WAR ON DRUGS IS A DISTORTION OF TRUE JUSTICE

The News Journal recently reported that a local judge sentenced a
20-year-old man to life imprisonment for marketing
cocaine. According to the report, no evidence was provided
indicating the man had harmed anyone or was in any other way a threat
to society. The only reported charges regarded the marketing of a
substance arbitrarily stigmatized and deemed "illegal."

I use the word "arbitrarily" with intent, since there is no evidence
that cocaine products are more addicting or damaging to individual
health and social welfare than many socially acceptable drugs.

We have, without justification, singled out cocaine ( and a few other
substances ) and made it illegal based on emotionally specious
reasoning, often stemming from racial and class prejudices. As a
result a man was sentenced to life in prison for merely selling drugs
no more harmful than others that we allow people to freely advertise and sell.

Does this not ring of sheer nonsense, or at least a blatant
miscarriage of justice? It is certainly a denial of a reasonable
interpretation of the equal protection provisions in the 14th
Amendment of our Constitution.

I once appeared for jury duty in a local court. The case involved a
Latino man who had been found with marijuana in the trunk of his
car. The judge asked if anyone had any objections to prosecuting the
man, and I offered my thoughts that if he had been found with a
similar quantity of ( far more dangerous ) tobacco, we would not be
wasting our time hearing the case. And I added that I thought the
drug laws were riddled with hypocrisy, arguably unconstitutional, and
inconsistent with an American sense of justice affording people equal
and fair protection in the eyes of the law.

Of course I was eliminated from the jury pool.

One can only wonder why this distortion of justice continues to play
in our courts. What good does it really serve the community? The man
the judge sentenced will be incarcerated for 40 to 50 years at a cost
of $40,000 to $50,000 a year and removed from the labor pool, where
he could be earning wages and paying taxes. In addition, he no doubt
will be denied what he really needs -- drug treatment and rehabilitation.

If we truly wanted to efficiently and effectively reduce drug use, we
would tax and regulate all drugs in accordance with their actual
impacts to the health and welfare of the community.

This would quickly put the petty drug dealers and their ilk out of
business and save billions in enforcement and judicial costs by
bringing drug abuse under the control and supervision of the
appropriate health authorities.

And if we spent only a small fraction of the savings educating people
about the dangers of drug abuse, and conducting research aimed at
understanding the chemical imbalances that make some people
vulnerable to addiction, we would not only drastically reduce crime
and the number of people incarcerated, we would eliminate much of the
funding that is now siphoned off to support all sorts of socially
malignant activity, including terrorism.

It has been reported that the chief source of financing for Osama bin
Laden and his minions has its roots in the poppy fields of Afghanistan.

Didn't someone once suggest that insanity could be thought of as
repeating the same unsuccessful behavior over and over again, while
hoping for a change in outcomes?

Ed Middleswart is a resident of Pensacola.