Pubdate: Fri, 09 May 2003 Source: Dallas Morning News (TX) Copyright: 2003 The Dallas Morning News Contact: http://www.dallasnews.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/117 DRUG WAR ITSELF A 'FAKE DRUG SCANDAL' Re: "Lone arrest in fake drug scandal isn't justice," by Ruben Navarrette, last Friday's Viewpoints. When regular folks, especially the most socially powerless, get ground up in the criminal justice system because of one or two people scamming the practice of paying drug informants, it is good that a voice of protest is raised on their behalf. That so many cases had proceeded so far on the basis of false evidence appears to be the result of an institutional momentum that can take a case from arrest to conviction almost without regard to guilt. Court-appointed lawyers are so overworked that a plea bargain is all they can do - and the state has been cutting funds from the program forever. If improving the system means spending money to ensure fair legal representation for indigent defendants, much of the blame for the scandal may lie in Austin instead of Dallas. Of course, the drug war itself is a kind of "fake drug scandal" - it is a sort of political bogeyman politicians use to preach their way to public office. The real scandal is that the drugs are illegal, since that enables mafias to become rich and powerful, guerrilla armies to buy arms, corruption to become rampant and the criminal justice system to become less respectful of individual rights. In a drug crime, there is no complaining witness, therefore enforcers have to use secret police tactics: undercover officers, informants, wiretaps and more and more invasive searches. Whereas the 18th Amendment was aimed at alcohol, the intoxicant of European-Americans, our current drug laws evolved from statutory harassment of surplus labor from non-European countries. Prohibition failed and was repealed. We should ask how much more profoundly can the drug war possibly fail? It should be repealed, too. Robert Sheaks Irving - --- MAP posted-by: Beth