MUST STATE BECOME A CRIMINAL TO FIGHT DRUGS?

Editor, Times-Dispatch:

To incarcerate a U.S. citizen, to enter that person's private body parts,
and to X-ray her on the slight pretext that she may be smuggling drugs, as
the government did to Gwendolyn Richards [December 3 news story, "Customs'
Drug Searches Prompt Suits"] is state-enforced rape in the same category
with such human rights violations as torture and political imprisonment. It
is state gangsterism. In order to fight against drugs, the state becomes
the criminal.

Some acts are so immoral that they never can be justified on public policy
reasons alone and should not be used except under the most extreme
circumstances. What Ms. Richards went through is one of those acts. Such
searches are anti-American. Conservatives should be outraged by this
practically unlimited use of state power.

These searches are discriminatory in racial, social, and other ways. Our
judges, politicians, and policy-makers need to ask themselves two
questions: Would they support such barbaric behavior if the Customs
Handbook cited three-piece suits as reasonable suspicion instead of baggy
clothing and sunglasses? Does the seizure of 850 pounds of cocaine and 803
pounds of heroin a year justify behavior so heinous and criminal that it
would leave an innocent person mentally scarred for life? As for me, as an
American believer in democratic principles, it scares me to death that the
power to abuse me in the most inhuman, undignified, and immoral way is in
the hands of our government.

Charles W. Peraino

Richmond

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski