DRUG USE A VICE, NOT A CRIME OR MEDICAL DISORDER

To the editor:

Letter writer Elvey Martin ("Taxpayers won't go for safe injection sites
without treatment," Jan. 1) subtly brings to our attention the true nature
of drug addiction by using terms like "destructive habit."

The safe injection sites are doomed to be another waste of tax payer
dollars. Canadians are dealing with vice in drug use, not crime or medical
disorders.

Pleasure drug "addictions" were defined as lust and gluttony for thousands
of years before separation of church and state. Medicine has evolved to
occupy the pedestal formerly reserved for the church in the Canadian
"therapeutic state" of today. Canadians have simply learned to do our
moralizing in medical terms.

"Drug problem" is a political designation no different than Hitler's "Jew
problem" or the Inquisition's "heretic problem." Ending drug prohibition
would go a long way to solving the state defined "drug problem."

If heroin and cocaine were sold for about the same, pound for pound, as
coffee, so-called addicts could afford all they want without having to
resort to crime or the public purse.

When the gluttonous have satisfied their lust for pleasurable experiences,
they can rejoin the mainstream without criminal records. The best help for
drug addicts is self-help and that is free.

"The care of every man's soul belongs to himself. But what if he neglect
the care of it? Well what if he neglect the care of his health or his
estate, which more nearly relate to the state? Will the magistrate make a
law: he not poor or sick? Laws provide against injury from others; but not
from ourselves. God himself will not save men against their wills."-Thomas
Jefferson

Chris Buors

Winnipeg