Drugs, war, business

Congratulations, your article on the NAOMI heroin prescription study couldn't be more timely and up to the point [Cover, "Heroin for health," March 31]. Much more could be said about the international political context in which it takes place, though.

First of all, I want to stress that health-related scientific research (including the NAOMI "harm reduction" initiative) is 100 per cent legal, according to the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. That being said, focusing too much on the U.S. drug czar or NIMBY condo owners as main opponents to safe injection sites could make us lose the big picture.

As of 2005, the world is facing a strong comeback of the hardcore prohibitionist stance, led by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) "major donors," such as WASP evil-fighters United States and Sweden, along with Japan, the U.K. and neo-fascist Italy. (By the way, the new chair of the joint program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) is no other than UNODC Italian director Antonio Maria Costa, who promised recently that he would review - in true Orwellian fashion - all of the office's printed and electronic statements to remove references to harm reduction!)

Now, add to this mix a handful of weak ex-communist states desperately in need of Washington's foreign aid, and you get a strategic alliance very similar to the Coalition of the Willing of Iraq fame. This is rather weird, since the latest UN AIDS report shows that the HIV epidemic in many ex-Soviet republics is about to go out of control. In newly "democratic" Ukraine for instance, 80 per cent of injection drug users under 30 are HIV-positive, and an average of 0.8 per cent of the general adult population has already been infected! However, in spite of these dramatic figures, there are no harm-reduction projects in Ukraine, and I somewhat feel that the recent round of "colour revolutions" will only bring more drugs and despair to countries where they took place.

Right now, the U.S. is building a string of nine airfields in Afghanistan, the purpose of which is not clear. Is the U.S. trying to put pressure on neighbouring Iran, or set up "counter-drug" facilities in its poppy-growing protectorate? What if the U.S. actually aims at exporting as much heroin as possible from their Afghanistan bases to other bases located in Kirgyzstan, Iraq and Bosnia? I believe selling drugs to unsuspecting allies prone to economic hardship and social disintegration is a very lucrative business for the U.S. After all, while dramatic ads featuring fried eggs ("This is your brain on drugs") were aired on TV back in the '80s, it is well documented that crack-cocaine sold to inner-city youth helped the CIA fund its anticommunist operations in Central America.

Given these circumstances, any attempt by Canada to create a regulated market for opiates and medical marijuana will be an economic obstacle to the financing of Uncle Sam's illegal imperialistic operations. So, as NAOMI helps decrease the rate of new HIV infections here in Montreal, get ready for another onslaught of remote-controlled fear campaigns in our trash corporate media.

» Pierre E. Paradis

Sympathy for students

Kristian Gravenor's excellent column [‘‘The hungriest protesters," Kristian Perspective, March 31] offered me a lot of food for thought.

The world is rife with injustice. Since terrorism and violence are rarely acceptable methods of combating injustice, hunger strikes, petitions, freedom of speech and/or mass demonstrations are excellent ways of fighting for progress.

I sympathize with students in this student strike. Never mind conservatives who keep saying students in Quebec are a pampered lot and have very low tuition rates. But why should students pay much higher tuition rates like university students in the U.S.? The U.S. is a very bad model to follow - it's a democracy, but has 45-million people without any health insurance, the largest prison population of any country, an ever-widening gap between rich and poor and horribly dangerous street gangs in cities.

If we want to maintain broad access to higher education, we must follow the model in most European countries and many Asian countries where higher education is very cheap. Let's hear both points of view in the media.

» Manish Patwari

Fed up with Frenglish

Your restaurant review last week was so horribly written and copy edited that, not only did it give me a headache, but I got bored of reading it after the first paragraph ["Hail the king!" Resto Bizarro, March 31].

Why can't Alice and Yanka just stick to English? The Mirror is an English-language paper, and I don't appreciate having to make sense of their Frenglish just to read about a restaurant! Plus, I don't even understand what the hell those two are trying to say, as their writing skills are a convoluted mess!

I can't believe you allow such crap to be published and allow Alice and Yanka to use so much French. If there was that much English in a French paper, you know some ass would be calling the Bill 101 police in a second! (Just like some loser did about the Tavern on Monkland. Oh, no! It's missing an "e"! The apocalypse is coming!) Besides, the majority of those French words should be written in italics. Being a Montrealer, I know that Alice and Yanka are writing French, but how about a little respect for the tourists visiting?

» Anonymous

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