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MARTIN SLAGGED FOR DRUG COLUMN

By Hempology | September 28, 2005

Editor:

Wherever did John Martin get the idea that more draconian punishments would somehow deter the ruffians in charge of the drug black market?

I was stunned to get to the end of the diatribe on “meth producers getting another break from do-nothing libs” to discover that for all the ignorance I read, the author was not only an educated man, but a criminologist to boot.

Clearly, Martin has never read Lysander Spooner’s timeless essay “Vices Are Not Crimes” or he would understand the difference. In short, vices are harms we do to ourselves and crimes are harms we do to another person or their property, wrote Spooner in a vindication of moral victory.

On that criteria, the question arises that Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman has been asking for over 40 years, why punish drug merchants at all? Why not let all drugs be sold on the the free-market and make people personally responsible for their drug-taking actions?

That is the only other option other than quadrupling punishments that are the only actions available to hapless politicians, who should know better, trying to control the vices of men by passing immoral laws.

They’re immoral because they do not pass the temperance, prudence, justice or fortitude cardinal virtues test of St. Thomas Aquinas.

As for a degree in “criminology” at the University College of Fraser Valley where Mr. Martin teaches, do the students ever hear about the evils of alcohol prohibition? The lessons are transferable to drug prohibition.

None of that is to mention the lessons of the Parable of The Fall which is that the forbidden fruit always tastes sweeter. Does Mr. Martin not make sure his charges understand the inherent lessons on prohibition taught there?

Chris Buors

Winnipeg, Manitoba

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