Pubdate: Fri, 09 May 2003
Source: Dallas Morning News (TX)
Copyright: 2003 The Dallas Morning News
Contact:  http://www.dallasnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/117

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repealed.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 It should be repealed, too.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
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