Pubdate: Wed, 16 Aug 2000
Source: Victoria Times-Colonist (CN BC)
Copyright: 2000 Hollinger Canadian Newspapers
Contact:  P.O. Box 300, Victoria, B.C. V8W 2N4
Fax: (250)380-5353
Website: http://vvv.com/home/timesc/
Author: Robert McInnes

CASUALTY COUNT TOO HIGH IN THE WAR ON DRUGS

I have concluded that the casualties of the "war on drugs" are just too 
high. I don't smoke, use alcohol or any "drugs", but I think that this form 
or prohibition has failed. It is true that drugs ruin lives, but so do 
alcohol, tobacco and motor vehicles.  I don't see our prisons full of those 
"trafficking" in those items!

What the attempt to suppress drugs with police action does is to raise the 
price on the street and encourage the whole distribution to be done by 
criminals.

The "war on drugs" is a form of civil war, with addicts and peddlers vs. 
the police and the "justice" system.  The extreme case of this, projected 
on innocent people, is the U.S.'s announced plans to spend several billions 
in Colombia to shore-up their military to fight the guerrillas and try to 
eradicate the source of the drugs which are so much in demand in the U.S.

One side of this war will be paid for by the U.S. taxpayer (and any other 
governments they can coerce to join) and the other by U.S. drug users. Many 
thousands of innocent people in Colombia will be the victims.  This is a 
despicable, insane, scenario!

Instead of all this destructive folly, we should put our money into 
treatment programs for the addicted.  There are many models around the 
world that are better to copy that the U.S. "war on drugs".

Robert McInnes, Victoria
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