From my reading of the above article, I gather that the author
is saying that
1). The war on drugs is futile and counterproductive
2). Don't bother fighting the drug menace, cos it's useless.
What nonsense. I didn't know that surrendering to the devil is such
a good thing.
saying we must respect Singapore's system
of laws.
No thanks, and to hell with Harry Lee's line on Asian values.
In Rome, do as the Romans do. If you come to our place, you will
respect our laws. If we go to your place, we'll respect your laws.
Fair and square. Just what is it about you that makes you above our
laws? An Aussie passport still makes you as much human as any one
of us, yah?
Singapore's death penalty is overwhelmingly applied to drug
couriers
and is clearly a total failure, as it is wherever the penalty is
used
as a strategy in that lost cause called the war on drugs.
Nothing
stops the trafficking. Singapore could hang thousands - it
probably
will in due course - and there will be just as many poor fools
ready
to risk their lives for big money or a pittance.
Our laws are harsh, no doubt about it. However, if we have
deterred just one person from being stupid enough to bring drugs to
our shores, then I'd say the law has worked. No doubt there will
always be fools who will still try to risk it. So we make an
example of these fools to convince other intelligent people to do
the right thing and stay away from drugs.
Keelty should admit that, were heroin legally available to
addicts, there'd be a hope of controlling quantity and quality.
Drug addicts will do anything just to get their fix, turning to
theft, robbery, and even murder just to get it. If you were to
control the quantity of drugs and deny them their drugs once
they've had their fill, they'd simply turn to the black market to
get it. In other words, controlling the quantity won't eliminate
the black market for drugs - it'll flourish instead.
And what does he mean by 'quality'? Refine the drugs to highly pure
and refined form? The more drugs the addicts take, the more
addicted they simply become. It's a vicious cycle - they need more
and more drugs as their bodies become numb to its effects. You
increase the quality, and the addicts will slip deeper and deeper
into addiction.
Besides, the very fact that he said there'd be a 'hope' shows an
underlying pessimism in his own stand. What if they fail? Then they
would have loads of new addicts and a thriving black market. Good
luck to them.
Add the moral horror of the death penalty or the monstrous
nonsense of an Australian girl arrested in Denpasar for
possessing
two ecstasy tablets and we're living in a world gone mad.
No, man, I'd say the world has gone mad when we start lobbying
for harmful drugs to be legalised and say that conviction for
possession of illicit drugs is considered 'monstrous nonsense'.
