FOSSILIZED THINKING

Re: "Treason," Letter, Jan. 14., and "Ecstasy victims showed extreme
symptoms," Jan. 16.

Much like Ronald Reagan's Just Say No policy of the 1980s, Dave
Reesor's idea of harsh minimum penalties for drug producers belongs in
a museum. Claiming that illegal organizations produce and distribute
illegal drugs for anything but profit is an opinion-biased argument.
Using the case study of the United States as an example for failed
drug policy, it is clear that harsher prohibition has not affected the
consumer demand for drugs in any way. Instead, it has pushed
production south, into Mexico, where a violent drug war has claimed an
estimated 47,500 lives since 2007 as gangs fight for control over
unregulated distribution networks into the U.S.A.

These unregulated markets also mean that producers can cut drugs such
as ecstasy with cheaper substances to maximize profit. If pills laced
with paramethoxymetham-phetamine are to blame in recent deaths, it
would be in the Calgary Police Service's best interest to re-lease
pictures of the pills in question, along with their trademark
insignia, to effectively warn the public of the dangers.

This strategy is called harm reduction and is an alternative to
prohibition, which failed to prevent the five deaths in Calgary and 16
in British Columbia. How many more deaths will happen before our
elected officials open their eyes to the true dangers of drug prohibition?

Mark Persinger

Calgary