MERRIFIELD'S POT POLICY QUESTIONED

Jasper Booster - I have a few questions for MP Rob Merrifield about his
evident support for drug prohibition, a program he should know was
initiated during the first half of the 20th century as a means of
persecuting and "controlling" blacks (marijuana) and Chinese (opium).

1. If drugs are banned because they are harmful to users, why, then, are
tobacco and alcohol not banned? Doesn't this seem unfair to those who
prefer illegal drugs? If we ban one harmful drug, shouldn't we ban all
harmful drugs?

2. Is it not true that, far from protecting users from harm, banning a drug
harms them much more than would otherwise be the case because it cuts them
off from access to drugs of known potency and purity? Weren't thousands of
Americans poisoned or blinded by adulterated alcohol during Prohibition.
Didn't the problems vanish when alcohol was legalized again?

3. Doesn't drug prohibition CAUSE street-level drug dealing? Why should
anyone buy drugs in the street if the corner store sells them?

4. The 1973 Le Dain Commission concluded, "There appears to be little
permanent physiological damage from chronic use of pure opiate narcotics."
Why, then, ban heroin?

5. If prohibition is so great, why did America give up on the prohibition
of alcohol?

6. Is it not true that if drugs and prostitution were legalized, the power
of the Hells Angels would be severely curtailed? After all, Prohibition
created Al Capone, not the other way around.

7. Is it not true that if marijuana were legalized, marijuana grow
operations would be no more dangerous, do no more damage and steal no more
hydro than the average tomato grow operation?

For me, there is no more reason to punish drug users and dealers today than
there was in the past to hang witches, lynch blacks, incarcerate Japanese
Canadians or gas Jews. 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.