DRUG WAR ITSELF A 'FAKE DRUG SCANDAL'

Re: "Lone arrest in fake drug scandal isn't justice," by Ruben Navarrette,
last Friday's Viewpoints. When regular folks, especially the most socially
powerless, get ground up in the criminal justice system because of one or
two people scamming the practice of paying drug informants, it is good that
a voice of protest is raised on their behalf.

That so many cases had proceeded so far on the basis of false evidence
appears to be the result of an institutional momentum that can take a case
from arrest to conviction almost without regard to guilt. Court-appointed
lawyers are so overworked that a plea bargain is all they can do - and the
state has been cutting funds from the program forever. If improving the
system means spending money to ensure fair legal representation for
indigent defendants, much of the blame for the scandal may lie in Austin
instead of Dallas.

Of course, the drug war itself is a kind of "fake drug scandal" - it is a
sort of political bogeyman politicians use to preach their way to public
office. The real scandal is that the drugs are illegal, since that enables
mafias to become rich and powerful, guerrilla armies to buy arms,
corruption to become rampant and the criminal justice system to become less
respectful of individual rights. In a drug crime, there is no complaining
witness, therefore enforcers have to use secret police tactics: undercover
officers, informants, wiretaps and more and more invasive searches.

Whereas the 18th Amendment was aimed at alcohol, the intoxicant of
European-Americans, our current drug laws evolved from statutory harassment
of surplus labor from non-European countries. Prohibition failed and was
repealed. We should ask how much more profoundly can the drug war possibly
fail? It should be repealed, too.

Robert Sheaks

Irving