Pubdate: Sat, 07 Apr 2001
Source: Yuma Daily Sun, The (AZ)
Copyright: 2001 The Yuma Daily Sun
Contact:  http://www.yumasun.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1258
Author: Chris Buors

DRUGS A RIGHT

Editor, The Sun:

There are deeper questions to ponder about the DARE program than Art 
Gradillas brought up in his recent letter to the editor. For instance, 
ceremonial drug use is as old as mankind is itself - is it a good idea to 
stamp ceremonial drug use out? Is it amoral for the state to control the 
thoughts of its citizens with political demonizations? Drugs are inanimate 
objects and are therefore of no danger to anyone. It is a political 
designation that there are such things as dangerous drugs. Hitler neither 
drank alcohol nor smoked cigarettes. Hitler certainly did not use 
ceremonial drugs. Does that mean I should emulate the personal and 
political views of Hitler?

The ugliest aspect of the war on drugs is that in order to control what 
substance a man may put in his body the state must control what ideas a man 
may put in his head. Is it not a characteristic of totalitarian states to 
control thoughts? Public schools have the inherent ability to exert 
influence. The police who teach DARE wear their uniforms to exert influence 
and do not impart truthful information. In every other culture and time 
that was called indoctrination. The Hitler youth "educated" by the Gestapo 
had exactly the same goals, to ingrain the "right" morals onto 
impressionable youth. Are the goals of DARE to educate or to indoctrinate?

That DARE has been criticized for causing more harm than good ought not 
surprise those who still believe in freedom and liberty with responsibility 
for our own drug use that those notions still entail. The law is but the 
tyrants will when it violates individual rights, said Jefferson.

We have a natural right to drugs, all of them. It is a right mankind has 
owned since time began. Those who would inflict their tyranny over the mind 
of men shall forever have the admirers of Thomas Jefferson to argue with 
them that the idea of personal autonomy in self-medication is an 
inalienable right. The eternal hostility Jefferson swore to has been 
discarded by well-meaning Americans less than 200 years after the founding 
of the so-called land of the free. Restore our natural right to drugs.

CHRIS BUORS, Winnipeg, Canada
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