UNLUCKY ERIC

The headline - "Teens arrested on felony drug charges," (The Free Press
Advocate, 3/31/04) - caught my eye as I curbed my motorcycle for a lunch
break in Wilmington on Wednesday. The news story was about another drug-war
failure.

According to the story and charges, 19-year-old Eric M. Friddle, a former
local high school football player was caught selling 1 gram or more and
less than 15 grams of cocaine to another. Too bad for Eric, he happened to
be standing within 1,000 feet of a school making his commonplace infraction
of Illinois drug laws a Class-X felony, the equivalent in seriousness of
armed robbery, calling for mandatory penitentiary time.

Unbelievably, bail was set at $500,000, requiring the deposit of $50,000 in
order for Eric to be released on bond. And assuming Eric the-19-year-old or
his friends and relatives can post $50,000, ten percent of the bond,
$5,000, will automatically be forfeited to the government for acting as
"bail bondsman" under Illinois law.

Drug dealing in a prohibition world is the most profitable business on
Earth but $500,000? The day after my motorcycle ride, I picked up the
Chicago Tribune and read the storyline ("$750,000 bail set for man in
slaying," Chicago Tribune, 4/8/04). A bail similar to Eric's bail was set
for Christopher Kartzmark, 18, in a routine gang murder in
Chicago. Something is amiss, I thought, when the bail for murder and
petty-ante drug-dealing so nearly equate killing another and drug dealing
between consenting adults.

The prohibition of drugs has failed young Eric, as it has failed all of
us. Assuming for the sake of discussion before trial that Eric messed up,
maybe Eric had an ineffective D.A.R.E. instructor, or maybe
D.A.R.E. itself is ineffective, as numerous studies have found. No
defense. Or maybe the lawmakers who enacted prohibition laws that make
drugs unreasonably valuable and put more drugs everywhere, tempting good
kids to go bad, should be on trial with Eric for aiding and abetting
drug-dealing everywhere. Won't happen.

Too bad Eric. Bad luck. Most people don't get caught. But the police claim
they caught you and, now, prohibition has a good chance of destroying your
life. Ironically, drug prohibition is supposed to save the kids. But not
you Eric. Not you.