DRUG LAWS UNFAIR

Editor, The Journal

Re Street value of grow-op marijuana - $1.5 million, Feb. 17

Why do governments prohibit certain drugs?

Is it to protect users from harm?

No, that can't be the reason because users suffer MORE (adulterated drugs
and jail time) when a drug is banned as compared to when it is legally
available. My wife and I became well acquainted with this aspect of
government policy when we lost our 19-year-old son to street heroin in
1993. Many more people died from the effects of bad booze during
Prohibition than when alcohol was legally available. The harm argument is
moot in any event because two of our more dangerous drugs, alcohol and
tobacco, are legal.

Is it to reduce the crime associated with illegal drugs?

No, that can't be the reason because banning a drug always gives rise to
MORE crime (drug cartels, petty crimes by users as prohibition makes drug
prices much higher, violent disputes between dealers, etc.) than when the
drug is legally available.

Is it a brutal, Hitler-like pogrom to distract and entertain the majority
by ruining the lives of the INNOCENT minority who ingest or sell certain
drugs? BINGO!

In short, drugs are highly useful, functional and beneficial scapegoats.

They provide a ruling class with fig leaves to place over the unsightly
social ills that are endemic to the social system over which they preside
and they give the general public a focus for blame in which a chemical
'bogeyman,' or the 'deviants' who ingest it, are the root cause for a wide
array of complex social problems.

And of course, The Ascroft Cache Creek Journal, along with the rest of the
establishment media, wholeheartedly supports this campaign by excluding
from drug bust stories such as this the opinions of those who oppose this law.

Alan & Eleanor Randell Victoria