Prohibition’s gotta go

A Holocaust denier is someone who refuses to admit that the Nazis killed six million people, despite solid, indisputable and overwhelming evidence to prove that it did, in fact, happen. The notion is regarded to be about as sensible as asserting that the Earth is flat.

When it comes to the topic of drug prohibition vs. regulation, this so-called “Conservative” government is literally no better than Holocaust deniers!

The Tories, police, churches, and anyone else who supports drug prohibition, are refusing to admit to the solid, indisputable truth: Like alcohol prohibition in the last century, drug prohibition is a colossal failure. It subsidizes gangsters, costs a fortune, increases danger and gets bigger the more we fight it. Prohibition is ruining society, but they still insist that it must not only continue, but increase.

Despite decades of solid evidence that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that prohibition actually makes a bad problem worse, they refuse to admit it. It is completely, utterly, Alice-In-Wonderland-ly absurd.

Stephen Harper, Vic Toews, Stockwell Day and most of the top brass of Canadian law enforcement are either so blinded by religious or quasi-moralistic ideologies that they refuse to see the facts—or they are deliberately misleading and endangering the Canadian public. Either way, they are a clear and present danger to our safety, and they have got to go! And so do these gangster-subsidizing prohibition laws.

» Russell Barth, federal medical marijuana licence holder

Democracy ain’t easy

Throughout the Parc Ave. name change debate, many people have stated their feelings of frustration over a lack of democracy, and their sense that those in City Hall (and especially) the mayor of Montreal, Gerald Tremblay, don’t really listen. In the case of Helen Fotopulos (the local mayor), she was either MIA or out to lunch throughout the whole Parc Ave. debate. The question that no-one bothers to ask is, why should any politician at any level in Quebec even bother listening to the population?

The name-change controversy is a perfect example where everything that the average citizen could do in a democracy was done. There were demonstrations, letters written and 42,000 names gathered in petitions, all to no avail. In the meantime, Mr. Tremblay and politicians of his type pretend to listen to people and we as people let him pretend.

The recent Park Ave. decision, the sponsorship scandal and the Charest decision to pump $500-million to Alcan while at the same time telling us he’ll be cutting 2,100 chronic care beds, are just examples of local governments not listening, caring and acting in a corrupt manner and/or just having the wrong priorities. How did this happen? Who’s to blame? If you’re looking for the guilty, you only need look into a mirror.

Democracy isn’t easy, folks. Democracy is advanced citizenship and it requires work of us all and you have to want it bad. At the bare minimum, it requires people taking the time to turn out at the polls in large numbers and making informed, educated and responsible decisions.

At no time during local elections has there been a better menu full of choices on the ballot at every level, and yet we keep voting in the same assholes, expecting different results. You have to ask yourself what would truly happen if we all turned out at the polls and voted for those that we deem unelectable at each election and letting them govern for a change, be that someone from Projet Montreal or a New Democrat. So how about it, folks?

» Fidel Fuentes

Altruism and injustice

Ken Frankel’s litany of those horrible world leaders [“Front fascinates,” Dec. 21] takes a stab at the world-wide institutions of social abuse and injustice. Conspicuously missing were the four big occupiers of other lands—George Bush, Tony Blair, Ehud Olmert and Stephen Harper.

In his stabs, he castigates the efforts of folks with altruistic leanings for overlooking other projects whilst pursuing their own causes. Frankel views their causes as perhaps self-serving or myopic. But such is the human condition. There’s simply no excess hours in the day, nor the energy, to dedicate oneself to causes “on the other side of the fence.” Moreover, Frankel uses his diatribe against “those awfully cute seals” who are being clubbed to death, and takes a poke at their natural predatory practise of “fish eating.” Those “poor poachers” (who are serving the rich and greedy), he laments, as he falls just short of calling us all a bunch of hypocrites. Instead he uses “knee-jerk reactionaries.” The real jerk is Frankel.

A serious note to Mr. Frankel: we do our best in life. We align ourselves with anomalies that cry out “this ain’t right.” Furthermore, we humans naturally lean towards our forte—music, art, science, cooking-baking-and-candle-stick-making, the slaughter of seal pups, social justice.

And re: your patronizing, condescending view of “the forward-looking humanity of many Muslims,” in suggesting they’re not all bad—some of ’em even ride a bicycle! Allow me to expand on the bicycle: My personal forte is to garner awareness to an impending disaster—the worldwide allegiance to the private automobile.

» Edward Abramic

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