DRUGS: MEDIA'S TO BLAME

To the editor:

Re,: Pot Grower Sentenced to Stay at Home, Capital News, March 15.

My wife and I became well acquainted with government policy (on drugs) when
we lost our 19-year-old son to street heroin in 1993.

Banning a drug always gives rise to more crime than when the drug is
legally available.

(The laws are) to distract attention away from more important issues by
conducting a brutal pogrom, first to ostracize and then to destroy the
innocent few who ingest or sell certain drugs, with the additional
"benefit" of allowing our politicians and cops, along with their media
sycophants, the pleasure of strutting and swagger before us as they promise
to ride out like St. George and slay the fearsome and deadly dragon of
drugs while sticking the taxpayer with the cost.

How did the politicians win our approval, or at least our acceptance, of
such a manifestly evil crusade?

The media: in two ways.

First, the media immerse us in a torrent of "objective" accounts of the
mayhem, without allowing the victims' stories to be told so that we are
persuaded they only have themselves to blame.

Second, the media never miss an opportunity to allow those who profit from
the drug laws (cops, drug experts, Crown prosecutors, politicians) to tell
their stories while allowing only the occasional letter from those who
oppose the law.

Why do the media support a brutal government pogrom like our drug laws? I
can only surmise that tragedy, suffering and war sell more newspapers than
happiness, contentment and peace.

Alan Randell, Victoria