DEFINITION

In this chapter we use the term "drugs" to mean mood altering, possibly addictive substances that are used for non-medicinal purposes and generally sold illegally, either a prohibited substance or a misdirected prescription drug. Substances not required to maintain or improve physical health.
 

For those who are interested, there is a very good history on social drugs called The Forbidden Game by Brian Inglis. It includes alcohol & tobacco with the other substances most often associated with the term "drugs". To make a long story short, there seems to be a problem with the society's perception of drugs. While I feel really sorry for anyone who needs drugs as a crutch to get through life, they are not evil incarnate. I am a dedicated non-user but in a society where the majority cannot operate in the mornings without a caffeine fix and lets hundreds of thousands die each year from alcohol and tobacco abuse the banning of other drugs seems a bit silly.
 

TOBACCO

At one time, tobacco was seen to be as evil as we currently consider the hard drugs. It is a shame that so many thousands die each year from this stupid, dirty habit. However, there is no way we can prohibit people from smoking and no way to make them all quit. To ban the weed would merely drive it underground. We cannot even raise the price in Canada much more as the rate of smuggling will only go up. In addition, every time there is a price increase, the rate of break-ins to stores, gas stations, etc. only rises. In Italy where the government raised the price too far they only created such a huge smuggling industry that government revenue from tobacco has fallen to very low levels.

In addition, further education aimed at adults cannot do any good as you have to be pretty stupid to have not gotten the message by now that tobacco substantially reduces your life expectancy. Even my kid knew smoking was bad for you by the age of four. So then, how do we stop the use of tobacco.
 

SOLUTION

Stop new users from being created by making it much harder for minors to get their hands on tobacco. After all, teenagers see it as a thing to use to rebel against authority with, they think its cool and at that age, they still think they are immortal.
 

1. While restricting sales of liquor to government liquor stores has not totally prevented minors from getting alcohol, selling tobacco products only in liquor stores will go a long way to making it harder for kids to start smoking.

2. Stop targeting education efforts at adults and aim the effort entirely at teenagers. It has to be made totally uncool for a teenager to smoke. The campaign for this has already started but it has to come from their peer group. Teenagers do not listen to adults as they already know it all and not until sometime between 25 to 90 they realize that they don't really know bugger all.

3. Continue banning smoking anywhere in public. This does not work without enforcement. There are fines of up to $2,000 on the books but no one ever gets charged. Since most smokers are law abiding citizens, a few well publicized examples will have to be made of some of those violating the no smoking laws. After a few smokers pay fines up to $2,000 most smokers will become a lot more discreet.

4. Point out to employers that while few smokers are hard drug users, pretty well all hard drug users smoke. They need the effect of nicotine to buffer the effect of the hard drugs. On the other hand, virtually no non-smokers are hard drug users. By not hiring any smokers, you greatly reduce your chances of hiring a hard drug user. Even a boss that smokes would be put off of hiring other smokers if this were pointed out to them. Make it OK to discriminate against someone on the grounds of their smoking habit. If smoking prevented you from getting a job, a teenager might think a little more before starting and would try a lot harder to quit. At least they would do it in private and not bother the rest of us.

5. All tobacco users, when they buy their tobacco at the liquor store, would have to provide their medical insurance card or proof of residence outside the province. No card, no smokes. Residents of the province would have their identity number sent by computer to the provincial medical plan. Their eligibility for taxpayer subsidized treatment of smoking caused illnesses would be denied for 5 years after the purchase date. While treatment would not be denied because of inability to pay, they will, if possible, have to repay the entire cost of treating their smoking caused illness after they return to work. This would include lung cancer, some heart disease and any other condition deemed caused by smoking by the medical profession.

6. Forget the tobacco farmers. If they have not seen the light by now and started converting their operations to different crops by now, they deserve to lose it all. After all, the demand for their product is not going to dry up overnight but it will steadily decline. They can convert some acreage every year. It they don't, don't feel sorry for their stupidity.

