LETTER OF THE WEEK

WAR ON DRUGS PAYS OFF

By Keith Jones

Regarding your story of Oct. 29 reporting the seizure of $118,000 in
an I-40 traffic stop: Chalk up one more highway robbery to the
mis-named "war on drugs."

Let's be real; this is an industry living off of the pretense of
protecting us from ourselves. If you deal in or carry cash, beware!
Ninety percent of the cash in circulation has drug residue embedded
in it and once it is seized, it is your problem to hire the lawyer
and prove your innocence.

My client took his mother's life savings of $12,000 that he retrieved
for her from her coffee can in her just-sold New Mexico house to his
Oklahoma house to her as he prepared to care for her in her last
years. He learned a lesson the hard way.

So did my car dealer friend with $23,000 in cash, returning with a
bill of sale from Arizona. This industry - just like Senator Ted,
Sheriff Mike or Tulia Tom - love to think they are heroic public
servants while they feed themselves, their friends and their
departments with money for payrolls, fancy equipment, new cars and
"seminar" trips, in the name of protecting us from drugs.

Call it by it's real name - highway robbery.

Real drug-use reduction will come about the same way it happened with
tobacco - we treated it like the health problem it is; we arrested no
one and educated everyone.

Keith Jones

Amarillo

Pubdate: Mon, 3 Nov 2008

Source: Amarillo Globe-News (TX)