TECH SHOULD TAKE WOOLDRIDGE'S MESSAGE UNDER CONSIDERATION

Retired police detective Howard Wooldridge spoke to an audience of
students on Wednesday about the need to redirect America's war on
drugs and the ineffectiveness of the government's efforts for the last
40 years. He was invited to speak at Virginia Tech by Students for a
Sensible Drug Policy. Wooldridge helped found Law Enforcement Against
Prohibition in 2002, based on his belief that the current methods used
are the most "dysfunctional, immoral, and domestic policy since slavery."

With this philosophy in mind, SSDP is working this semester to
institute two new policies necessary to achieve a sensible drug
policy. These include promoting the "good Samaritan policy," which
would grant amnesty to students who call for help in medical
emergencies involving alcohol and other drugs, and another policy
that, according to the CT, would allow "first-time drug policy
offenders to meet with a counselor at Cook Counseling Center in lieu
of facing punitive charges."

Both of these policies seem like realistic alternatives to the harsh
penalties currently in place against students who are caught with
drugs. The reality is that people do use drugs, and punishing those
who are trying to do the right thing, in a moment of crisis, only
destroys lives -- it doesn't save them.

Wooldridge takes issue with the government continuing its prohibition
approach. Unlike alcohol and tobacco, the two deadliest drugs in
America, which are legal, regulated and taxed, there are many other
drugs that are not. While Wooldridge raises interesting points,
legalizing the sale of drugs should not be taken lightly. Granted, no
more U.S. tax dollars should go toward funding prison beds as we only
continue to lock up offenders. We should look to other countries and
see how their governments have handled the abuse and misuse of drugs.
In 2004, Canada pushed for the decriminalization of minor
marijuana-related offenses.

Other nations have taken similar steps to combat the problem. While
generally a law is a law for a reason, we are ultimately the ones
paying for it. According to norml.org, an organization working to
reform marijuana laws, "60,000 individuals are behind bars for
marijuana offenses at a cost to taxpayers of $1.2 billion per year."

If what we are doing now is not working, we need to look to alternate
methods to keep people as safe as possible. As Wooldridge told the CT,
"The disrespect for government and law in general because you have a
law, for marijuana at least, has been ignored by 100 million
Americans. And so, when you create disrespect for law it's almost like
semi-anarchy." It's up to us to decide what to do from here.

The editorial board is composed of David Grant, David Harries, Sharon
Pritz, Laurel Colella, and David McIlroy.