STATE CREATES CRIME

Dear Editor,

I have to ask letter-writer Jim Bugg what basic human rights were
defiled by witnessing two immature youths smoking cannabis [Pot use
offensive, April 30 Letters to the Editor, Langley Advance News]?

Mental anguish is the only "effect" someone else smoking cannabis
could possibly cause, so Jim Bugg took the correct course of action by
leaving.

None of this is to excuse the poor judgment these foolish young ladies
demonstrated. However, Mr. Bugg's does not seem to understand why it
is that "moral decay is out of control."

I believe the worst aspect of the state controlling substances has
been the skewing of morals, because the state also has to control the
ideas about those substances.

Temperance, prudence, justice and fortitude are the cardinal virtues
of St. Thomas Aquinas, from which I measure morality. Not one of those
virtues is reconcilable with prohibition.

Canadians have lost our sense of what is right and wrong over drug
prohibition. Criminalizing non-violent persons for their vices is
immoral. Drug dealers and users do not aggress against others,
legislators and prohibition supporters do. Drug dealers and users do
not destroy family values, the state that encourages parents to
denounce their children and worse, encourages children to denounce
their parents to authorities is what destroys families.

Ceremonial and ritual drug use, as well as self-medication for health
reasons, was a natural right less than 100 years ago. Today, Canadians
are kept ignorant of ceremonial drug use, and government defines the
activity in Orwellian terms such as "recreational use" or "drug abuse."

In Western culture it is wine in the priests' goblets, and it is wine
with which Canadians ritually toast each other at our ceremonial
occasions. Opium and cannabis are the ceremonial drugs of the Eastern
culture. Coca serves the same purpose in South America.

Drug prohibitionists have lied to Canadians for 100
years.

"Common sense" said Einstein, "is the collection of prejudices
acquired by age eighteen."

Chris Buors

Winnipeg