DRUG-FREE ZONES A JOKE

I don't know about you but I don't understand city council making a
drug-free zone around the two high schools.

Somehow I just don't see how putting up signs and making a declaration
is going to make any difference. If it does, why wouldn't this
campaign work on every social ill we have, from bootlegging to
pollution? We've all seen the signs that say no dumping and underneath
there's household stuff, dumped.

I wonder if I put signs up in my kitchen and made a declaration that I
could lose weight, the pounds would miraculously fall off?

I understand city council has to do something about the drug problem
in our city but there has to be more to it than that.

This ridiculous policy is almost as silly as thinking that by
registering guns, there will be no more deaths by gunfire. Ask the
parents of the 15-year-old girl killed on Boxing Day in Toronto if gun
registration works. Ask the parents of the three dead young men in
Cambridge Bay. Registering a gun only makes the government feel like
it's accomplishing something and gives the public a false sense of
security.

A drug-free zone, even if the Yellowknife Area Policing Advisory
Committee monitors it, is a great idea. But great ideas have to be
more than a great idea if anything is to be accomplished. Perhaps the
public is supposed to think the drug problem will disappear. It won't.
Even if the RCMP assist by doing random drive-bys, people wanting to
buy or sell drugs will not be deterred, whether they're students or
not.

The answer lies in more foot patrols, so law enforcement knows who's
who on the street. One night I watched three uniformed police officers
hanging around the entrance of the Gold Range. They weren't
interacting with the smokers, as far as I could see they were just
standing there and I wondered what the point of that was.

Police in the schools is a great idea. The answer lies in more
policing, knowing who the main characters are and having a law with
teeth that will shut down known pushers. We need stiffer sentences for
pushers as well.

I heard a horror story about a student living with her mom and her
mother's boyfriend. The boyfriend is a drug pusher.

The girl has complained she needs to move out but not only do
authorities ignore the girl, they ignore the guy. I know law
enforcement members need to have all their facts to make charges stick
but everyone seems to know about it except the authorities. Seems silly.

Action, not signs and declarations, is the solution to our drug
problems.