Casualties of the Corrupt Drug War (Balko)

It was one year ago this week that narcotics officers in Atlanta, Georgia broke into the home of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston.

They had earlier arrested a man with a long rap sheet on drug charges. That man told the police officers that they'd find a large stash of cocaine in Johnston's home. When police forced their way into Johnston's home, she met them holding a rusty old revolver, fearing she was about to be robbed. The police opened fire, and killed her.

Shortly after the shooting, the police alleged that they had paid an informant to buy drugs from Ms. Johnston's home. They said she fired at them first, and wounded two officers. And they alleged they found marijuana in her home.

We now know that these were all lies. In fact, everything about the Kathryn Johnston murder was corrupt. The initial arrest of the ex-con came via trumped-up charges. The police then invented an informant for the search warrant, and lied about overseeing a drug buy from Johnston's home.

That informant--Alex White--refused, and bravely came forward to tell the media what had happened. Had he given in to the pressure put on him by APD narcotics officers, the world would still likely believe Kathryn Johnston was a drug dealer, and her killing was justified.

"The world" wouldn't think her killing justified if she did deal drugs.

The so-called "war on drugs" is an abysmal failure and should be ended. The dollars worth of drugs one druggie uses a day is costing him hundreds of dollars a day and since he is dealing at a 10% fence, he's having to commit thousands of dollars a day worth of crime to get the hundreds to buy the dollars worth of drugs.

That is a dollars's worth of chemicals being translated into several thousand dollars worth of crime times the number of those idiots out there times 365, all through the magic of stupid laws.

No nation on Earth including ours can afford that. A rational drug policy would:

Legalize marijuana and anything else demonstrably no more harmful than alcohol on the same basis as alcohol.
Provide heroin, crack cocaine, and other highly addictive substances at cost at govt. centers to present addicts while keeping those items illegal for sale on the street, i.e. take every dime out of that business for criminals.
Provide major criminal penalties for the sale of LSD, PCP, and other Jeckyl/Hyde formulas.
Provide major penalties for selling any kind of drugs to children.

Do all of that, and all meaningful drug problems and 70% of urban crime would evaporate in two years. In fact you could do that and keep the present prison system intact. You could end the war on drugs and declare a war on fraud on the same day. Every druggie thrown out of prison would be one more prison cell available for a democrat.

Nonetheless that is just an ideal solution; you'd be better off legalizing it all than doing what we are.

since the Johnston raid last year, there have been mistaken drug raids on innocent people in Temecula, Calif.; Annapolis, Md.; several incidents in Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York City; Galliano, La.; Hendersonville, N.C.; Ponderay, Idaho; Stockton, Calif.; Pullman, Wash.; Baltimore; Wilmington, Del.; Jacksonville, Fla; Alton, Kansas; Merced County, Calif.; and, believe it or not, Atlanta, Ga. And of course, these are merely those reported in newspapers.

But hey its all worth it to make sure people don't have an effect on cogress's ability to regulate interstate commerce. Or worse yet someone getting a non government approved buzz on.

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