A DRUG SNIFFING SOCIETY

'I suspect that some of these cars they are going to pick up on are going to
have merchandise with no receipts.' --Sheriff George Nourse, anticipating an
incidental benefit to the use of drug- detecting dogs in Canyon County
parking lots.

'Shucks, they might even flush out an ACLU lawyer or two.' --Anonymous
drug-detecting-dog enthusiast, anticipating a perfect world.

One of these days, we Americans--Idaho Americans in particular and Canyon
County Americans in particular--are gonna have to sit down and figure out
exactly what and how much we're willing to give up to keep waging the war on
illegal drugs.

Don't expect it to happen anytime real soon, though. To conduct a reasonable
community discussion that might result in some reasonable community
solutions, it's going to take some reasonable community leaders. At this
point in the endless war, you'd have more luck spearing squid out of Lake
Lowell than in finding a local official with the guts to suggest the drug
problem has not been, nor will it be, solved by the us-versus-them policy
that's been flopping about on the deck of America's ship of state for three
decades now, all the time crushing more and more of what keeps the boat
afloat in the first place.

I bring it up because over the last several weeks people in a position to
have their public fingers in our private pies are encouraging some definite
escalation on the drug battlefield. The mayor of Boise, for instance, has
suggested that every employer in Idaho should require employees to tinkle in
a jam jar now and then and submit the contents for chemical analysis.

Officials at Boise High School are considering a policy that would demand
that students who wish to participate in extracurricular activities first
pass a drug screen. And most controversial, if not most intrusive, 2-C
Sheriff George Nourse is walking narcotics dogs around Canyon County parking
lots in search of stray methamphetamine spoor.

This war has already cost us a bundle, and I'm not talking about mere money.
Sure, the billions the nation has poured down this rabbit hole add up to
some significant bread, but we can always make more money. We can flush urn
near more money than you can imagine into septic systems like Vietnam, 'Star
Wars,' tobacco subsidies, Ken Starr--yet we always bounce back, don't we? If
there's one thing this country does well, it's making more money.

But there are other expenses not so easily bounced back from. It's not so
easy to recoup the hundreds of thousands of wasted lives once they've
withered away under the poverty of addiction or inside the razor-wire
reservations filling up the desert heart of America.

It's not so easy to uncorrupt local law-enforcement agencies, federal
mega-bureaucracies, and entire foreign countries once the deluge of both
drug and anti-drug monies have corrupted them. It's not so easy to unweave a
criminal drug empire once it's been woven.

And it won't be so easy to un-erode our civil liberties once they've been
eroded to promote an impossibly pristine vision. Take my word for it.

Hell, don't take my word for it. Take Thomas Jefferson's word for it. Take
the Weimar Republic's word for it. Once those civil liberties are gone,
they're damn tough to get back.

So how many random pee tests are you willing to endure to ensure a drug-free
workplace? If one a month is such a swell idea, maybe three a day is better.
Maybe you wouldn't mind a permanent catheter running straight from your
bladder to the boss' office.

Are you pleased that your kids might have to test negative before they can
join debate club, play football for the home team, tootle flute in the pep
band, or engage in any of those activities that would naturally distract
their attentions away from the drug culture? Maybe you'd be even happier if
the brats couldn't attend school at all until they prove they're clean. No
sense teaching a druggie how to function in life, huh?

I know you personally have nothing to hide from those pooches sniffing at
your mini-van, citizen, so maybe you wouldn't mind if they check out your
home, too. Just to be on the safe side.

These are just a few of the things we need to hash out, fellow Americans.
Just how far do we go? All the way, like with the National Guard on
permanent border patrol, troops on the streets, and mandatory urinalysis at
the polls? Might work, and it'll only cost us the democracy.

Or maybe we could discuss decriminalizing the stuff--regulating the trade,
cleansing the poisons from the substance, stripping profits from the
dealers, offering treatment instead of jail time, looking for medical
answers instead of prison space. That, too, might work--if we're willing to
accept a certain level of dependency. Or we could continue along as we
are--pouring good billions upon bad, building a prison nation, enriching the
crime cartels, and watching people die. We already know it doesn't work, but
it does keep the dogs busy.