{news} US OH: Column: The Ill-Conceived War on Drugs Destroying America

[Clifford Thornton]

Newshawk: Lima Alert http://www.mapinc.org/alert/0358.html<http://www.mapinc.org/alert/0358.html>
Pubdate: Sun, 13 Jan 2008
Source: Lima News (OH)
Copyright: 2008 Freedom Newspapers Inc.
Contact: letters at limanews.com<mailto:letters at limanews.com>
Website: http://www.limanews.com<http://www.limanews.com/>
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/990<http://www.mapinc.org/media/990>
Author: Thomas J. Lucente, Jr.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Tarika+Wilson<http://www.mapinc.org/people/Tarika+Wilson> (Tarika Wilson)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/raids.htm<http://www.mapinc.org/raids.htm> (Drug Raids)

THE ILL-CONCEIVED WAR ON DRUGS DESTROYING AMERICA

America's ill-conceived War on Drugs cost another life this month 
when a police officer in Lima accidentally shot and killed a woman 
and injured her baby during a drug raid. They were looking for her boyfriend.

The accidental shooting of 26-year-old Tarika Wilson was just the 
latest in more than a quarter-century of bloodshed.

For example, in Belpre in October 1998, police shot 57-year-old 
Delbert Bonnar eight times. They were looking for his son.

In March 1994, a retired Methodist minister, Accelyne Williams, of 
Boston, died after a police special weapons and tactics team, given a 
bad address by an informant, raided his home. He died of a heart 
attack after police tackled him.

In February 2003, Drug Enforcement Administration agents looking for 
her father shot Ashley Villareal, 14, of San Antonio. The agents 
thought he was driving the car in which Ashley was sitting so they 
shot and killed her. The agents, by the way, did not even have a 
warrant for the father.

In August 1999, SWAT team officers looking for marijuana shot Mario 
Paz, 65, of Compton, Calif., twice in the back. Police found no drugs.

The casualties are not limited to women, children and retired 
ministers, either. Law-enforcement agents are also losing their lives 
in these senseless and hastily arranged drug raids.

Alarmed homeowners have killed quite a few police officers raiding 
the wrong house. This usually results in the death of the homeowner.

The list of the innocents killed in this war is long and depressing.

How many more people must the government kill in this war on U.S. 
citizens? How much more treasury and blood must be spilled before the 
government recognizes the folly of this policy? Already this year, 
government has spent more than $1.3 billion on the war on drugs. 
Police have made more than 51,000 arrests this year. This is only January.

In 2006, government agents made 1.89 million arrests for drug law 
violations (13.1 percent of the total number of arrests and more than 
for any other offense), according to FBI statistics. In fact, police 
arrest someone every 17 seconds for violating a drug law.

Yet, illegal drugs continue to permeate our society.

Clearly, in a free society, a person's choice to take drugs is his or 
hers alone. It is no business of government what a person puts into 
his or her body.

Still, the illegality of drugs is no excuse for the government to 
wage war on a large segment of its society, especially considering 
there are no beneficial results, only death and misery and an 
increasingly overcrowded prison system.

In fact, the United States, supposedly a free nation, imprisons more 
people than any other country in the world, in actual numbers and as 
a percentage of the population. Even China and Russia imprison fewer 
people than the United States. That was not always the case. The 
dramatic increase in the prison population is largely from the war on drugs.

Another ill-effect of the war on drugs is the increasing 
militarization of our community police forces. They are no longer 
keepers of the peace; they have morphed into quasi-military 
organizations that have adopted a siege mentality in their own 
cities. They take millions of dollars in grants from the federal 
government and purchase armored vehicles, helicopters and automatic 
weapons. They use this equipment in macho shows of force to keep the 
populace in line.

This "us against them" attitude makes it increasingly easier for them 
to bust down doors on unsuspecting residents based on often-spurious 
tips from shady characters. They conduct pre-dawn raids with very 
little intelligence on what they will find in the house. Then, when 
an officer kills someone, they put up a wall of silence and claim the 
whole operation was "by the book."

Well, whatever book they are using has no place in a free society 
where police should be protecting the liberties and freedoms of 
citizens -- even if that freedom includes the recreational use of drugs.

The Constitution has become nothing but a doormat for government 
agents to trample on as they bust down another door to another 
American home looking for drugs that may or may not be there. 

Efficacy
PO Box 1234
860 657 8438
Hartford, CT 06143
efficacy at msn.com<mailto:efficacy at msn.com>
www.Efficacy-online.org<http://www.efficacy-online.org/>
 
"THE DRUG WAR IS MEANT TO BE WAGED NOT WON"

Working to end race and class drug war injustice, Efficacy is a non profit
501 (c) 3 organization founded in 1997. Your gifts and donations are tax
deductible

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