cannabisnews.com: Drugs in the District





Drugs in the District
Posted by FoM on February 06, 2000 at 07:03:31 PT
Letters To The Editor
Source: Washington Post
The Post's Jan. 31 front-page story described an open-air drug market and the cat-and-mouse game drug dealers play with police. The failure to enact tougher drug laws and to prosecute offenders has fostered a drug culture in the nation's capital and made it a haven for criminals.
Anthony Williams must put some political muscle behind his promise that drug dealers are not going to be on the streets while he is mayor. And D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton should be fighting for stricter laws to protect her constituency. Until the attitude "you do the crime, you do the time" is adopted, the city will see increased drug addiction, youth violence and repeat violent offenders.Jon TrippAlexandriaDrug dealing in the District will never be eliminated as long as a financial incentives remain for engaging in criminal activity. Police efforts to limit supply while demand remains constant only increase the profitability of drug dealing. Increasing penalties is not the answer. According to the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives, 50 percent of 18- to 35-year-old African American men in the District are under court supervision or are sought on arrest warrants. Let's make sure that ample treatment options exist before putting more black men behind bars. I disagree with police who claim that lax marijuana laws pose a problem, especially if such laws mean that dealers choose not to sell harder drugs. Penalties for a drug should be commensurate with its potential for abuse. Existing drug laws do far more harm to the District than marijuana ever could.Robert SharpeWashington Sunday, February 6, 2000; Page B06 © Copyright 2000 The Washington Post CompanyRelated Article:D.C. Struggles With Stubborn Drug Trade http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread4532.shtml
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Comment #1 posted by kaptinemo on February 06, 2000 at 12:55:26 PT
The willfully blind who will not see
Newton's Law of Cause and Effect has been around for 400 years, right? You know, every action creates an equal but opposite reaction? This is supposedly taught to every schoolchild in the land.Evidently, the police, the DA's, the policy wonks and the bureaucrats running the WoSD must have skipped basic physics. (Or slept through it, daydreaming of the time when they will be able to exact vengeance upon the potheads who called them 'squares'.) They continually refuse to (publicly) acknowledge that their efforts are contributing to the very problems they publicly bemoan. They just will not see their own participation in these pointless, expensive and occasionally brutal and deadly 'policies' as being the font of the very problems they seek to rid themselves of.I'm certainly no Bible-thumper, but there is an especially suitable line from it that goes something about being troubled about the mote in thy brother's eye, but ignoring the beam in your own. In other words, you point out a problem someone else is causing, while ignoring the even bigger one you are creating. And thta sums up the DrugWarriors quite well. In fighting a small problem, they have created a much bigger one. But they just can't see it.
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