DRUG WAR CORRUPTS IN CANADA TOO

Dear Sir:

Just about everything that Steve Frey said about Mexican prisons
(Carillon-Feb. 19/04) is true of Stony Mountain too.

Inside employees have been charged with drug trafficking at the institution
on several occasions. It was reported in the national press this week that
gangs of assorted affiliations control the insides of our prisons too.
Sanitation conditions are about the only improvement we have over Mexico.

Canadians like to think that we have "fair trials." We do not. Most rights
were cast aside to prosecute "consensual crimes" like drug distribution and
cultivation, where there are no victims.

For instance, I was not allowed to even know who my accuser was when I asked
questions in a Canadian court. Keeping the identity of the informant secret
was deemed more important than the truth. I could not test the truthfulness
of the arresting officer's testimony because the officer merely had to state
that he believed answering the question might give me some inkling of who
the informant was.

I came to know who the informant because of a leak in the Crown attorney's
office. I knew the officer was lying on the stand. There was nothing I could
do about it. I quit believing in Canadian justice that day.

The incident enraged me so much that I decided to do something political
about it. I became a Libertarian Party member and am now the leader of the
party. I too work for worldwide justice and it has cost me everything I
worked for 20 years to achieve.

Steve Frey got caught up in the international perversion of drug war
justice. Let me rest Manitobans assured that the drug war has corrupted our
society too. It is not drugs, but drug prohibition that leads to drug use
that is irresponsible, self-indulgent, and personally and socially
self-destructive.

This point was driven home with reports that pharmaceutical companies have
been less that truthful regarding their drug test results. Pharmaceutical
companies "deceive" doctors and their patients-and perhaps their
shareholders-when they withhold unfavorable data on prescription medicines,
the Canadian Medical Association Journal argued in the latest issue.

The Canadian government has consistently encouraged the public to conduct
themselves according to the maxim "the buyer need not beware" because Health
Canada was looking out for consumers. Can such paternalism on the part of
our rulers lead to anything but infantilism on the part of the people?

When it comes to drugs, the cure is worse than the disease once the state
gets involved Nothing short of the repeal of drug prohibition will restore
justice. Caveat emptor is a skill that must be re-learned by Canadians or we
will otherwise be at the mercy of the unjust therapeutic state.

Canada must reject the 1963 United Nations Convention on Drugs agreement.
That is the world-wide source that subverts not only the cardinal virtue of
justice but prudence, temperance and fortitude as well. It is time for a
divorce for state and medicine.

Chris Buors Libertarian Party of Manitoba Winnipeg, MB