7. Forget the tobacco companies. I don't know how their people can sleep at night. The evidence of the health hazard of smoking is so overwhelming I cannot see how any of their people can keep a straight face when they deny that all the studies are inconclusive. After all, the US government banned cyclamates after 1 Canadian study that turned out to be faulty and 1/100 as damning as any of the independent tobacco studies. The tobacco companies can diversify from their profits of death and if they don't, they deserve to go to corporate oblivion.
 

ALCOHOL

Alcohol is already controlled as tight as can be without causing all the problems of prohibition. After all look at all effects the Volstead Act caused in the U.S.A. in the 1920's. It made a lot of Canadians rich and turned the islands St. Pierre & Miquelon into thriving ports trans-shipping French wine in 50,000 gallon lots. Bootlegging became a thriving industry and an illegal, untaxed and possibly poisonous drink was never very hard to get. It created piracy, gangsterism and a general dis-respect for the forces of law and order. Worst, it made it respectable to flaunt the law and for people to think that laws are for other people, not themselves. The conspiracy became so widespread, the only charge that stuck to Al Capone was income tax evasion.

All we can do is make drinking as uncool a thing as possible to do and to reduce the effects. The main effect we care about is impaired driving or operation of any other vehicle as this is the one thing that is most likely to harm others.

We have done a lot to stop the carnage but there appears to be a die hard bunch out there that has failed to get the message. These people must be thick as a post or something and they need to be hit between the eyes with a 2 X 4 to get their attention.
 

SOLUTION

These steps will also apply to operating a vehicle under any other form of impairment, whether from alcohol, marijuana, hard drugs or anything else.
 

1. The enforcement of impaired driving has to be stepped up. The first offense must carry a mandatory 90 day stay in jail. This is not a 90 day sentence with parole in 30 days but a 90 day stay in a work camp, preferably with cold and dirty conditions. This must be coupled with a 1 year license suspension. Driving while suspended would result in a 1 year jail stay and confiscation of the vehicle, no matter who it belongs to, if it is paid for or if it is a Boeing 747. A first offense with an accident or an injury is have a mandatory 1 year jail stay.

2. For a second offense, the sentence must be at least 1 year in jail, confiscation of the vehicle and a lifetime ban on driving. After all, if they have not learned their lesson the first time around, they're as stupid as a post and don't deserve any less.

3. A third or greater offense would get a 10 year stay in a labour camp along with confiscation of the vehicle. After all, we don't want people this stupid living anywhere near us or anyone who will drive under an already imposed lifetime driving ban.

4. For any impaired driving offense involving a death, 10 years without parole in a labour camp.

5. For a prosecutor who knowingly charges a second or greater offender with only a first offense, a 90 day stay in jail, disbarment and firing with loss of pension.
 

In addition, other steps can be taken to get the chronic drinker to think twice about over-imbibing at all.
 

6. A mailing would be done to all medical plan members to inform them that the medical plan will require re-payment of all expenses treating alcohol related diseases (cirrhosis of the liver, injuries from falling off drunk from a bar stool, etc.) except for alcoholism treatment that results in staying dry for at least 2 years.
 

MARIJUANA

It appears that the hard line against drugs stems largely from the work of Harry Anslinger who failed so miserably as the Assistant Commissioner of Prohibition. However, as the chief of the new Narcotics Bureau, in the 1930s he may have had a thing to prove. He apparently fabricated much of the evidence against marijuana and harder drugs. It appeared to be less a case for antipathy to marijuana when it was lumped in with the hard drugs than a case of administrative simplicity.

"Said to" was a favorite saying in their reports and so-called evidence when they had no evidence on who did the saying. In 1937 marijuana was put under the same control as the Harrison Act did for hard drugs.

Since marijuana is not exactly addictive and harms ones health no more than tobacco there is no pressing need to do anything drastic about marijuana. Since the following section on hard drugs would cut off the main source of income for the scum of the earth and since most marijuana is grown domestically it does not adversely affect the trade figures. Actually it is one of BC's biggest cash crops. Therefore, only a few minor steps need to be taken here.

There are those who say that Mr. Anslinger's campaign was part of a bigger conspiracy. While the following is not 100% provable, it makes sense when you look at history.

