LIBERALIZED CHARTER GIVES MORE RIGHTS TO DRUG DEALERS

Re: Harper vows jail time for drug dealers, producers, Oct. 5

Before Vancouver NDP MP Libby Davies decides to criticize Prime
Minister Stephen Harper for his plans to incarcerate drug dealers,
she may wish to reconsider the effects of what she considers her
enlightened policies.

The Downtown Eastside, the heroin capital of North America and
disease sector of our city, is the result of poverty mixed with
tolerance of drug crimes. The drug dealers, many of whom are in
Canada illegally, leave a swath of ruined lives far out of proportion
to their numbers. These dealers remain at large because of lenient
judges, a non-functional deportation system, and a political
bureaucracy which performs better at sustaining itself than
protecting the public.

The comparison to American drug enforcement is distracting and
erroneous for many reasons. Before our Charter of Rights was styled
in the American manner, with greater freedoms for criminals and more
hindrances for police, our drug crime was comparatively isolated and
contained. It was the liberalizations that enabled a political and
social relaxation towards drugs which, in the runaway ideology of
Davies, would expand into no enforcement at all.

The public may not recognize that drug dealers far surpass murderers
in their destruction of human life, but may wish to visit Main and
Hastings to view the current progress of Davies's philosophy of law
enforcement.

Ken Waters

Vancouver