NEW LAW'S TARGET TOO BROAD

Once again the high court justices have shown a supreme lack of
understanding by deciding that public housing directors could evict entire
families for drug use by one member whether the use was on public housing
property or if anyone else knew about it.

Just how in touch with the real world is the Supreme Court? A week after
the justices were interested in perhaps allowing the random drug testing of
all students involved in afterschool programs, they give the go-ahead to
public housing officials to evict tenants for drug use by family members.

Perhaps I could better understand the reasoning behind the decision if I
look at it from a different angle.

The way I see it, if we think it's a good idea to evict residents of public
housing for family drug use, the White House and the Florida governor's
mansion should both be vacant. Their occupants should have been ousted when
their children partook of illegal drugs.

The president's twin daughters were more than once busted for underage
drinking. And Gov. Jeb Bush's 24-year-old daughter was arrested for trying
to illegally fill a false Xanax prescription at a Tallahassee Walgreens.
She was charged with fraudulently obtaining a controlled substance.

Neither of these scenarios is any more ridiculous than evicting senior
citizens because their grandchildren or great-grandchildren do drugs.

"One strike and you're out" is the "Eiger Sanction" of drug warfare. It
might look good on some people's paper, but what it really points out is
that the system can't get the job done.

In "The Eiger Sanction," Clint Eastwood's character, Hemlock, is sent on a
dangerous mountain climb to expose the identity of a notorious killer.
Hemlock has no idea who the killer is, but when the entire
mountain-climbing party is killed in an accident, he is congratulated for
killing everyone in order to get Mr. X.

We don't need laws that resemble movie scripts. Much of what passes as law
and order is more about morality than real justice. And it's all really
about the 6 o'clock news. Sure, drug dealers set up shop in housing
projects, but there's no talk of evicting these often-shrewd entrepreneurs.

Instead, officials want to go after easy targets -- unsuspecting family
members of drug users. This ill-conceived notion is doomed to fail because
so many of the people who stand to be evicted are law-abiding senior citizens.

Prisons in this country are overflowing with perpetrators of victimless
crimes -- people with drug charges. Is this latest high court ruling an
attempt to increase the homeless population?

I think most people (who aren't cashing in) would love to wake up tomorrow
to a world devoid of illegal drug trafficking and all the chaos it spawns.
But these heavily publicized, poorly scripted attempts at law and order
don't put us one step closer to a real-world solution.