ADDICTION DOESN'T EXIST

Re: We chase away tourists, and attract more junkies (Editor's Desk, July
14).

Before Tom Fletcher asks questions he ought to know what he is talking
about. For instance, "addiction."Is there really such a thing as a
supernatural force like addictionthat compels people to act against
their free will? I challenge Mr. Fletcher to name the person who
proved the theory of addiction, and to tell readers in what year the
theory was proven.

The next challenge is, can he tell readers the difference between a
vice and a crime? Mr. Fletcher ought to consult well respected
American jurist Lysander Spooner's classic essay Vices Are Not Crimes,
written in 1875, if he is not sure. In short, vices are harms we do to
ourselves and crime implies harm to another person or their property.
By that, and any other definition, drug taking and dealing for that
matter are vices; dealers and users are willing participants and
aggress against no one.

In fact, in the absence of any prohibition law, from Canada's discover
by the Europeans up until the Opium Narcotic Act of 1908, Canada did
not have a drug problem at all. The entire history of literature can
be searched and there is no inkling at all. Today, there is not a
newspaper in the land that does not have some sort of
"prohibition-related" item every day. Trouble is, supposedly informed
persons who deliver news to the community couch the truth with
Orwellian rhetoric like "drug-related" crime. As if drugs had a moral
agency of their own.

People choose to use drugs for reasons that are important to them as
individuals. They stop using drugs when they are darn good and ready
too as well. Passing prohibition laws has socially constructed the
streetscape Canadian from one end of the nation to the other are
dealing with now. When sorcery was against the law, there was no end
of self-professed witches to burn at the stake, says the historical
record. If you confessed, the Inquisitors would wring your neck for
you before they lit the pyre.

The theory of addiction has never been proven. What you are really
dealing with is lustful gluttons. They lust for pleasure and they
don't know when toquit. Those are two of the Seven DeadlySins, which
tradition tells us leads to spiritual death. Ergo, homeless junkies
have spiritual, not medical problems.

Wanting your way so bad that you would be willing to harm another
person to get it is vainglory defined. That means stigmatizing people
and giving them criminal records for their vices makes Canadians just
as ugly as Crusaders, Inquisitors and Nazis of the past. We may be
kinder in our cruelty, but vainglory is the right word for wanting a
drug-free Utopia so badly that you are willing to harm others.

Chris Buors

Libertarian Party of Manitoba Winnipeg