DRUGS: BAN CREATES HARDSHIPS

Dear Editor,

Why do governments prohibit certain drugs [Crime!: Drugs top Langley's
crime list, March 26, Langley Advance News]? Is it to protect users from harm?

No, that can't be the reason, because users suffer more (adulterated drugs
and jail time) when a drug is banned, as compared to when it is legally
available, and besides, the most dangerous drugs of all, alcohol and
tobacco, are legal.

Is it to reduce the crime associated with illegal drugs?

No, that can't be the reason, because banning a drug always gives rise to
more crime (drug cartels, petty crime by users as prohibition makes drug
prices much higher, violent disputes between dealers) than when the drug is
legally available.

Is it that our drug laws are nothing less than a brutal pogrom designed to
distract our attention from more important issues, and to provide bigger
budgets for our police officers, by ruining the lives of the innocent few
who ingest or sell certain drugs?

After the Holocaust, people asked themselves, "How did it happen? How was
it possible that a majority of the German people was persuaded to accept,
if not support, Hitler's brutal policies?"

One of the reasons might well have been a stream of "objective" newspaper
accounts of the terror, written in such an uncritical, matter-of-fact
fashion that it seemed to the non-Jewish reader that persecuting Jews was
"normal." After a while, the majority simply shrugged and allowed the
government free rein to commit genocide.

Despite all the talk about how the Holocaust must never happen again, it is
happening again, all around us, only the victims this time are the users of
certain drugs. Like the German people before us, the media have lulled us
into tolerating state sanctioned evil. Those who do not use illegal drugs
have become acclimatized to the cops' incessant hounding of those innocent
souls who do. We shrug and turn the page.

What to do? Assuming you care about innocent people being carted off to
jail (possibly not, because persecuting a innocent minority does sell
newspapers), please make your drug bust stories less one-sided in favour of
the cops by including the comments of the individuals arrested and their
families as well as, wherever possible, the comments of someone who opposes
these laws.

Please try to put a human face on the suffering.

Alan Randell

Victoria