Not all the lunatics are in the asylum. Why? Because federal prison officials are providing needles to prisoners so they can inject themselves with illegal drugs. Now, Doug Ford, premier of Ontario, is being criticized for damning the use of injection sites in prison and in Canadian cities. Condoning drug use is the most illogical way to combat North America’s opioid epidemic. But what else would work?

The drug problem is like a cancerous growth that kills, not just people. Look at what has happened in Mexico and Colombia. Drug lords have amassed so much money they can bribe politicians, lawyers and the police. In effect, if not eliminated, illegal drugs can eventually destroy society as surely as malignancy kills patients. But will we ever learn from history?

Providing needles and drugs to prisoners is like giving an alcoholic another drink. He, or she, will keep coming back for another one. It also creates another bureaucracy. And in the end, bureaucracy needs the addicts for their employment — more than the addicts need the bureaucracy!

Some readers may think drug injection sites work. If that’s the case, why are 42,000 addicts, just in one Canadian province, lining up every week for methadone treatment, costing tens of millions of dollars to overburdened taxpayers?

So what would be effective in combating the use of illegal drugs? I have bad news for Doug Ford’s political critics, bleeding hearts, and do-gooders, in this country. You will continue to lose the war on drugs unless you bring back the death sentence. And with the current opioid epidemic, the need for capital punishment has never been more obvious.

Years ago in an address to the Empire Club of Toronto I complained that the court system has proven to be too inefficient for illegal drug dealers. That the solution was the creation of a special court to deal quickly with those caught pushing illegal drugs. In other words, the answer was Lee Kuan Yew’s “Singapore solution.”

Lee Kuan Yew, former prime minister of Singapore, believed that you don’t show your teeth if you’re not prepared to bite. He decided to hang drug dealers until they heard this message, and it worked.

But is it such an immoral and unethical crime to hang drug dealers? After all, drug dealers are adding fentynal to opiate drugs that kill thousands of North Americans. It’s a lethal drug combination that ends lives just as surely as pulling the trigger of a loaded gun.

Shakespeare was right when he wrote in the play Hamlet, “Diseases desperate grown by desperate appliance are relieved. Or not at all”.

Doug Ford has his critics. I’m sure they will viciously use every means to attack his opinion on supervised drug-use sites. But he is dead right on this issue, and I hope he does not back away from this important fight.