'Washington Post' Op-Ed calls for end to prohibition [When Swine Aviate]
Many people have not heard of L.E.A.P., but they have to be one of the most effective anti-drug warriors around. They’re “Law Enforcement Against Prohibition” and they make all kinds of crazy sense.
On Monday, August 17 – the straight-laced alcoholics at the Washington Post ran an Op-Ed from the sensible boys in blue essentially saying that if you want to end the hundreds of American cop killings each year – you could start by eliminating demand for the corner boys they run up against:
“Undercover Baltimore police officer Dante Arthur was doing what he does well, arresting drug dealers, when he approached a group in January. What he didn’t know was that one of suspects knew from a previous arrest that Arthur was police. Arthur was shot twice in the face. ...
The prohibition on drugs leads to unregulated, and often violent, public drug dealing. ... When it makes sense to deal drugs in public, a neighborhood becomes home to drug violence. For a low-level drug dealer, working the street means more money and fewer economic risks. If police come, and they will, some young kid will be left holding the bag while the dealer walks around the block. But if the dealer sells inside, one raid, by either police or robbers, can put him out of business for good.
Only those virtually immune from arrests (much less imprisonment) – college students, the wealthy and those who never buy from or sell to strangers – can deal indoors.
Without the drug war, America’s most decimated neighborhoods would have a chance to recover. Working people could sit on stoops, misguided youths wouldn’t look up to criminals as role models, our overflowing prisons could hold real criminals, and – most important to us – more police officers wouldn’t have to die.”
Don’t believe the dope fiends. Believe the cops, and just say no to prohibition.
