DEALERS, POLICE BENEFIT FROM ILLEGAL DRUGS

In Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn," the slave Jim talks about being rich
when he is freed. In slave-owning days, people had a clear understanding of
what freedom was. A free man owned his body and the fruits of his own labor.
We seem to have lost that distinction. Who owns your body?

Apparently, our city prosecutor and Senate president don't think teenagers
own their bodies. To them, random drug testing is no more a violation of
their rights than searching their school lockers. Children, in this view,
are property, free to be searched like a room or a car. They seem to believe
that the constitutional guarantee against unreasonable searches has no more
application to teenagers today than it did for blacks under slavery.

Drug addiction, a minor community irritant when it was legal, has become a
major problem for everyone since it has been made a crime. Those who benefit
are the drug traffickers and all the people in law enforcement and
corrections who have received billions of dollars in taxes our country has
wasted on this fool's errand.

We Libertarians believe freedom works. Society is better off when it is
governed by ideals of respect and tolerance than by stone throwing,
judgments and punishments for those whom some see as not living a moral
lifestyle. Please help us build a more respectful society.

Tracy A. Ryan

2002 gubernatorial candidate

Libertarian Party