Pubdate: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 Source: Montreal Gazette (CN QU) Copyright: 2003 The Gazette, a division of Southam Inc. Contact: http://www.canada.com/montreal/montrealgazette/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/274 Author: Chris Buors DRUGS ARE A PROPERTY; WE HAVE A NATURAL RIGHT TO THEM Re: last week's Supreme Court decision on cannabis (Gazette, Dec. 24, "Puffers' high hopes go up in smoke"). What we are talking about here is the moral code of the Canadian people. Civilizations of the past perished because they did not adjust their moral codes and legal systems to the requirements of a market economy. Patents, prescription rights and drug prohibition are political interventions in the drug market. The social order is doomed as long as politicians, for whatever reason, want to pretend drugs are anything other than a mixture of chemicals found on the periodic table. Whatever dangers attributed are politically defined, and not everyone will agree with those definitions. Therein lies the rub. We sow the seeds of destruction of the social order by criminalizing dissenters. Intervention always has its political corollary, be it "the Fuhrer principle," the "Superman idea" or the fantasy a leader will arise to make all the right decisions and save humanity. In short, as Plato remarked, leadership needs scapegoats, some enemy to fear, or else we would have no need of leadership. Drug users are the scapegoats today. Drugs are a property. We have a natural right to them. We have owned that right since time began. The right is bestowed by the Creator in Genesis 1:29, no matter what immoral law the tyrants care to legislate into political truth. We have the cardinal virtues of temperance, prudence, justice and fortitude to guide us - or else we have whatever Paul Martin thinks. Chris Buors Libertarian Party of Manitoba Winnipeg - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake