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.