VICTIMS ARE BEING SILENCED BY THE MEDIA

Re: "Students taught lesson", (Weekend Edition, May 31)

On and on it goes.

You and your media colleagues continue to immerse us in an endless torrent
of "objective" news stories about drug busts and associated court cases
without allowing a single word from those arrested, their families and
friends or from those people like me, who oppose the prohibition of drugs.

There is no more reason to persecute drug users and distributors today than
there was in the past to hang witches, lynch blacks or gas Jews.

If you want to know how it came to be that most Germans acquiesced to
Hitler's policies towards the Jews, you only have to realize that a flood
of "news" stories like this has made us think that sending innocent people
off to jail is normal. We shrug and turn the page.

Are we better than the Nazis because our drug laws threaten an innocent
minority with fines or jail rather then with execution?

Are we better than Hitler because we persecute an innocent minority because
of the drugs they use or the plant they grow rather than because of the
religion they follow? I think not.

Are you better than those German editors who published anti-Jew propaganda
as instructed by Hitler's administration?

Considering you have the freedom to present an objective account of these
types of tragedies, I would say you're a lot worse.

Alan Randell