Hemp, the parent plant for marijuana older than history. It was cultivated by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Prior to its prohibition, hemp was used medicinally for clearing of bronchial passages, relief of migranes and treatment of glaucoma. Cannabis was also an excelled source of linen and cloth. The covered wagons of many of the pioneers were covered with the stuff. The word CANVAS is derived from CANABACIUS. Even ships sails and flags in the up to the early 1900s were made from hemp.

Even the first of the Levi's jeans were made from hemp and hemp rope was used by the navies of the world. Hwever, one of the finest uses of cannabis has been in the non-polluting production of hemp-fiber paper. In a saner world you would be reading books printed on marijuana paper now.

In paper production it is estimated that every acre of cannabis hemp could, and once did, save four and a half acres of trees. It gave superior quality paper and no pollution from wood pulping. At one time up to 90% of all the paper in the world was manufactured from hemp. The vellum that the US Declaration Of Independence was written on was produced from Dutch hemp.

Even, George Bush, when he was shot down by the Japanese during World War II, was saved by a parachute with hemp fibre rigging.

So, what happened to get this weed of a thousand uses, capable of growing almost anywhere, banned? Rumour has it that the person responsible was William Randolph Hearst, a person we would now call a media giant. With the end of the civil war hemp paper production was replaced by the cheaper, but far more noxious, wood pulp sulphur process. However, by the mid 1930s, a new invention called the DECORTICATOR, threatened to make hemp paper cheaper than wood paper. Forecasters declared that hemp was going to become America's first billion dollar crop. The legend has it that with his vast holdings in pulp timber and paper mills Hearst faced financial ruin.

The answer was to get hemp banned. Hearts drenched his newspapers with stories of hemp turning innocent people into fiends of the worst sort. However, they omitted government and medical studies (The Siler Commission for example) that said marijuana was not only not harmless, but was beneficial in many ways. Hearst's papers churned out endless editions of propaganda though the real target was congress. Cannabis had to be banned. The movie Reefer madness was made around this time to try to scare people off marijuana. It can be seen at most every Grateful Dead concert through clouds of marijuana smoke amid much laughter.

At this time it is said that DuPont, the holders of the patents for the sulphuric acid wood pulping process and the developers or rayon and nylon cloth also faced enourmous lossed if cheaper hemp fibers were available. The story continues with Andrew Mellon, chairman of the Mellon Bank (DuPont's main source of finance) and US Treasury Secretary appointed Harry Anslinger Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Anslinger was apparently married to Mellon's niece.

Evidently, most of Anslinger's testimony before Congress was articles from Hearst papers read aloud. The basic theme was that marijuana was the most violence causing drug in the history of mankind. Then Hearst papers printed the testimony again taking it as news from government authority.

However, when the New York City LaGuardia Marijuana Report of 1944 refuted the violence claims, Anslinger apparently changed his testimony. Now the story was that marijuana causes users to become so lethargic and pacifist that in the future American boys would not want to fight in a war. He was, in this case closer to the truth. After all, not that many American marijuana users in the 60's wanted to go to Viet Nam.

However, by then, Congress had passed the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, effectively outlawing the weed. Hearst, DuPont and Mellon prevailed.

Why have things not changed since. It has been said that George Bush, ex director of the President's US Drug Task Force and ex-CIA chief as well as ex-President was between 1977 and 1979 a director of the Eli Lilly Company. Eli Lilly has reported to been unsuccessfully trying for years to synthesize the active ingredients in cannabis and could lose a third of its patent monopoly on valuable drugs such as Darvon should marijuana be de-criminalized. Bush's family is has been rumoured to hold a controlling interest in the Eli Lilly company which make for an interesting theory as to why the former president had been one of the most rabid detractors of cannabis.⁽¹⁾

Therefore, if as much as 80% of violent crime is linked to the abuse of legal alcohol and/or hard drugs. why is "pacifistic" cannabis illegal? Is it because you can't make rope, paper cloth and safe cheap medicines from booze? While the writer feels that too much marijuana use makes the user stupid and that driving under the influence can be every bit as dangerous as driving under the influence of alcohol, the choice to use this form of brain rot, as opposed to alcohol, should be a matter of private choice. That is, as long as society is going to accept the use of brain rotting, health destroying substances anyway.
 

