YOUR POLICY FAILS EVERYTIME

No amount of interdiction, prosecution, incarceration, police, judges
or jails will ever, ever make a difference in terms of human beings
seeking, finding, and using chemicals to alter their consciousness.
It's who we are.

Throughout our entire history there has been drug use and abuse. The
only thing that a just society can do is choose whether to maximize
the negative impact of drugs through misdirecting resources towards
useless endeavors or to minimize their impact through funding
education, safe injection sites, education, education, education.

Today, unfortunately, there's too many transmissible diseases that can
be passed via inter, intra, and extra drug populations. As a society
who claims to be intelligent and compassionate, we owe to ourselves to
try and protect ourselves as much as possible - by openly dealing with
the issues and working to mitigate them, not by segregating and
deluding ourselves into thinking we can simply sweep the problems
under the carpet of the justice system.

We need to grow up. We need to get past our visceral reaction to drugs
and what they really mean to us: the good, the bad, and the ugly. We,
collectively, get to choose the path. Let's choose one that has not
failed every single time.

Cary Lewis

Toronto, Ontario