DRUGS SHOULD BE TREATED LIKE ALCOHOL AND TOBACCO

There Is No More Reason To Punish Drug Users And Dealers Today Than There
Was In The Past To Hang Witches, Lynch Blacks, Incarcerate
Japanese-americans Or Gas Jews.

Re: Sniffing out trouble, Feb. 20

I have a few questions for you about your evident support of drug prohibition:

1. Do you agree with these words taken from the Declaration of
Independence? "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of
Happiness." Doesn't this imply that people have the right to ingest any
drug in pursuit of their particular version of happiness, however harmful,
so long as they physically harm no one else?

2. Is it not true that if drugs were legalized, the flow of funds to
terrorist groups would dry up? How much money does Osama bin Laden make
from booze and tobacco?

3. If drugs are banned because they are harmful to users, why, then, are
tobacco and alcohol not banned? Doesn't this seem unfair to those who
prefer illegal drugs? If we ban one harmful drug, shouldn't we ban all
harmful drugs?

4. Is it not true that if meth were legalized, the manufacturing process
would be subject to government safety regulations and would hence be no
more dangerous to the workers, to the neighbors or to the environment than
the average distillery is today?

5. Is it not true that banning a drug harms users because it forces them to
rely on a drugs whose potency and purity are unknown? Weren't thousands of
alcohol users poisoned and blinded during Prohibition? Didn't the dying and
the blinding stop when alcohol was legalized again? Or perhaps you feel
that the only good drug user is a dead drug user?

6. If a constitutional amendment was required to ban alcohol, why was an
amendment not required to ban drugs?

7. If prohibition is so great, why did America give up on the prohibition
of alcohol?

For me, there is no more reason to punish drug users and dealers today than
there was in the past to hang witches, lynch blacks, incarcerate
Japanese-Americans or gas Jews. Drug prohibition is nothing less than a
state sanctioned pogrom directed against an identifiable minority (innocent
drug users and distributors) to first, ostracize them, and then, to
annihilate them. Kind of makes one wonder who won World War 2 doesn't it?

Alan Randell, Victoria, BC, Canada