SOLUTION

1. Since the possibility of legalization is almost non-existent, reduce the penalty for possession or growing of small quantities for individual consumption to a $50.00 fine. A ticket would be issued without arrest.

2. Possession of amounts for trafficking would result in arrest with a sentence of up to one year. The exception would be trafficking to minors. Traffickers who sell to minors are too stupid to tolerate and these could be sentenced from 1 to 25 years at the discretion of the judge. In addition, the trafficker would lose all their motor vehicles. The idea is to make the growing and use of marijuana an individual do-it-yourself, at home enterprise. Usage would be largely confined to the home which would reduce the possibility of driving under the influence.

3. Growers of commercial quantities would have their growing gear and personal effects on the property (including motor vehicles) confiscated. Private growing indoors of small amounts for personal use would get a $50.00 ticket as in part 1.

4. Make the impaired driving laws have a zero tolerance for THC in the bloodstream and make sure everyone knows it. Apply the impaired driving penalties in the Alcohol section.
 

HARD DRUGS

By hard drugs, I mean heroin, LSD, PCP, cocaine, etc. I would almost swear that the drug dealers themselves are behind the current laws as no other system controlling the drugs could possible make them as rich. Are our politicians in the pay of the drug lords to keep the system this way?⁽²⁾

After all, the current system is sure as bloody hell not working. Anyone with any awareness at can tell you that. Every newscast has evidence of the growing crime caused by hard drugs. The problem is that the drugs are made out to be the problem. They are a problem, but they are not what is destroying our society. The main problem is the crime that comes from the distribution and sale of drugs under the current system. After all, who really cares what most junkies do to their own bodies. In a free country, we should all be free to go to hell in our own handbasket if that is what an individual wants as long as society does not have to pay for the consequences.

All prohibition of alcohol in the twenties did was make the vast law abiding majority into law breakers and raised the cost of booze. It also created a new class of criminal and did not reduce the number of users one bit. The law lost the respect of the majority of citizens and the prohibition laws had to be repealed.

Two principles of good government were broken:
 

1. NEVER PASS A LAW THAT THE MAJORITY OF THE PUBLIC WON'T SUPPORT.

2. NEVER PASS A LAW YOU CANNOT ENFORCE THE MAJORITY OF THE TIME.
 

Even a police state like the late, but not lamented, USSR with the help of the KGB and tens of thousands of Interior Ministry troops could they stop people from getting excessive amounts of alcohol let alone other drugs.

If the authorities all over the world could not cut off the flow of liquor and marijuana which are relatively bulky, how can they ever expect to cut off the flow of vastly more profitable and compact substances like crack or heroin?

Why have we not tried alternative approaches to controlling hard drugs? Apparantly, Mr. Anslinger, who was in charge of the Narcotics Bureau into the 1960s preferred to work with the police forces, the Coast Guard, the customs and the Secret Service rather than lose control of his department to Department of Health & Welfare. An unfortunate choice as it was doomed to failure. You would think that the man who was so high up in the administration that failed so badly in the prohibition of alcohol would have learned from the mistakes. Never underestimate the power of human stupidity or possibly greed⁽³⁾ All of this is in the USA. In Canada, it seems that we went along with the USA. Probably because of some inside deals between the governments. I'm amazed that we broke with the Americans over prohibition, stopping it as unworkable after only a few years instead of letting it drag on over a decade and a half like the USA did.

The tolerance addicts get for heroin that makes them need ever larger doses only guarantees that the demand will go up and trying to stop the flow will only make the addict have to commit worse and worse criminal acts to get his fix. Once hooked, the addict will pay any price, risking any penalty to get their relief.

Prohibition only makes the problem get worse and the drug lords richer. It almost makes you believe in conspiracies. After all, many drug lords have enough pocket change to buy almost anyone. While I have absolutely no proof of this, the application of Occam's Razor (an old tool of deduction that says the simplest of all possible alternatives is probably the correct one) would make you think the people in charge of narcotics prohibition are in the pay of the people they are supposed to stop as is often the case in countries like Mexico. After all, as early as 1966 39 narcotics agents in New York City alone were under investigation for drug offences. If the troops are dirty, can a few of their superiors also not be less than clean.

