WAR ON DRUGS CAN CLAIM A DEADLY VICTORY

Pot-smoking Ohioans already get off easy, say opponents of Issue 1, which
would mandate rehab instead of jail for some users.

For Clayton Helriggle, however, the penalty was death.

On Sept. 27, the doors of his Preble County home were kicked in by masked,
heavily armed men. One shot Helriggle in the chest.

The intruders belonged to a SWAT team -- "lawmen,'' so to speak, from
several Preble County jurisdictions.

They were seeking drugs and found some -- a tiny bit of marijuana. They also
found a couple of pot pipes and "quantities of packaging items used in the
distribution of marijuana,'' i.e., sandwich bags.

Helriggle was buried a week ago.

"My son was a free-spirited kind of kid,'' said Helriggle's father, Michael
Helriggle.

"All he cared about was playing guitars and playing music. He camped every
weekend. He was big into rappelling off cliffs -- he spent a lot of time in
Red River Gorge in Kentucky. He was pretty much a normal 23-year-old kid.''

And, like many 23-year-olds, Clayton liked to smoke a little pot.

He lived with three friends in a rented farmhouse that also was a hangout
for other 20-something musicians and music lovers, his father said.

"Sometimes there would be as many as 15 kids out there playing guitars. As
terrible as this was for me, this could have been a lot more terrible. A lot
more kids could have been killed.''

The shooting is under investigation by the Montgomery County Sheriff's
Office, which has assigned two detectives full time to the case, said Sgt.
Ed Copher. He hopes to complete the investigation this month.

Michael Helriggle said he heard his son's address announced on the police
scanner the afternoon of the shooting.

"I only live a quarter mile from there. I was at the scene five minutes
later.''

The sight stunned him. More than a dozen officers, in all manner of battle
dress, stood outside the house, the "battle'' over.

"I watched the SWAT guys high-fiving each other, laughing.''

Police said Clayton was holding a pistol when he was shot.

Clayton owned a gun, as do many folks in rural Preble County, his father
said. But Clayton's best friend, who saw the shooting, said he was armed
with only a blue drinking cup.

"I'm going to believe his best friend,'' Michael Helriggle said.

"But even if he did have a gun, he had every right to have it. Those guys
that busted in there, they didn't have 'sheriff' or 'police' written on
their shirts. They had on camouflage and black masks. They didn't knock.
They didn't serve a warrant. They just came in more or less like a bunch of
storm troopers, kicking down unlocked doors. All they really had to do was
knock.''

The marijuana in the house would have netted his son a minor penalty in
court, Helriggle noted.

"Clayton would have known there was no reason to worry about what police
would find. The problem was, they sent an unskilled SWAT team into a
situation they had no business being in.''

Helriggle said he hopes his son's death spurs a hard look at the war on
drugs.

"I'm never going to get my son back, but if I could shut down these SWAT
teams in the name of my son, I know that would be something he'd appreciate.

"This could have been anybody's kid.''

Clayton Helriggle is just the latest casualty in the war on drugs, said John
Hartman, director of the Ohio Cannabis Society.

"Unfortunately, this type of thing is not uncommon in the world of marijuana
raids,'' he said.

"The sad reality is that marijuana is a substance that hasn't killed anyone
in itself. But the whole act of prohibition and the way it's enforced --
that does cause death.''

That's one truth DARE classes don't teach: Pot doesn't kill people. Drug
warriors do.