{news} Drug laws are meant for nobodies, not Bridgeport's mayor

[clifford thornton]

            <http://www.journalinquirer.com/> Wednesday, June 21, 2006  





      Chris Powell
      Drug laws are meant for nobodies, not Bridgeport's mayor 
      By Chris Powell 
      06/21/2006

      John M. Fabrizi could be mayor of Bridgeport for another two decades and not have done his city and Connecticut the service he has just done by getting caught using cocaine while mayor and a member of the City Council. 

      The mayor's drug use was discovered incidentally during a federal investigation aimed at someone else and was disclosed last week by the Connecticut Post when an investigative document was filed in court without the usual secrecy. Fabrizi first fudged about having made "poor choices." When it quickly became clear that fudging wouldn't do politically, he confessed at a meeting with the newspaper's editorial board and made a tearful admission and apology at an assembly of city employees at City Hall.


             
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      "I thought that these were personal, private matters to me and my family, that I could deal with these issues with my family and myself," the mayor told the assembly at City Hall. "I now recognize my actions affected many others, and I want to apologize to my family, my friends, and the people of Bridgeport."

      The mayor, a Democrat, stressed that he had not used cocaine for a year and a half and added that he had stopped drinking alcohol a few months ago as well and had gotten medical treatment. He means to stay in office, though there are calls from both parties for him to resign.

      Among those urging the mayor's resignation is a Republican who challenged Fabrizi for mayor three years ago, Rick Torres, who asks: "How do we explain to children that drug use is dangerous and can ruin your life if the top guy is a drug user?"

      That is a good question but it is not the foremost question. The foremost question is how anyone can sustain himself in public office after admitting to many felonies, since every possession of cocaine in Connecticut is a felony, a serious crime, a crime punishable by more than a year in prison.

      Part of that question is why this particular felony should be, as the mayor suggests, forgiven completely for a white, middle-aged, middle-class guy who happens to be part of the government and political establishment while every day in Connecticut it is NOT forgiven for dozens of poor, uneducated, and unskilled people from racial minorities and even for some ordinary white people as well. After all, Connecticut continues to imprison people even for involvement with a drug much less potent than cocaine, marijuana. 

      But Fabrizi will not be prosecuted and, despite the shame he says he feels, does not plan to give up his place of honor, the city's highest office.

      Thus the Fabrizi case raises the question of the criminalization of drugs; indeed, it impugns the whole rationale for criminalization.

      Yes, drug use is dangerous and can ruin life -- for SOME people. Though it's a terrible idea, OTHER people, like Fabrizi, can make recreational use of drugs and continue to function adequately or even well. This is only obvious.

      But the law ignores the obvious and, doing so, causes problems far worse than the problems of drugs -- the problems of drug prohibition, the creation of a vast and violent criminal underground; the destruction of the cities as the main battlegrounds of the futile but never-ending "war on drugs"; thousands of murders and maimings every year, many of them involving innocent bystanders; the fantastic overhead of a huge prison system; and the compromising of justice with the double standard so glaring in the Fabrizi case -- sympathy, forgiveness, and medical treatment for the criminal with a light complexion and a familiar face, brutal punishment for the people with
      dark complexions, the people who dominate Connecticut's prison population. 

      And for what? To prevent some people from making "poor choices" in their personal lives, when the response to such "poor choices" in all other respects is medical treatment?

      As a matter of justice, equality, and propriety, Fabrizi should resign as long as what he has admitted doing remains a felony and as long as others who have done what he has done remain in prison. But if he should remain mayor of Bridgeport, at least Connecticut will have an enduring proof that its drug laws and criminal-justice system are shams, meant to be brought to bear only on the weak.

      ---------

      Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal
      Inquirer.




      ©Journal Inquirer 2006 

     
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