CRIME, TRUTH AND THE LAW

THE EDITOR:

Despite all the good intentions of the Abbotsford Coalition for Crime
Prevention and Drug Treatment, their efforts are doomed to failure.

The members of that coalition can fool themselves all they want that they
are dealing with crime or drug abuse or any other fiction they want.

What they are dealing with is vice and what they want is for moral
righteousness to prevail.

In the entire history of mankind there is still not one example of where
the legislation of morality has worked to achieve stated goals.

Because religions appeal to us to become our brother's keeper, the idea of
using the coercive force of the law always appeals as a handy tool to those
who wish to force their morality on others.

Janet Tomayer makes the classic social justice appeal of "community"
responsibility and the work together to do what needs to be done. There is
only individual responsibility - community responsibility is a fiction.

There is another course of action. The members of the community could
advocate for the end of drug prohibition and the restoration of our natural
right to drugs.

Once those property rights were restored the best course of action would be
to simply leave drug choosers alone.

"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,[sic] 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." Thomas Jefferson.

Chris Buors

Winnipeg