Pubdate: Wed, 23 Jul 2003
Source: Fayetteville Observer (NC)
Copyright: 2003 Fayetteville Observer
Contact:  http://www.fayettevillenc.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/150

DON'T EXAGGERATE

Terror And A Bad Deal All Around

Methamphetamine fries the brain and ignites rage. It is a volatile fuel for 
spousal battery and child abuse. The manufacture of the drug taints land 
and groundwater, props up an organized-crime distribution network and 
endangers anyone who happens to be near the combustible chemical should 
something go wrong and a whole house blow up.

The people who make and use the chemical are criminals. There is no doubt 
about that.

But they are not terrorists.

A North Carolina prosecutor is challenging that notion. He is pressing 
forward with plans to charge a drug-crime defendant under state 
antiterrorism laws. Other prosecutors are considering following his lead. 
They should reverse direction. He isn't the man to follow.

Meth manufacturers and dealers leave families and lives - chiefly their own 
- - in ruins. But they are not using sarin to poison shoppers at the mall. 
They are not letting loose smallpox on the population and slamming a 
fertilizer-filled truck into a federal building with a child-care center 
inside.

Drug crimes undermine society. But they are not political acts against the 
United States with the sole intent to terrify, destabilize and coerce an 
entire nation.

The prosecutor, Watauga County District Attorney Jerry Wilson, is 
frustrated that a 24-year-old man accused of running a meth line would get 
six months in prison - tops - if convicted.

His sense of helplessness is understandable. Methamphetamine use and 
manufacture is rapidly spreading in North Carolina. Considering that 
prisons are filled with cocaine users, prosecutors should be confident of 
being able to prosecute methamphetamine suspects without equating a 
narcotic with nuclear or chemical weapons.

If the prosecutor's problem with the case is a loophole or leniency, then 
fix the drug law. Do not, however, dilute antiterrorism law.

Methamphetamine dealers and manufacturers are not friends to society. But 
unless drug dealers are operating networks that directly finance acts of 
terror, they aren't Osama bin Ladens or Timothy McVeighs.

Antiterrorism laws were drafted to distinguish a terrorist from the 
ordinary criminal. Suspects charged with, or even suspected of, an act of 
terrorism have fewer rights under federal law. States and the federal 
government must guard against the extension of the term "terrorist" to 
include the ordinary criminal.

A district attorney can't go shopping for the penalty he wishes to inflict, 
and then call the crime by another name to make the case fit.

That's exactly what DA Wilson has done. He should worry less about the 
damage meth labs are doing to his county than about the damage he could 
inflict on his state if his legal strategy is allowed.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart