DRUG DEALER BALLOT QUESTION IS QUESTIONABLE He who frames the question wins the issue, a good illustration of which will appear on ballots next week under the heading, Question 8. Proposed by a self-described Coalition for Fair Treatment, it would allow drug dealers to avoid prosecution by declaring themselves "at risk of becoming dependent," thereby substituting treatment for incarceration. They do not have to be dependent, but merely proclaim themselves "at risk." Monies confiscated by the authorites who apprehend them would then go to a state-run Drug Treatment Trust Fund. Sounds reasonable. So what's the case against it? "Oh, it has some surface appeal," Hampden County District Attorney Bill Bennett concedes. "But what its proponents don't tell you, and the reason every DA in the state opposes this bill, is that repeat drug dealers, including those who traffic in heroin and cocaine, could have all charges dropped - no jail, no probation, not even a record - just by telling some judge they think they might be `at risk,' even if they're not dependent at all. "People charged with use or possession are already eligible for treatment. You don't go to jail for that. The only people in jail for using drugs are there because of other crimes they committed. So the only thing this bill would change is our ability to go after the dealers, the ones destroying our neighborhoods." Law enforcement officials, including Bennett, see Question 8 as a Trojan horse, camouflaging a hidden agenda of decriminalizing drugs. Indeed, the coalition's major benefactor is George Soros, a New York billionaire who has spent a fortune espousing his belief all drugs should be legal, reaffirming that a fool and his money are soon parted. Bennett, whose office is in Springfield, was recently joined by several western Massachusetts police officials in what must have been a startling scene for motorists. Stationing themselves along the Massachusetts-Connecticut border on Interstate 91, they held a sign reading: "Welcome to Massachusetts! If you get caught dealing drugs, you will not be prosecuted." Whoever said truth is stranger than fiction wasn't kidding. Drugs kill. Drugs destroy. Drugs do damage that's often irreparable. And those who deal them, especially to kids, are unrepentant lowlifes who do their business at the bottom of the ethical barrel, peddling misery, grief, pain and death without care, concern or conscience. Some will call that hysterical. Let them. But they cannot call it misinformed, not to one who's personally witnessed the devastation drugs can wreak upon victims and their loved ones. To be sure, there are those who use them with impunity, but they're like winners at Russian roulette, just a snort or hit away from becoming losers, too, perhaps tragically so. Back in 1986, this area was rocked by the news Len Bias, whom the then-champion Celtics had selected as their No. 1 draft choice 48 hours earlier, died of a heart attack brought on by the ingestion of cocaine. Local and national media poured into Maryland where his death occurred and his autopsy was held, intent upon gathering every conceivable nugget of information. At one press briefing, a medical spokesmen uneasily offered a cryptic, technical report, then stepped away from the microphone. But one persistent reporter demanded, "Doctor, will you please tell us, did he die of an overdose?" The medical man tersely replied, "I never use the term overdose because that suggests there is a correct dose, and for some people no dosage is correct." Don't bother suggesting that to dealers; they couldn't care less. Yet, consistent with the loopiness that permeates this commonwealth, we are now being asked to provide them with an escape hatch, allowing them to masquerade as yet another category of victims when, truth be told, they're among the vilest perpetrators of all. Question 8, it says here, should be soundly defeated.
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