Series: The Drug Issue: Part 13 of 13

USERS' RIGHTS DEFENDED

Dear Editor,

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms implies that citizens have the right to
pursue their own form of happiness so long as they hurt no one else. Thus
it seems Canadians have the right to ingest any drug, however harmful.

Why does Cpl. Jeff Johnston [The Drug Issue: BC's biggest business busts
out, Dec. 7, Langley Advance News] feel the government has the right to
punish individuals for what they choose to ingest into their own bodies,
and jail those who supply them?

If drugs are banned because they are harmful to users, why are tobacco and
alcohol not banned?

Far from protecting users from harm, banning a drug harms them much more,
because it cuts them off from access to drugs of known potency and purity.
Weren't thousands of Americans poisoned or blinded by adulterated alcohol
during Prohibition? Didn't the problems vanish when alcohol was legalized
again?

Many have characterized drug prohibition as a Hitler-like government pogrom
designed first to ostracize and then to annihilate an identifiable minority
of innocent people. Would police officers feel hard done by if they were
sentenced to a few years in jail for their part in enforcing drug prohibition?

The 1973 Le Dain Commission concluded, "There appears to be little
permanent physiological damage from chronic use of pure opiate narcotics."
Why, then, ban heroin?

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

Is it not true that if drugs and prostitution were legalized, the power of
the Hells Angels would be severely curtailed? After all, Prohibition
created Al Capone, not the other way around.

Is it not true that if marijuana were legalized, marijuana grow operations
would be no more dangerous, do no more damage, and steal no more hydro than
the average tomato grow operation?

There is no more reason to punish drug users and dealers than there was to
hang witches, lynch blacks, incarcerate Japanese Canadians, or gas Jews.

Alan Randell

Victoria