CHANGE THE WAY DRUG BUSTS ARE REPORTED IN MEDIA

Letters to the Editor - Regarding the July 2 story Sault men
`important players' in drug ring, The Sault Star should make some
changes to the way it reports drug busts.

Our political leaders tell us drugs are banned because they're
harmful, which is false because we do not ban two of our more harmful
drugs -- alcohol or tobacco.

The purpose of banning some drugs has nothing to do with protecting
users from harm. Drug prohibition is a cynical, manipulative campaign
to entertain and distract the majority by persecuting an innocent minority.

Drug laws are about the use of something by a group of people who are
already perceived as some type of threat.

For example, it wasn't alcohol that drove the move toward Prohibition;
it was the behaviour and morality of what the dominant, middle-class
Protestant saw as the "dangerous class" of urban, immigrant,
working-class Catholics. Similarly, it was the Chinese opium dens and
the resultant racism, not the widespread use of opiates among white,
middle-class, middle-aged women, that prompted the first drug laws.

Scapegoating is a way of blaming a drug or its alleged effects on its
users for a variety of social ills that usually have nothing to do
with the user or the drugs.

Drugs 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 those who ingest it, are the root cause
for a wide array of social problems.

How should a conscientious newspaper report drug busts? There's a
sinister side to reporting "just the news" when it comes to drug busts.

The steady drip-drip repetition of countless drug bust stories lulls
the public into complacency about these terrible events and they
become less and less inclined to voice any protest. Reporting one drug
bust as straight news may persuade the public to question the law. A
thousand drug bust stories only tend to make people bored with the
issue and to convince them that drug users "only brought it on
themselves."

Here are my suggestions:

* Include the comments of those who oppose these laws.

* Include the comments of the victims, i.e. those arrested and their
families and friends (with their permission of course) to personalize
them.

* Include the comments of the defending and prosecuting
lawyers.

* Ask the drug cops if they expect to be punished for enforcing
prohibition after we come to our senses and end it (or the courts do
it for us). The cops will bleat about having a duty to enforce the
law. Helping to enforce laws that are crimes against humanity is
itself a crime.

* Include a summary of the newspaper's editorial position on these
laws.

If the media continue to suppress the voices of the victims and
otherwise depersonalize them, I fear drug prohibition laws will be
with us for 1,000 years.

Alan Randell,

Victoria, B.C.