Otherwise I cannot see how the single-minded pig-headedness that is not working could persist for so long. By 1973, heroin became the U.S.'s single largest consumer import, worth over $4,000,000,000 a year. In 1972 Dr. Robert Du Pont, head of the Washington D.C. Narcotics Treatment Organization, estimated that the amount of criminal activity of the addicts came to $328,000,000. This in one city in one year in pre-oil embargo, pre-inflation dollars! Imagine the value in the 1990s with cocaine and crack added to it. The amount of money involved is staggering.

The only innovation in the anti-drug program has been trying to cut off the flow at the source. In the mid-80s, the United States was spending up to 75% of its $4 billion annual drug war expenditure on trying to wipe out the supply at the source. This has not been working well. George Bush, while Vice-President, was in charge of this operation and it has still not succeeded in its goal. There is an excellent article on this subject in the Feb./March 1989 issue of Mother Jones Magazine.

For example, Pakistan, a major target in the drug war, went from 40 tons of poppies in 1985 to over 140 tons a year later and still rising. Latin America's area under coca cultivation has risen six fold in the 80's. The agents destroy the crops, even paying the farmers for them and help him plant legal crops. However, why should a farmer settle for around $1500 a year growing corn when they can make 20 or more times as much with 1/3 or less the work growing coca.

Many areas are defoliated from airplanes using such chemicals as Spike, Roundup, 2,4-D and Agent Orange also hitting legitimate crops as well. All that occurs from these efforts, besides making many people sick, is to reduce the supply in that region. The catch is that the drug trade is about the only true totally free market system on earth and this temporary reduction in supply causes the price to go up. Now, with higher prices, even more of the third world poor are attracted to growing the plants to produce illegal drugs.

All that happens is that the cultivation occurs in even more remote areas, costing more to operate and even more heavily defended by private armies. This results in higher street prices and still more street crime and economic dislocation in the drug consuming countries. In addition, the more remote and more heavily defended growing areas cost still more to try to control and a vicious circle is created.

Much of the U.S. drug enforcement in the third world may have been a front for supplying military aid for counter insurgency. The Nicaragua thing made military aid unpopular back home while the war on drugs plays OK in America. However all this has not reduced the availability of drugs on the street one bit. It only effects the price and only temporarily at that.

In addition, the outflow of money from the country for these drugs has to be one of the largest things accounting for balance of payments problems. It always seems there is a lot more of our money in foreign hands than the trade figures account for. The answer is obviously the illegal drug trade.
 

SOLUTION 1

The first possibility, which governments could adopt easily, is even more draconian enforcement. Zero tolerance, confiscation of a dealer's entire assets on conviction, immediate permanent deportation of all non-citizens convicted of possession, etc. Unfortunately this will only raise the price of drugs, causing even more crime to pay for them. Not a viable option but the one that keeps getting proposed by law enforcement people. After all, you as a Member of Parliament or Congressman would not look good to the voters by telling the law enforcement experts that they were full of crap.
 

SOLUTION 2

How did the government stop moonshining, rum-running and the numbers racket. Simple, take them over and turn them into a substantial source of revenue. Moonshining and rum-running became your friendly provincial liquor store and the numbers racket became Lotto 6-49. What was previously immoral and degrading suddenly became mainstream. This destroyed the possibility for organized crime to make a profit and the criminals were shut out of these areas.
 

1. Recognize that drugs themselves are not evil. The evil is the crime caused by a flawed method of controlling the drugs. The people hooked on them are unfortunate souls who could function in society if they did not have to pay such exorbitant prices for their fix. Most of them got hooked voluntarily but were not completely aware of the consequences or were insufficiently prepared to resist peer pressure. The real tragedy is to make these people into a sub-human class who have to lead a life of crime to feed their addiction.

We recognized alcoholism as a disease many years ago through Alcoholics Anonymous. So is drug addiction. I would be really disappointed if my child got hooked on drugs but it is an even greater shame to condemn these people for what in others, society considers to be an illness. Besides, by what right do we deny the use of any substance in the treatment of the terminally ill. Many cancer patients die in agony because the most potent pain relievers are denied to them because they are addictive. If my mother were dying of cancer I would rather have her go in a herion induced high than suffer in pain.

