DRUGS ARE A PROPERTY; WE HAVE A NATURAL RIGHT TO THEM

Re: last week's Supreme Court decision on cannabis (Gazette, Dec. 24,
"Puffers' high hopes go up in smoke").

What we are talking about here is the moral code of the Canadian
people. Civilizations of the past perished because they did not adjust
their moral codes and legal systems to the requirements of a market
economy. Patents, prescription rights and drug prohibition are
political interventions in the drug market.

The social order is doomed as long as politicians, for whatever
reason, want to pretend drugs are anything other than a mixture of
chemicals found on the periodic table.

Whatever dangers attributed are politically defined, and not everyone
will agree with those definitions. Therein lies the rub. We sow the
seeds of destruction of the social order by criminalizing dissenters.

Intervention always has its political corollary, be it "the Fuhrer
principle," the "Superman idea" or the fantasy a leader will arise to
make all the right decisions and save humanity.

In short, as Plato remarked, leadership needs scapegoats, some enemy
to fear, or else we would have no need of leadership. Drug users are
the scapegoats today.

Drugs are a property. We have a natural right to them. We have owned
that right since time began. The right is bestowed by the Creator in
Genesis 1:29, no matter what immoral law the tyrants care to legislate
into political truth.

We have the cardinal virtues of temperance, prudence, justice and
fortitude to guide us - or else we have whatever Paul Martin thinks.

Chris Buors

Libertarian Party of Manitoba

Winnipeg