From: doctor1@cbnewse.cb.att.com (patrick.b.hailey)
Subject: Re: Drug Prices (was: What's happening to George Bush?)
Organization: AT&T
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 09:47:36 GMT

In article <1993Jan11.172221.4963@hellgate.utah.edu> thomson%jensen.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Rich Thomson) writes:
>In article <1ikg8bINNgim@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu>
>	cd651@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Wally L. Blume) writes:
>>In a previous article, mikeq@freddy.CNA.TEK.COM () says:
>>>      *Called his war on drugs a SUCCESS!
>>
>>        Drug street prices up over 25%, directly attributed to less
>>        availability as reported by CNN, and USA Today. Beats what 
>>        other presidents have done. 
>
>The fact that drug prices are rising is fueling the violence in our
>cities.  Driving the price up is exactly why inner-city youth find that
>earning hundreds of dollars a day dealing illegal substances is worth
>the risk of getting caught.  Extensive profits over illegal substances
>makes it worthwhile for people to shoot each other over their customer
>base ("turf").  Exhorbitant profits make it attractive for organized
>crime to enter the market.
>[ more good stuff deleted.. ]

On the other hand, penalties for drug crimes are way up.  Mere possesion of
all sorts of drugs that are safer than alcohol and nicotine can result in
longer sentences than murderers usually get.  "Mandatory minimums" remove
any possibility of parole, let alone a judge or jury deciding that the best
sentence is a suspended sentence.

The result?  The bad guys would rather kill than get caught.  They organize
terror campaigns to prevent neighbors from calling the police or providing
information.  If they are arrested, they'll kill witnesses that agree to 
testify.  If they're caught red-handed, they'll take a chance at killing
a cop.  Sure, they may get it for murder, but at least it's a chance to
escape the DRUG charge, which can put them away for a long time.

Another result is that the federal prison population has doubled in the 
last decade.  Of course, we shouldn't cry for such ruthless scum, should we?

No, we shouldn't.  *BUT*, THEY are not the ones that are going to prison.
Hey, these are dangerous people!  You expect the cops to get mixed up with
them?

A study in Florida a couple years ago looked at a year's worth of Floridians
sent to jail for drug prohibition violations.  Of these 45,000 people, 88% of
them had never been arrested for any other crime.  According to the head
researcher, this study "suggests we are incarcerating people who have not
committed other crimes and who tend not to commit other crimes".

Let's see now... 45,000 people in jail, only 12% of whom appear to have any
tendency to harm or steal from other people...hmmm... that's about 40,000
peaceful citizens locked up in one year from Florida alone.

Looks like a war on peacful citizens to me.  Because of the War on (Some)
Drugs, the ratio of violent people to non-violent people walking around
on our streets is increasing in favor of the violent people all the time.

All the more reason to crack down harder on those evil druggies, eh?.  Use
power company records to find suburban yuppies using grow lights to grow pot.
Put them in jail, get 'em fired, take their houses, cars and bank accounts, get their kids taken away, all without drawing a gun.  Whee!

Round up some AIDs patients, a lot of them use marijuana TO STAY ALIVE, and
they don't tend to carry guns or travel in armies, nor do they have the
money to buy good lawyers.  Cancer patients, too.  Hell, they're sick, they
won't put up much of a fight.  Besides, some of them still think they'll
receive mercy from a jury of their peers, not realizing that the federal
government made that illegal years ago.  Some of them have nice stuff to
forfeit, too.

Assign a few hundred investigators to hang out at Gratefull Dead concerts: a
lot of Dead fans tend to use LSD amongst themselves, and they are gentle
creatures who aren't a threat to anyone.  Plus, there's those delicious
mandatory minimum sentences for LSD: we can put some of those folks away for
10, 20, or even more years with no chance for parole, we can take their
children away, hell, we can destroy all kinds of lives and never set foot in
one of those dangerous crack-infested neighborhoods.  Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Arrest dealers?  What, and kill the geese that are laying all these golden
eggs?  Hell no!  We take their drugs and re-sell them!  We call them
"sting" operations, but we're careful to not arrest *all* the buyers,
or the game would be up!  No, no, we just arrest a few buyers every night,
and recover those drugs to sell again.  Oh, yes, and we keep all the money.

So what if a couple of kids o.d. on drugs they bought from cops?  Hey, it's
a *war* you know!  Besides, the citizens will never know *we* sold the
bad dope.  They think we're the good guys!  Kill a few kids and they'll
sacrifice even more of their rights to us out of gratitude for going
after those evil druggies!  Pretty soon they'll be powerless against us!
Bwah ha ha ha!

All while the vast majority of murders, rapes and other real crimes are
never solved, and even if they are, their perpetraters get out in a few
short years to make room for more peacful people who use some drug other
than deadly nicotine or alcohol.

It's a war all right.  And it's being won.  Aren't you glad?

   Thanks awfully,
              Patrick

Newsgroups: talk.politics.drugs