Hey, no problem. The drug war doesn’t work anyway take tomorrow’s drug bust by the drug ton, or yesterday’s. (Pot busts net 2,800 pounds, valued at $7.5 million, Chicago Tribune, 1/8/07) Or take the Afghanistan situation: even with 150,000 soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan, the U.S. army could not stop the bumper 2006 opium crop of 2,100 metric tons. And we prosecute heroin here by the gram. These examples tell the folly of staying the course and hoping to win the drug war. It’s a bad policy that endlessly costs and gets us nowhere.
Oh, but what about our drug courts, our drug-diversion program, our drug-treatment? What about drug testing, drug drops and drug counseling? What about our undercover drug cops, our confiscation programs, our prosecutors, our public defenders, our drug
|
education programs and our sheriff’s police? Oh, my D.A.R.E. the addicted public officials and employees cry. The drug war is a cash cow for drug dealers and a patronage pig for public officials. Fly over the Cook County Jail and take a bird’s eye look at the drug-war prison sprawl. New jail after new jail a patronage dream. Eight out of every ten inmates who enter the Cook County Jail are there for a drug crime. Better to build pyramids or cathedrals.
But not all jail inmates are your friendly, law-abiding (but for drugs), drug-using neighbors, friends and relatives. No, drug prohibition causes serious crime too. After a four-year decline, the Chicago police blame gangs and gang squabbles over drug turf as the reason murders are up. (Chicago Tribune, 1/2/07, City murder tally up.) In the early...»»
|
