I am writing again about our pointless war on drugs.
My headline: The drug war does not work.
Shocker.
Last week a piece in this publication focused on the continued and unnecessary drug war. In it were, of course, inaccuracies regarding how our narcotics unit functions and its ability to boost its numbers of “busts” and intake to make it seem like it is actually doing something “good” for the community.
But I promise, we would all be better off if it just stopped.
How many times do I have to write that the drug war needs to end? How hard is it to stop policies that blatantly target a minority class and put nonviolent people in prison — most likely ruining what life they have to live with that on their record?
I’m writing to request we stop and think about the money that is going to our narcotics unit.
Our own mayor, clumsy as he may be with his choice of words, does not even know what our narcotics unit is up to. He’s said it himself — he only puts money toward the unit, but does not know what it does.
Why don’t our officials know what’s going on?
There is no supervision — only a panel with police watching other police. Sounds plausible.
What we need is a civilian oversight board. Our Lafayette County Libertarian Party has been pushing this for quite some time, much to the chagrin of our leaders, no doubt.
I haven’t begun to write about the countless deaths that have occurred as a result of their confidential informant program. A program that takes innocent marijuana peddlers and sends them off to “bust” serious gang-related drug pushers.
I cannot imagine the legal questions surrounding these practices.
Most likely without attorney or parent representation, the narcotics unit makes people it catches with small-time drug charges sign a document that supposedly relieves the unit of liability if things go wrong when it forces these kids to go in undercover to bring down a larger, more dangerous individual.
I am glad the U.S. government is defunding these programs slowly but surely. I wish our university and local government would stop as well.
President Obama has acknowledged the problems with our drug war — one that we have never been intent on winning, just wasting resources that could better be used elsewhere.
I am calling out our city officials and our Board of Aldermen. It is time to wake up and stop being children about an issue that is killing people, destroying families and creating racial inequalities.
Doing drugs is stupid.
You know what else is stupid?
Spending money to stop people from doing drugs when they will do it anyway.
So, if we would all stop acting stupidly, we can wake up to the fact that our narcotics unit needs to go.
I encourage each citizen of Lafayette County to ask your officials to find out what is going on; it may very well surprise you.
“We are all invested,” is what they tell us. But I haven’t invested in anything. I don’t want to invest in what they’re doing. And you should not either.
Cory Ferraez is a third-year law student from Columbus.
