IMMORAL DRUG LAWS

I wonder if church member and letter writer Pamela Self of Amherst has ever
thought about the immorality of the prohibition drug laws? The law fails
the four cardinal virtue tests of temperance, prudence, justice and
fortitude. Temperance and prohibition are irreconcilable not to mention the
imprudence of spending vast sums from the public treasury in a futile
effort to save people from temptation. It is the duty of parents, not the
state to instill character traits like resisting temptation.

Great Americans like George Washington, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and
Martin Luther King Jr. certainly did not condone blind obedience to the
law. "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God" was Jefferson's personal
motto. In a free country the right to challenge authority must also be
instilled in the children or far from being out of control, the country
will be in total control of a tyrant. Eternal vigilance is the price that
liberty extols.

And imagine, I'm from Canada where the ideas of Jefferson and liberty for
all still resonate. The ugliest thing about state control of medicines and
diet is that the state also has to control the ideas the people hold about
their medicines and their diet too, said Jefferson in his "Notes on
Virginia." Trouble is, when you live in a country where the ideas are
controlled, you are not free anymore.

The idea of putting people in jail because they do not share the same
ideology as yourself is called persecution in the history books. It is
always the aggressors who are seen to be the criminals in history books. It
is not the drug dealers who aggress in supplying the demands of American
users, it is the supporters of prohibition who are the aggressors, and no
matter how you dress it up today, the history books will criminalize your
legacy as aggression.

Pamela Self ought to consider how the billions spent on the immoral war on
the American people would have been better spent on constructive efforts
based on voluntary cooperation rather than on turning America into a police
state.

CHRIS BUORS

Winnipeg, Manitoba