Sky train attacker a 'gentle soul'.

So read the headline in one of Vancouver's daily freebies.The article goes on to tell of a man's fall into addiction and violent robbery and the damage he's done.The crown is asking for a sentence of 10 years.The man did hit several women over the head with an iron pipe.At this point he has to be punished.The defense is asking for 6 years which is still a big chunk out of someone's life.The man's wife tells of a wonderful husband and father that loses his job through government policy betrayals and a failure to be retrained with any success.He then becomes depressed and self medicates with crack cocaine.Only in the era of prohibition could such a tragic miscalculation happen.The criminal nature of the control of drugs under prohibition assures that people like this guy can obtain any and every drug known to man.The people selling these drugs have no pride in their work or care for the well being of their clients.They offer the most addictive drug with the shortest period of intoxication.Why not? they're in it for the money and nothing performs like crack cocaine.The press continues to demonize these poor addicts with the kind of name calling you'd normally associate with the playground or from John Walsh on America's Most Wanted.I won't bother to repeat the dirt.Everyone has seen and heard it a million times.It amazes me that the press still doesn't get it.These are just people with problems of addiction.That doesn't make them evil or beyond redemption.It means they needed help and were unable or unwilling to find it.The former is most probably the case because unless you're a junkie there's no kind of substitution therapy.I won't go into the drawbacks of methadone because as we sit,it's the only program offered to any addict.This poor guy used crack and was without an option until he was ready to quit.Of course he should have gone for treatment but if it was that simple there'd be no such crimes.Yes he did horrible things.He was probably a good man as well.He is another victim of a system of "justice"that takes people with serious medical issues and puts them in prison for as long as it can.This guy will either clean up in the first 6 months and then have to deal with many years of prison.Or he'll waste away in jail waiting for the day he can do more crack.I don't get crack.We called it freebase when I was a user and a lot of people liked and did a lot of it.Almost all of us eventually quit and moved on.Most of us were junkies and reverted to our drug of choice.I hope the time comes,very soon,that drugs will be under the control of the kind of system that we use for alcohol.The only difference is that alcohol is legal and therefore relatively cheap.A person can hold down a job and support his habit with alcohol.Drugs are more easily available and far more expensive.Only doctors and those with friends as doctors can reasonably be expected to support a drug habit with a job.Eventually,these people will usually lose control and need help.That is when help should be offered.To punish everyone because a tiny percentage may require help some day is insane ,unjust and very expensive in money and lives.I read recently that there were 33,000 over dose deaths in the US in '07.Since the opening of INSITE in Vancouver there have been 1000 lives saved from overdose.There are answers to these problems that do not involve the criminal justice system or the violence displayed on both sides of the drug issue.There is a problem here and it's open and obvious to anyone that cares enough to look.Lives are being needlessly lost due to bad law.This has to change.The forces of the drug war want us to follow the law because they say so.They kept drugs confined to certain ethnic groups for years with racist programs and out right lies.It's obvious that drugs are here to stay.It only remains to see how long it will take until science is heard and dogma is kept to a persons personal beliefs where it was meant to be kept all along.Lets leave the name calling to little kids and bitter television hosts that think they're cops.