DRUG WAR IS A PERIL TO CHILDREN AND SANITY

"Let me get this straight: A young, promising college student gets
involved with a drug dealer, becomes a mule carrying weapons for this
miscreant and then refuses to cooperate with authorities on his
whereabouts."

Thus began an e-mail from Kurt Heinrich on one Kemba Smith, who did 6
1/2 years in federal prison for her role in drug dealer Peter Michael
Hall's narcotics ring. She was sentenced to a 24-year mandatory minimum
sentence but was pardoned by former President Bill Clinton and released
in December.

Several African-American organizations, individuals and publications had
taken up Smith's cause and urged her release. Delta Sigma Theta, a
predominantly African-American sorority, was one of the groups urging a
pardon for Smith, who spoke at the DST convention in Baltimore last
Saturday. Heinrich wrote to express his bewilderment with it all.

"I am happy she is making the most of her second chance," Heinrich
continued. "But doesn't the fact that she stands to make a profit on her
book deal bother you? Don't you think this is ridiculous? A reformed
felon profiting because she broke the law? She may be considered a
'nonviolent drug offender' but I wonder how many people were killed or
injured with the weapons she transported. Call me crazy but this is not
right!"

No, Kurt, you're not crazy. And let's be even more realistic. Smith is
not only going to get a book deal. HBO and Showtime will probably have a
bidding war over the rights to a cable movie. Smith will make a bundle.
I have no problem with that. Almost everyone connected with the O. J.
Simpson murder trial has written a book and tried to cash in on the
horrible death of two people.

And if Mark Fuhrman, the self-confessed thug with a badge, can make
money from a book, Smith sure as hell can.

My gripe is with the lack of perspective many African-Americans have
shown on this issue. They see Smith and other women imprisoned for
similar misdeeds as victims. Indeed, they may well be. But mandatory
minimums were instituted with concerns for other victims in mind. In my
second column on Smith, written in April 1998, I wrote about one of
them.

His name was Tauris Johnson. He was only 10 years old. In November 1993,
he was caught in a cross-fire between rival drug gangs. Tauris took a
bullet to the head. The tough little guy hung on for more than eight
hours, his parents spending minute after agonizing minute at Johns
Hopkins Hospital as their little boy struggled for his life.
Tauris didn't make it.

You didn't see two front-cover stories on Tauris or his parents in
Emerge magazine, which did two - including a 17-pager - on Smith. I
doubt if anyone from Delta Sigma Theta has gone by his parents' home to
express condolences or ask what they can do. There will be no book deals
for his parents, or movie deals either. Black America's collective
response to Tauris Johnson's death has been, roughly, "Got shot in the
head by a drug dealer and died, huh, kid? That's your tough luck."

There is a reason the response for Smith was different, of course. When
black Americans make Smith a victim, and wail and moan about the
injustice of mandatory minimums, we make "the system" the perpetrator.
And, as everyone knows, another name for "the system" is "the white
man." With young Tauris as a victim, we know we have only ourselves to
blame. So, we keep his victimization on the down-low.

In our search for a victim to rally around, we lose sight of solutions.
As Smith noted in her interview for Wednesday's column, hundreds of
black women are still in prison, most of them nonviolent drug offenders.
What do black Americans propose to do about them? If we're going to wimp
out on mandatory minimums - which were imposed for our protection, not
our oppression - then we should go whole hog and say let's end the drug
war, treat addiction as an illness and legalize drugs.

What, after all, has the drug war gotten us? Tauris Johnson and others,
young and old, killed in cross-fires. A staggering body count among
young black men in major cities as they shoot each other for control of
drug turf. Entire communities terrorized. Undercover cops Ed Toatley and
Mike Cowdery assassinated in the line of duty. Violations of civil
liberties and privacy as both police and the courts display a sneering
contempt for the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable
searches and seizures. Racial profiling, based on the assumption that
minorities use and deal drugs more than whites, neither of which is
supported by statistics.

No, Kurt, you're perfectly sane. It's our society that's crazy. First,
we ask for harsher, more Draconian sentences in order to effectively
fight the drug war, based on the theory that such punishment will deter
first-time offenders. Then, when these first-time offenders claim
ignorance of those laws - apparently, they never read a newspaper - they
plead for leniency based on being first-time offenders. Then we give it
to them.

It's as if we suffer collectively from drug-induced stupidity.