PROHIBITION DOESN'T WORK

re: Dr. Colin R. Mangham's letter published Sept. 16.

Mangham says a lot of things. Like most prohibitionists he spews little
more than meaningless hot air. Nobody is saying that abusing marijuana or
any substance is a good thing. What we are saying is that the restriction
of law has not improved the situation.

The law has not reduced either demand or supply. In fact it has caused
dealers to push drugs harder in order to profit from the unnecessarily
valuable substance, thereby creating more users and more demand.

Up until about 100 years ago when we decided to persecute racial segments
of society by restricting their drugs of choice, all drugs were as
available as baking powder. Opium and marijuana have been used for
thousands of years for many different reasons. Heroin was invented by Bayer
as a cough suppressant. Morphine and cocaine were commonly used without any
concern because it was never a problem before prohibition.

People become addicted to many things that feel good whether it is a
skydiving adrenalin junkie or someone who is sexually promiscuous. The
criminal and social problems surrounding addiction are created and
amplified by prohibition. Serious problems that otherwise would not exist
have arisen as a result of prohibition and prohibition's inflation of the
value of otherwise valueless substances, including the rise of violent
gangs, government corruption, disease from markedly increased needle use
and death.

The reason the Senate choose this cause to focus on is that the House of
Commons has refused to hear anything that might suggest that prohibition is
the complete failure that it is. Normally in our democratic process the
Commons would weigh the evidence and formulate a decision. This has not
occurred and so the Senate has chosen to listen to rather than ignore reality.

Perhaps Mangham should focus on the dangers of drugs released without
thought of patient safety and pushed by doctors all in the name of profit,
drugs that replace tested and effective drugs that are no longer profitable
due to patent expiry. Or focus on the epidemic of untreated and improperly
managed pain by the medical profession, leading to assisted suicide, all
because of an irrational fear of addiction and a complete misunderstanding
of proper pain management techniques.

The Senate should be applauded for having the backbone to do the right
thing. In spite of powerful American threats to impede trade, uneducated or
scared MDs and years of prolific propaganda, the Senate did the right
thing. The senators are not guilty of expressing mindless opinion. They
conducted a study that was all encompassing spanning years and costing
millions, resulting in a summary more than 1,000 pages long that Dr.
Mangham says we should ignore because in his opinion the result of the
study is "cop-out realism to the extreme?" It must be understood that Dr.
Mangham is truly a professional prohibitionist. He is not interested in
reality. His paper Harm Reduction and Illegal Drugs: The True Debate
advocates prevention. Prevention through law is the real pipe dream. An
utter failure proven by the current state of affairs. A situation caused by
years of lies and prohibition.

Devin Olmstead