METH LAB CONVICTION COMPARED TO HOLOCAUST

Editor: Re: Meth lab operator gets extra five years, (The Times, June 23).

In times past, most rulers oppressed their people with unremitting
savagery. With the development of more educated populaces and the
concomitant rise in democracy, despotic monarchs were generally
replaced by elected governments who governed with the consent of the
people and, for the most part, the lives of most individuals improved.

However, the rise of high circulation newspapers made it possible for
governments to convince even an educated readership that it was in
their interests that their government do evil things to a minority of
the population.

Consider the Holocaust. Consider our drug laws.

There is no more reason for punishing the users and distributors of
certain supposedly harmful recreational drugs, and not the users and
distributors of other harmful recreational drugs, than there was in
the past for other majority-supported pogroms against identifiable
minorities such as hanging witches, lynching blacks or gassing Jews.

If you were to read every day in the paper that Jews were being
slaughtered in extermination camps and the victims' voices are never
heard, after a while, if you were not Jewish, you would become inured
to the suffering, bored perhaps, and turn the page. We would care
nothing for those affected or their families.

It is routine. It is normal.

Today, we read every day about people being arrested or shot by the
cops because they use, manufacture or sell certain drugs, and the
victims' voices are never heard.

If you're not a user of those drugs, you become inured to the
suffering, bored perhaps, and turn the page. You care nothing for
those affected or their families. It is routine. It is normal.

What to do? Assuming you care about innocent people being carted off
to jail (possibly not, because persecuting a innocent minority does
sell newspapers), please make your drug bust stories less one-sided in
favour of the cops by including the comments of the individuals
arrested and their families as well as, wherever possible, the
comments of someone who opposes these laws.

Please try to put a human face on the suffering.

Alan Randell,

Victoria