We are not irresponsible

Dear Mr Peter Toyne, regarding the prohibition of illicit drugs.

With your strident view that flouting the law is irresponsible behaviour,you ignore the possibility, no, the certainty, that not all laws made by mere humans are good ones, and according to basic principles of free societies, bad laws are to be resisted as a public duty, especcially when lawmakers cannot be persuaded to change them in a timely manner.

American constitutional scholar Alexander Bickel went so far as to say: "We cannot, by total reliance on law, escape the duty to judge right and wrong... there are good laws and there are occasionally bad laws, and it conforms to the highest traditions of a free society to offer resistance to bad laws, and to disobey them."

Now, you may believe present Territory drug laws are good ones, but that is far from generally agreed today. That groups such as the Network Against Prohibition NT are now as a matter of principle beginning to resist what many percieve as ill-considered drug law is to be welcomed, not condemned as irresponsible.

Perpetrators of atrocities have always and everywhere stated that they were merely following the law. Beware aligning yourself with them.

Gary Meyerhoff
Darwin

Newshawk: http://www.napnt.org
Pubdate: April 2002 (unsure of correct date of publishing)
Source: Northern Territory News
Author: Gary Meyerhoff (Letter to the editor)
Website: http://www.ntnews.com.au
Email: ntnmail@ntn.newsltd.com.au
Copyright: 2002 Northern Territory News