FIGHTING HEROIN

Aggressively challenge the drug markets

Here's a simple proposition: without heroin, a user cannot die of a
heroin overdose. So it follows that fighting drug dealers who are making
heroin available to growing numbers of North Texas youngsters must be
part of any meaningful antidrug strategy.

Yet because of unintended consequences, law enforcement initiatives must
always be well considered. So it is with one particularly tough idea
making the rounds in North Texas community forums: introducing the death
penalty for dealers whose product results in an overdose death.

That suggestion reflects an understandable frustration. Heroin overdoses
have taken about a dozen lives in the DallasFort Worth area this year.
Yet, both prosecutors and criminal defense lawyers around the state are
skeptical of threatening dealers with a death penalty. First, proving
the intent to kill would be very difficult. After all, dealers who want
to keep their customers buying would not want them to die of overdoses.

It also would be very difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt where
the victim obtained the drugs. The death penalty for drug kingpins law
already on the federal books has been invoked by prosecutors only about
10 times in the last decade, and even then it has never been carried
out.

The judicial system also may conclude that the punishment may not fit
the crime. Recently, four members of the U.S. Supreme Court redflagged
a portion of the existing Texas death penalty statute.

A less draconian but potentially more effective approach is already
available. One that balances the need for treatment and education with
rigorous enforcement of existing laws:

Educate the drugtaking community.

Tell them they should seek help. Warn them that they should be careful.
With 141,000 new heroin users in the United States last year, there are
many novices who don't understand that new and more potent heroin can
kill them.

Crack down on street drug markets.

In many instances, the police already know where drugs are being sold.
But fullscale community involvement helps them quickly pinpoint new
locations, as citizens become the eyes and ears of law enforcement.

As the Greater Dallas Crime Commission notes, more than 500 neighborhood
crime watch groups exist in the Dallas area. Prosecutors acknowledge
that such an infrastructure could help police challenge drug dealing by
seizing any and all cars involved in drug purchases, or padlocking the
businesses from which drug sales are often conducted.

True, law enforcement is currently under fire for committing excesses in
the area of assets forfeiture. But that means carefully implementing the
law rather than jettisoning it altogether. And because the challenge
also requires more law enforcement resources in an area where the drug
problem is reaching crisis proportions, the Office of National Drug
Control Policy must designate Dallas a high intensity drug trafficking
area.

YOU HAVE THE POWER

The Greater Dallas Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse has recently
expanded its website to include more information about heroin. The
council's online address is: rampages.onramp.net/~gdcadarc.