UNQUALIFIED RANTINGS

Dear Editor:

Your recent article "Chief slams PM over pot laws" (Dec. 23) shows the
utter contempt with which the political establishment, namely Police Chief
Noel Catney and MP Paul Szabo, views the populace. As a believer in the
power of individual choice over the coercive faculties of the state
apparatus, I was appalled that their rantings were printed unqualified.
They present a moral absolutist world view aimed at sacrificing the
individual at the altar of the collective.

Catney makes his priorities patently clear when he says the new laws will
only impede efforts by the police to crack down on pot smoking. Apparently,
protecting people is secondary to moral imposition: people need to be
protected from their own choices, they need to be parented, and who better
to decide than an unelected official.

There is a fatal flaw in Catney's reasoning: he reduces the marijuana user
to a consequence of his/her consumption, eliminating all hints of
individual agency. He claims, in so many words, that those who use cannabis
are unable to control their own consumption, leading to a strain on health
services and a general lowering of the quality of life.

Catney also makes the absurd claim that increased marijuana usage will lead
to increases in crime. How, pray, would that happen? The break-ins and
thefts that he refers to are not a result of pot usage in and of itself,
but rather an artifact of prohibition.

If the price of cannabis was not ridiculously inflated as a result of its
illegality, if there weren't exorbitant amounts of money to be made in
flaunting an unjust law, would there be turf wars, break-ins, thefts, and
the other ills he attributes to a mere plant?

Szabo's comments are so bad as to be almost below response, but he cannot
go unchallenged. True, cannabis impairs the ability to drive and to work
safely around machinery.

But, how is that different from alcohol, or cough syrup, or any of hundreds
of over-the-counter medications? If someone smokes marijuana and then
decides to, say, drive a bulldozer down Hwy. 401, that says volumes more
about the person than about the drug.

In the ideology of Catney and Szabo, someone who dares to challenge the
Orders From Above is not a member of society, but rather exists to
subjugate society and to undermine order, and someone who indulges in an
unauthorized substance is a slave to his/her addictions and not a
consenting adult who consciously chose to do so.

How much further will the police state encroach on our right to choose?

Ashar Latif

Mississauga