A FRIGHTENING CHARACTER

Re: Harper's drug-war flashback, DEC. 7.

Kudos to Dan Gardner for his excellent opinion article. Stephen Harper
is, indeed, a frightening character on the Canadian political landscape.

The notion that a small handful of arbitrarily designated illegal
drugs, almost all of which are less harmful than hundreds of legal
drugs, are an enemy "attacking" our values, and that maintaining the
serious and costly social problems triggered by their prohibition
should be considered desirable, leaves one wondering about Mr.
Harper's motivation for entering politics.

He says that taxpayer money shouldn't be used to fund safe injection
sites, blissfully unaware that these sites provide a cost-effective
way of inhibiting an HIV epidemic from blooming, or that businesses
providing safe-ingestion sites for coffee and alcohol have been legal
for many years.

A greater irony, however, is that Stephen Harper has been attacking my
values for some time, not only with his ignorant attitude toward drug
policy, but also his desire to use religion as an excuse to engage in
human rights violations and his unseemly attraction to U. S. President
George Bush.

George Kosinski, Gibsons, B.C.