War on drugs causes crime and actual war

I respectfully disagree with our county prosecutor, Michael Soong, when he says

the increasing use of “drugs” like metamphetamine (ice, batu) is causing

increasing crime. I think he has causes and effects confused.

Drugs do not

“cause” crime. Ignorance, poverty, anger, boredom and despair do.

Oh, yes,

and the “war on drugs” is a serious cause, as well. The increasing use of “ice”

in our community is directly due to the past decade or so of “green harvest.”

This federal bribery has transformed a relatively benign recreational drug,

marijuana, formerly grown as a weed in back yards and shared among friends,

into an illegal commodity more precious than gold and impossible for losers

like those who smoke “ice” to obtain.

President Reagan, a legendary man in

many ways, started this distortion of the truth that drugs cause crime.

Politicians like to invent bogey men to scare us. Then they can promise to save

us from them if elected. In the 1950s it was communism. Around the turn of the

century it was “demon rum” that was the downfall of civilization. Outraged

people were marching in the streets, they were so sure of it. So America’s

favorite recreational drug, alcohol, was declared illegal. And what was the

result? Widespread disrespect for the law. The rise of a gangster class, often

admired outright by the public, who killed each other in the streets. The

corruption of the police, the courts – everyone but Elliot Ness. Sound

familiar?

I’m sure Mr. Soong is convinced that drugs cause crime because

all his colleagues chant that mantra, and the criminals he prosecutes often use

recreational drugs. But it escapes his notice that the same unfortunates often

eat rice. Does rice cause crime? And every single one of them has a mother. Do

mothers cause crime? Also, lots of law-abiding people use politically correct

recreational drugs: Alcohol, nicotine, caffeine. Many are addicted. Why don’t

they cause crime?

But Mr. Soong would point out that the criminals

themselves admit they stole that stereo because they needed money to pay for

their habit. Sure they do. They’re looking to excuse their behavior, and they

know the officials will accept the excuse “the devil (drugs) made me do it.”

Also, the very fact that their drugs are illegal makes them so expensive

that crime becomes the only way to pay for them. Besides, we have been

criminalizing kids and other perfectly good citizens for over 20 years by

sending them to prison for drugs, where what? They turn into corporate

accountants and jet pilots? No, where they are brutalized and taught by the

real criminals they’re thrown in with how to jack cars, scam old folks and hold

up liquor stores.

So now we surpass every other country in the world in

the percentage of our citizens who are in prison. And 60 percent of our

burgeoning prison population is behind bars for drugs. So, being druggies in

the first place, and now deprived of a normal life by our justice system, these

people show up again in Mr. Soong’s office as criminals addicted to

drugs.

But this horrible waste of good people, many of whom were formerly

going to school, holding down a job or raising a family, is not the end of the

body bags. Now we are funding the war on drugs’ in Colombia, also, to the tune

of billions. To kill the peasants who have the temerity to grow the cocaine the

Americans want to buy from them. “Oh, but we’re only sending equipment,

aircraft, and advisors,” our politicians say. It reminds me of Vietnam.

So

Mr. Soong, the next time you sit back and relax with a cool one, or sip a

little of the corporate drug of choice, caffeine (perhaps enhanced, like crack

cocaine, by concentrating it into espresso), think about the hyped role of

“recreational drugs” and very real role of the “war on drugs” in causing crime

– and now, even actual war.

As long as you continue to parrot our

misguided federal DEA agents, as long as you continue to prostitute your office

in the greed for DEA money and confiscated property, you will continue to be

part of the problem, and the solution will continue to elude you.

Larry

Liberte

Kalaheo