WAR ON DRUGS LEVIES A HEFTY TOLL

The War on Drugs claimed yet another victim last week when Wake
County Alcoholic Beverage Control investigators conducted a drug raid
that left one man dead and another wounded.

The deceased was a Texas fugitive by the name of Stephen Scott
Thornton; a man who was wanted on federal drug charges for growing
marijuana, which he claimed was for medicinal purposes. Thornton had
been living in Raleigh for the last several years under an assumed name.

Acting upon a two-month investigation, Wake County ABC agents raided
Thornton's home for marijuana plants, where a resulting shoot-out
left Thornton dead and a sheriff's deputy wounded in the leg
according to Wake County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Phyllis Stephens.

While none would argue that Thornton's actions weren't illegal, a
question arises: at what cost should we continue to enforce the
current laws? The fact is, the War on Drugs has already taken
countless lives -- those of police officers, innocent civilians
caught in the crossfire and other unsavory individuals whose crimes
still hardly merit the death penalty.

All the while thousands more lives are ruined -- particularly those
of college students, who are instantly disqualified from federal
student aid if they are convicted of a drug-related offense.
Ironically, even crimes like rape and murder manage not to warrant
this level of attention.

To be sure, Thornton hardly comes across as a pitiable character. The
incidents that lead to his first conviction in Texas began with
Thornton brandishing a gun on a neighbor who had come to confront him
about a violent outburst involving the neighbor's dog. When police
came to investigate the gun incident, they found dozens of marijuana
plants inside Thornton's home.

Thornton pled guilty to charges of illegal possession of marijuana
with intent to distribute, yet fled the state while awaiting sentencing.

Compounding this is the fact that Thornton shot at the officers
serving the warrant on his home so Thornton's death is not likely to
evoke much sympathy. Yet the question remains -- despite Thornton
being by all accounts a bad neighbor and potentially a menace, did
his crimes warrant death?

Clearly, Thornton sealed his fate when he fired upon one of the
officers serving the warrant, and the consequences he paid for it
were most severe. However, none of this would have happened were we
not stuck with a legal regime which prohibits substances such as
marijuana to begin with.

Critics immediately point to the fact that it was marijuana that was
responsible for Thornton's unfortunate end, as well as that of
countless others. Yet this same flawed logic would just as soon blame
alcohol for Al Capone's rise, rather than the real culprit: the
Prohibition regime which allowed him to monopolize the bootlegging
market and fund his criminal empire. Without Prohibition, bootlegging
no longer proved to be a profitable criminal enterprise - and the
rest is history.

Thus at some point the question must be asked - at what cost do we
continue to wage the War on Drugs? While supporters would point to
the negative social consequences from the abuse of drugs like
marijuana, how many lives -- both those taken and those destroyed --
do these averted harms possibly justify?

Steve Skutnik