2. Start a drug maintenance program. In Britain they have a drug maintenance program for addicts. This is much more humane than the present program. In Britain, when this program was first introduced they had some uneasy moments in the 60s, when the rate of addiction, though low by U.S. standards, appeared to grow very fast. This was due to two things. First, the estimates of the number of addicts was inaccurate. After all, with the present laws, how many junkies will identify themselves. With cheap legal drug habit maintenance, a lot of closet junkies came out of the wood work.

The second reason is that any doctor could prescribe the drugs and with about 25% of the addicts at that time being doctors, there was abuse of prescriptions. A handful of doctors were prescribing heroin so lavishly that they were feeding the small black market. A few were only concerned with raising their incomes. Once the control of prescribing narcotics was given to government operated clinics, this practice stopped and the rise in the rate of addiction was halted.

3. Open government clinics where, for a reasonable (tax included) fee, any drug would be available for those who wanted it. These would include heroin, cocaine, LSD, PCP, crack or even Drano for that matter. The fees would be enough to cover the cost of operating the clinic and to return a small (by drug pushing standards) profit. This would probably be less than $20.00 per dose.

A registered user would be able to purchase 2 doses at a time, one for immediate use on the site and a second to take home. Users would NOT be permitted to leave by driving a vehicle themselves. The clients could take their doses communally or in private. Cots would be provided in cubicles to allow the doses to wear off.

Of course, the clinic and government will be released from any and all responsibility if the client overdoses or dies from the use of the drugs. After all, the government collects big revenues from tobacco and alcohol yet are held blameless in the use of these substances. The lawyers would like to get their mitts on the liability issue here, but the precedent has already been set.

4. Make the clinics a pleasant environment. The addict just wants his fix and to be left alone.

5. Make judgmental counseling available , without nagging, to help the user quit.

6. Without nagging, offer the user alternate, "less harmful" drugs such as methadone, etc. at a lower cost.

7. Make sure the client realizes the penalties for impaired operation of a motor vehicle as outlined in the alcohol section and that they realize that those penalties apply to them as well and that they will be applied ruthlessly. The time in a labour camp is spent "cold turkey".

8. All clients, when they buy their doses at the clinic, would have to provide their medical insurance card. No card, no drugs without a $50.00 surcharge. The surcharge would go to the medical plan. Clients would have their identity number sent by computer to the provincial medical plan. Their eligibility for taxpayer subsidized treatment of drug caused illnesses would be denied for 5 years after the purchase date. While treatment cannot be denied to them, they will have to repay the entire cost of treating their drug caused illness after they return to work. An exception to this would be treatment than got them drug free for at least 2 years.

9. Initially source the drugs from seizures by unauthorized traffickers. When this source dries up, get it from American seizures and finally, license legitimate drug companies to supply the product. The profits they make from this alone will add substantially to the government tax coffers.

10. Prevention. Teach youngsters that the addicts are uncool, unfortunate souls that got in too deep into something they did not know enough about and are doomed to waste a large part of their lives in drugged out bliss as well as becoming stupid. For the religious, the churches could plant a story that any loss of mental function that you cause through use of these drugs will follow you into the afterlife. Not just stupid now but for eternity! That society sells them their drugs (at a reasonable profit) to keep them out of trouble and from breaking into our homes. That they are not to be jailed but to be pitied.

A question is who to get to run these clinics. That's easy. Give a very short time period amnesty to the big drug overlords. I'm talking about the ones that really control the trade and generally avoid arrest. Give then a 7 day period where they can come clean and declare their ill gotten gains. After paying income tax on all that investigators can find in the previous year, let them invest the money needed for clinics. This way, the government collects a chunk of cash and the clinics don't cost the government a cent to set up. There are two reasons for doing this.
 

1. If the drug lords are given a chance to go straight and keep half the money, the writer feels that a large per centage of them will grab the chance.

2. Hoods still have to eat. If you cut off their income, they will soon find other crimes to commit to avoid doing honest work. Work running the clinics will keep the drug lord's underlings off the street and employed.
 

