Lando 
Posted on 03/18/2005 8:35:15 PM PST by Lando Lincoln
So, where's the picture?
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
I have the answer to your tag line. All of them, unarmed, on the front line with an angry enemy.
Listen, the American approach to the "war on drugs" is a ridiculous failure. The unique wacky moral attitudes to drugs and alcohol get in the way of serious harm reduction and eventual elimination. The Canadians are just trying a new approach. Thats what scientists do. Its called unbiased research. Also don't forget that most Canadians including myself don't buy into that hairy fairy jesus happy moralistic paternalistic nanny state arrogant "moral majority" attitude. That stuff is killing our Conservative Party in the polls.
Canadians and most of the world for that matter treat drugs differently than the US, the land where you need a doctors prescription to even buy Allegra and Tylenol w. Codeine for christsakes.
Oh, and did you know that hospitals in Europe use heroin as a pain killer for terminally ill cancer patients. They must be evil according to wacky American morals.
Being too libertarian here gets you flamed. I won't do that to you, but I'm sure you've seen it happen. In Illinois, you can legally buy one bottle of codeine cough syrup every 96 hours on your signature alone. Yet all the major corporate, chain pharmas won't sell it to you without a doctor's prescription. I have vicodin from my last operation a month ago. I'll end up throwing it out. But if I have a cough that the pretty much worthless dextromethorphan won't stop (OTC cough syrup active ingredient), I've got to see a doctor.
It really comes down to the government here never infringing my rights on a personal level. They're much too smart for that. That might get the peasants off their asses to rise up and vote them out of office. What they do is regulate the businesses who then won't sell me the products I need or want. Second hand fascism, if you will. It's a technique that the gun controllers here have used for years, although the NRA has pretty well outed and thwarted them at every turn. The issue is that no other organizations like the NRA are out there to stop them from taking my freedoms in other ways.
Well in Canada, the peasants just don't trust themselves with too much freedom. Ever see our liquor laws or gun laws? The difference between the US and Canada for the general populationis simple, in Canada the folks are subjects to the crown, in America they are citizens.
Every country has its national phobia that is an outlier to the prevailing ethic of the country. In the US it just happens to be the fear of narcotics. Its an American Phobia, just like Canada's phobia of "two-tier health care", or Britains fear of gun. Marijuana for instance is used as an excuse in the US for any social ill from teen pregnancy, poor grades, unproductive workers, all the way to terrorism.
Lando
I've seen a number of people go down to smack. Trust me, it wasn't the social conditions, it was the drug.
:-)
Yep, Rachel Marsden is certainly a wingnut. Here most recent article only further proves the point.
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