Pubdate: Sun, 12 Sep 1999
Source: Grand Forks Gazette, The (Canada)
Contact:  +1-250-442-3336
Author: Pat Dolan

DRUG POLICIES AND THE ABSURD

I found your report on the Midway drug bust both informative and
disturbing (8/11/99).

I live in a Sr. Cits’ apartment block where we conscientiously sort
our garbage for the sake of the environment and the economy. Then we
read of the RCMP roaming the countryside in helicopters looking for
‘patches of green’ which might indicate a marihuana crop. And spending
weeks in court prosecuting any growers they happen to catch.

Our neighbors to the south have prosecuted a ‘zero tolerance war on
drugs’ for the last thirty years at a cost of nearly three trillion
dollars. Net result: drugs are now purer, cheaper, and more widely
available than ever before.

As a Fraser Institute survey concluded recently: "It may be that drug
users are fools, maybe they are immoral, but as long as it is legal to
drink and smoke yourself to death, it makes no sense to imprison some
of our immoral fools and not others." (Vancouver Province 6 Sep 1998)

‘Tis a scenario fit only for a Theatre of the Absurd.

Pat Dolan
Vancouver B.C.
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