However, with this amnesty would also come an amnesty for all those in jail for possession and non-violent trafficking. However, there would be no compensation for time served as what they did was, after all, against the law when they did it. Violent offenders and those who committed crimes to get money to buy drugs would still have to serve their sentences for those crimes.
 

The key here is to make getting a fix an easy part of an addict's life. If you preach to them or make it a pain to come, they will still deal on the corner for their stuff and still commit crimes to pay for it. Make it clean, safe, comfortable and relatively cheap and the junkies will put the drug dealer's out of business so fast, you will wonder why we didn't do it years ago.

Of course, there have to be some safeguards. Prior to starting as a client to these clinics, the addict will have to be examined by an independent (to the clinics) trio of doctors and found to indeed be an addict. No drugs will be sold to a non-addicted thrill seeker. Minor addicts would be offered a greater amount of counseling to find out how they got addicted so young but they would NOT be hassled about getting addicted in the first place nor would they be denied maintenance.

To prevent immigration of new addicts, the user of the clinic would have to be a citizen or landed immigrant at least 1 or 2 years. As far as visitors go, junkies are not known to make up a very large number of our tourists. They can still deal on the street though known junkies would have to be denied entry at the border.

If nothing else, the spread of AIDS will be substantially slowed from the shared needles.

I do not agree with those who feel they need drugs to cope with life but I cannot agree with denying drugs to those who want them. Education and controls can keep the number of new users growing too much.

As far as the ethics of this go, realize that the main source of revenue of the British regime in India was the profit from selling opium to China. Britain went to war in China to protect this revenue and modern Hong Kong, up to the 1997 return to Chinese control was one legacy of that time. The very moral Victorian English aristocracy are looked up to as an example of a very moral people who did things correctly with the highest morals yet they still took the money from this trade. After all, they must have felt, who were they to deny the addict his opium.

The thing is, the present system does not work, more enforcement will not work and the effects of the drug trade keep getting worse. The solution to a runaway crime problem is to de-criminalize it and then tax it to death. If nothing else look at the lower home insurance costs, lower murder rate, reduced trade imbalance⁽⁴⁾, reduced number of break & enters, lower policing costs and fewer destroyed lives if we de-criminalize hard drugs.
 

STEROIDS

These are not illegal. Doctors prescribe them every day. They are controlled substances and not narcotics.
 

SOLUTION

1. If a person wants them for other purposes such as body building, they should be available in small quantities at the same clinics selling heroin.

2. The buyer must demonstrate knowledge of the side effects of taking steroids.

3. They are subjected to the same loss of free medical care for the side effects as are the other drug users.

4. The buyer's identities will be available for computer scanning by sports organizations. However, organizations such as weight lifting may have "unlimited" classes where anything goes. However, these should be considered to be no more sporting events than WWF wrestling.

5. Random checking of urine samples for drugs in the Olympics and other sporting events will have to continue. It will just be part of the routine. Alternately, forget it and let the athletes use whatever they want to win as long as the taxpayer does not have to pick up the medical bills for the side effects and the rest of us have to learn not to take sports so damn seriously. They are only games and 10 minutes after the event, except to the athletes themselves, it does not make any difference who won!
 

In conclusion, the entire drug question needs to be looked at as a medical problem, not as a criminal problem. The laws concerning narcotics have to be stricken from the books. The control of mood altering substances has to be looked at from the ground up. The question has to be what is best for society as a whole while allowing the individual their right to go to hell in a hand basket any way they want as long as no other individual or society as a whole is hurt by it.

The writer feels that a more rational approach will save society so much heartache and grief that even a door post is smart enough to seen the benefit. The present system does not work.

1. See: The Big Book of Conspiracies by Doug Moench - Paradox Press 1995

2. Early in Bill Clinton's Presidency the Surgeon General recommended the de-criminalization of drugs as way to solve many of the USA's problems. The speed with which a person with such expertise was brushed off tells the writer that there is something behind the scenes going on. Something we don't know about. Something dirty. The brush off was intense and instant.

3. Greed includes the lust of little people for power, however they can get it.

4. While we lose the export revenue from BC marijuana, we save as much if not more from hard drug smuggling. The money will stay in Canada to preserve Canadian jobs instead of going to Columbia, Laos, Turkey, etc.