TACKLING THE DRUG PROBLEM

Editor, BC Christian News:

Re 'Grappling with drug use' (January): How profoundly disappointing to see
the church cooperating with evil rather than confronting it and working to
eliminate it.

Canada's drug laws are nothing less than a brutal Hitler-style pogrom
designed by the government of Canada to distract our attention from more
important issues. These laws are ruining the lives of the innocent few who
ingest or sell certain drugs. And please, don't insult my intelligence by
insisting the drug war is there to protect users from harmful drugs. If
that were the reason, why didn't we ban alcohol and tobacco too?

Also, banning a drug harms users (adulterated drugs and jail time) and
non-users (murder and mayhem on our streets) much more than if the drug
were freely and legally available.

Hitler's armies may have lost the war, but his tactics seem to have found
ready acceptance here in Canada. May God forgive them.

Alan Randell, Victoria

Editor, BC Christian News:

The 'four-pillar' approach, advocated by Vancouver's Mayor Philip Owen, is
a mixed bag of incompatible ingredients -- prevention and treatment along
with supplies of needles and safe injection sites -- offered to fix an
already complex problem. How can we expect drug users to get a straight
message out of such a mixed bag?

As for 'harm reduction': This is the same philosophy that has trumpeted the
'safe sex' message, and supplied teens with condoms to hopefully avoid
disease. Our federal government is giving smokers the message that our
society has no place for them, yet it is willing to fund 'safe' shoot-up
galleries.

Why is the funding not going for prevention and rehabilitation? If handing
out free needles is working, why is the largest increase of HIV-AIDS
infection among I-V drug users?

The harm reduction philosophy is flawed at its very roots.

M. R. Heinrichs, Abbotsford.