DRUG STORY HAS BEEN WRITTEN A MILLION TIMES

Editor, The Record:

Other than a change of drug names, "Jerry's" story has been written a
million times by well meaning journalists like Julia Caranci. The reason
the formula story works so well is that it is a social construct. Crystal
meth is but the latest drug de jour to come down the pike that apparently
has supernatural powers of allurement.

None of that washes with the properties of chemicals found on the periodic
table; none of those chemicals has properties of allurement. What drugs do
is not where the debate is. How drugs get into someone's system is the
question, so we must look at something other than science for an
explanation as to what makes this garbage so magnetic.

I believe the answer can be found in the parable of The Fall. The forbidden
fruit has had the allurement properties Julia and her contemporaries write
about.

Yeah, that's the ticket. Tell kids they can't use "dangerous drugs" and
that all illicit drugs are intrinsically evil and lo and behold, the kids
grow up with the ambition to give every one of them a try.

Surprise, surprise. As adults we ought to know better than to make drugs
the forbidden fruit.

I remember thinking the same thing when I was a kid. If adults had to have
the police come by and tell us how evil drugs are then drugs must be a
great thrill. Adults are always trying to spoil your fun when your a kid.

Of the millions of words I have seen written on the issue of drug
attractions, the one word I have never seen associated is temptation. Why
is that? Because the "medical" category we classify drug use under would
then be revealed to be misguided.

"Dangerous drug" is a political designation that has worn awful thin in the
youth crowd. Has there been a drug manufactured in the last 100 years that
did not carry the this is "the most dangerous drug ever" warning?

The Americans are still peddling the myth that cannabis is very dangerous,
though medically speaking instead of politically speaking, table salt is
more dangerous. Yeah, electricity, cars, every sport, chemicals under the
kitchen and bathroom sink, not to mention the garden shed; the world is
full of danger. And when you are a kid, what do adults fear? Well, they
fear everything from the air that we breath to the terrorist of Osama bin
Laden. Really, does anybody really wonder why the kids don't believe the
lies they are told about drugs?

Classic liberalism is the politics that I embrace so I have learned a lot
about self-protection. With the government track record, I don't believe a
single word that comes out of Health Canada or the police or journalists
who depend on them for information.

Canadians can continue to lie to our children and lie to ourselves about
drugs as long as we want the paternalism of the state to offer the
protection of junk science that delivers the right moral message or we can
end drug infantilism by restoring our natural right to drugs and making
them all available on the free-market.

The proper person to consult about drugs is a pharmacologist.

Chris Buors, Libertarian Party of Manitoba