MORE KNOCKS FOR METH EDITORIAL

Your Feb. 16 editorial on crystal meth betrayed a significant lack of
understanding about the effectiveness of drug prohibition.

You make the assumption that cracking down on drugs by using the criminal
law will actually produce some positive results. Yet the evidence, after a
century of prohibition and two decades of a "war on drugs," is that
prohibition reduces neither supply of drugs nor demand for drugs. Put more
bluntly: prohibition is an abject failure.

Indeed, the most dangerous illicit drugs in our society exist only because
of prohibition. Crack was invented in order to make the sale of cocaine
easier (cheap, easy to conceal and high potency rocks instead of bulkier,
more expensive powder). Smoking crystal meth became popular during prohibition.

Methamphetamine itself was commonly used as a stimulant and appetite
suppressant as recently as the 1950s (and not prohibited criminally until
the 1970s), with some ill effects but nowhere near the human devastation
caused after it became illegal.

And prohibition causes other immense social problems, from funding and
fueling organized crime to the petty thefts committed by addicts seeking to
pay for massively overpriced street drugs.

Blind faith in prohibition is a mistake. Indeed, I challenge anyone to
point to an example of a successful (reduction of supply and demand)
criminal drug prohibition anywhere in the non-totalitarian world.

There isn't one - so isn't it time we tried something new?

Kirk Tousaw

Campaign Manager

British Columbia Marijuana Party

Vancouver, B.C.