Legality is poor policy

Randy White, for those of you that do not follow Canadian politics, is a windbag prohibitionist that is a poster boy for reefer madness. He works with the like-minded organization known as the Drug Prevention Network of Canada. Don't click the link and raise their traffic ranking! They are to the drug reform movement what Concerned Women for America is to feminism. They are a bunch of hand-wringing asshat moralists that are committed to promoting prohibition. Just look at the slogan on their site:

To advocate no use of illegal drugs and no abuse of legal drugs including alcohol, tobacco and solvents.

Apparently only legal drugs can be used responsibly. This despite the fact that legal drugs kill far more people than all illegal drugs combined. So every single drag that I take of my completely non-toxic marijuana is abuse due to the fact that marijuana is illegal. They would rather that the public continue to succumb to reefer madness rather than wake up to the fact that marijuana has never killed anyone in all the years it has been used for medicine and recreation. But I am getting off-topic.

I have linked an absolutely embarassingly terrible letter to the editor written by Randy White. Go ahead and read his article and then come back and read my rebuttal, which has a snowflakes' chance in hell of being published. But hey, what the hell is boxing day for but to write unread rebuttals to bloviating coservative moralists that think that keeping teh gays from getting married should be a priority of the Canadian government? Without further ado, my smackdown.

Randy White’s December 22nd letter promoting the aims of the Drug Prevention Network of Canada left me with a number of questions. The mission statement of this organization sounds very positive. It seems difficult to disagree with “To promote a healthy lifestyle — free of drugs, to advocate no use of illegal drugs and no abuse of legal drugs”. It promotes the unspoken assumptions made by those promoting the prohibition of drugs, that the most dangerous drugs were banned in order to protect the public. I guess nobody told them that legal drugs kill far more people every year than all illegal drugs combined. They also seem to unaware of the hundreds of medical marijuana users that benefit from the use of a formerly illegal substance.

Mr. White and the organization he represents seem to be completely unaware of the total and complete failure of the war on drugs. Thanks to decades of prohibition, all illegal drugs are cheaper, stronger and more widely available than ever before, despite the fact that $400 million a year is spent annually on arresting, prosecuting and jailing drug criminals in Canada.

Unlike Mr. White, I have enough faith in politicians to disagree with his view that all politicians promote wasteful policies. In any case I would rather that this money was frittered away on such non-essentials as health care, education or even another Liberal scandal than to see reefer madness compel the continued persecution of people that make the mistake of enjoying the wrong plants.