TICKETS WON'T DETER KIDS FROM DRUG USE

Suburban police departments have a limited number of officers, and
they're always looking for ways to stretch their manpower. They want
police to spend their time patrolling rather than filling out forms.

For this reason, Bartlett, which straddles Cook, Kane and DuPage
counties, and Hawthorn Woods in Lake County studied the idea of police
giving tickets, similar to traffic tickets, to offenders who possess
10 grams of marijuana or less. Police would spend only about 10
minutes writing a ticket for a village ordinance violation, as opposed
to two hours hauling the offender into the police station and
processing them.

Either way, offenders would face a court date for allegedly violating
a state law against possession of a small amount of marijuana, a
misdemeanor offense. And either way, a convicted offender pays a fine,
usually at least $200. Bartlett Police Chief Dan Palmer sees the chief
advantage of the ticketing method as saving time for police officers.

On Tuesday night, the Bartlett village board approved the ticketing
concept. We see several flaws in it, however.

Chiefly, it seems less likely to deter kids from their bad behavior.
If a young teen is just starting to sell or use marijuana, giving him
a ticket isn't likely to dissuade him. It's too cursory. It provides
too brief an encounter with law enforcement.

On the other hand, consider what happens if police take the teen into
the station, fingerprint him, take his mug shot, give him a stern
lecture and call his parents so he can be released into their custody.
Police and parents will warn that if it happens again, he'll be
punished more severely. That's more likely to intimidate him enough to
stop selling or using drugs altogether. If he's toying with getting
into a gang, it might give him second thoughts.

Across the nation, the trend in policing is to stop people committing
petty crimes before they graduate to bigger crimes. It has proved
effective in reducing crime in general. This ticketing system flies in
the face of that philosophy, and runs the risk today's troubled teens
will grow into adult lawbreakers.

We would have preferred to see Bartlett officials turn down the
ticketing system, or adopt it only for a trial period. We would
discourage Hawthorn Woods or other municipalities from following
Bartlett's lead.