasizing that, while they may be heroes,
these officers lost their lives doing their job.

Nor does it indicate how many of these officers died trying to prevent
someone from using, purchasing, selling, or producing one of the few
illegal drugs out of the hundreds or thousands on the market.

How many more officers have to be sacrificed on the altar of the U.S.
war on (some) drugs before we begin to accept the insanity of treating
drug addiction as a crime instead of a medical problem, not to mention
the prohibition of the relatively harmless marijuana?

If a police officer died trying to prevent someone from selling beer
or cigarettes, is there anyone who would not consider that a senseless
waste of a life?

Why should the lives of our police officers be devalued just because
of the political status of a few drugs?

George Kosinski,

Gibsons, B.C.