End violence by ending war on drugs

http://www.sctimes.com/story/opinion/2016/07/23/end-violence-ending-war-drugs/87285478/

Things are not going well. Falcon Heights, Minnesota. Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Dallas, Texas. All are locations of our most recent senseless deaths, leaving families and friends devastated beyond comprehension.

This national nightmare, when studied, always brings us back to the same conclusion. This country’s war on drugs bears direct responsibility for the militarization of the police, and it has caused a decades-long degradation of inner-city minority communities.

Just one glaring example of what the drug war has done to our judicial system involves the Fourth Amendment to the Bill of Rights, which states citizens are protected against unreasonable searches and seizures. This requires police under oath to convince an impartial judge an arrest or search should be made. Otherwise, evidence illegally obtained was inadmissible to prove guilt. This is called the exclusionary rule.

This radical restraint on the police is unique to all the other countries of the world. For 200 years it stood. Then came the drug war.

Keep in mind most illegal drug transactions are between consenting adults. Judges, out of some misguided sense of civic duty, began finding exception after exception for the exclusionary rule. The Fourth Amendment is now so shot full of holes that it more accurately resembles the flag that flew over Fort Sumter. Remember the words of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in this 1928 dissenting opinion from Olmstead v. United States: “The right to be left alone — the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized man.”

All races of Americans use drugs at roughly the same rates, but the drug war is waged disproportionately against black and Latin-Americans. Tactics used in drug law enforcement in inner cities would not be tolerated for a single week in white suburbia. The drug war reduces police resources for investigating and prosecuting homicides. Homicide clearance rates in all major cities have fallen dramatically over the drug war years.

The war on drugs has made criminals of otherwise law-abiding citizens. Minority communities have been devastated, and our prisons are filled to a level never seen before. Millions of young persons have had their life chances dashed by the drug war.

The police are victims of the drug war, too. The police are duty-bound to enforce laws, no matter how foolish. Police frustration boils over into ever-increasing violent, invasive tactics. This has been going on for so long that the police’s role in our society has become almost irreversibly distorted.

If we want to have a peaceful, prosperous and just society, we must end prohibition. Narcotics control belongs in the public health arena, not in the criminal justice system.

Ever wonder why marijuana is scheduled by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency as “highly addictive and having no medicinal value?” It is because the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in 1970 determined that marijuana was similar to alcohol and should be similarly regulated.

When President Nixon learned of this, he transferred authority for scheduling drugs from the doctors and scientists at that department and to law enforcement at DEA. In spite of half of the states’ legalizing medical marijuana, the DEA clings stubbornly to keeping marijuana as a schedule I drug, i.e., having no medicinal value. A cynical person might suspect the DEA is really trying to stay in business.

Can we as a people pull ourselves together during these times? We cannot continue to wage a war on ourselves. The war on drugs must end.

This is the opinion of Robert E. Pottratz, an attorney from Melrose.

Filed under: General Problems