LIBERTY ON THE GRASS

Pubdate: Wed, 23 Aug 2000
Source: Calgary Herald (CN AB)
Copyright: 2000 Calgary Herald
Contact: letters@theherald.southam.ca
Address: P.O. Box 2400, Stn. M, Calgary, Alberta T2P 0W8
Fax: (403) 235-7379

LIBERTY ON THE GRASS

I must agree with Herald letter writer Robert Mollot, who argued medical cannabis is a
charade. I believe the medicalization of cannabis is the fatal compromise in the struggle for
drug freedom. The question economist Milton Friedman has been asking for 40 years is why
we have prescription drugs at all. The pharmaceutical companies would lose an awful lot of
money if Canadians were free to use opium and cannabis products as our ancestors did in the
past. The cost of prescription drugs would be reduced drastically if the free market forces of
competition were unleashed on the pharmaceutical drug lords.

The idea of prescription drugs is a "devil's deal" between state and medicine. After outlawing
opium for racist reasons in 1908, medicine and the state produced prescription rights and the
therapeutic state. The therapeutic states seek medical-therapeutic solutions to moral-social
problems. The state is on a fool's errand. We should restore our natural right to drugs. It is
a right owned by mankind since time began. Less than 100 years ago, before we criminalized
and medicalized drugs, Canadians were responsible for their own drug use.

Perhaps if Mollot asked who benefits from turning vice to crime he would conclude that using
state-approved drugs such as Marinol suits the needs of pharmaceutical druglords a lot more
than it suits the needs of taxpaying Canadians. Those who are ill and would prefer the
freedom of self-medicating, that our ancestors took for granted, to cure whatever it is that ails
them, should not need approval from agents of the state otherwise know as doctors.

Chris G. J. Buors, Winnipeg

MAP posted-by: Don Beck