LET'S FORGET TREATMENT, PROHIBITION AND JUST LEAVE DRUG USERS ALONE

Letter writer Jim White (Ohio prisons chief opposes drug treatment for
obvious reasons, Aug. 8) does an excellent job of reminding everyone of
what George Orwell had to say, "The bought mind is a spoiled mind."

Unfortunately Jim endorses a worse policy than prohibition. "Drug
treatment" means psychotherapy. Psychotherapy means convincing "patients"
to live their lives according to the moral views of the psychotherapist.

The state ought not be in the "coercive treatment" business. Upon
reflection, the Soviet Gulag and Mao's re-education camps were engaged in
the same enterprise. The Soviets' psychiatrists considered you cured when
capitalism was renounced for socialism. Does all this "coercive treatment"
not sound eerily similar to what the Spanish Inquisition attempted in
forcing religious conversion on Jews, witches and heretics?

Forced religious conversion of values always finds receptive ears amongst
the believers. However, the history books tell us it is a very ugly enterprise.

There is always another option. It worked for the capitalists in Russia and
worked for the heretics of the Inquisition. Americans could just leave drug
choosers alone!

A quote:"Were the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our
bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now. Thus in France the
emetic was once forbidden as a medicine, and the potato as an article of
food. Government is just as infallible, too, when it fixes systems in
physics. Galileo was sent to the Inquisition for affirming that the earth
was a sphere. It is error alone which needs the support of government.
Truth can stand by itself."

Chris Buors

Winnipeg Manitoba

Canada