WHY NOT BAN ALL DRUGS?

Dear Sir:

Re: Largest cocaine seizure made at West Hawk Lake (Carillon Jan. 15)

Another day, another piece of propaganda served up by the media to persuade
us to prostrate ourselves before Big Brother government and support one of
the most oppressive and brutal programs ever conjured by the mind of man,
drug prohibition. It's propaganda because, as usual, those of us who oppose
these ridiculous laws are not permitted to be heard.

If drugs are banned because they're harmful, why don't we ban alcohol and
tobacco? No, let's face facts here. The government decided to ban some
harmful recreational drugs but not other harmful recreational drugs for one
reason and one reason only: To distract and entertain the majority by
persecuting an innocent minority.

Drug prohibition was initiated a hundred years ago to "control" certain
non-white minorities by banning the drugs used by those minorities, but
today, the cops are happy to make use of this racist legislation to harass
those whose life-style or skin colour offends them.

One thing for sure, drug prohibition has nothing to do with protecting
anyone from anything. Rather, drug scares are about the use of something by
a group of people who are already perceived by a ruling elite as some type
of threat.

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.

Alan Randell

Victoria, B.C.