Pubdate: Sun, 08 Dec 2013
Source: Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise (OK)
Copyright: 2013 The Stephens Media Group.
Contact:  http://www.examiner-enterprise.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1989

THE FAILURE OF OUR WAR ON DRUGS

The costly, counterproductive war on drugs has turned the United
States into incarceration nation. According to the International
Centre for Prison Studies, 716 of every 100,000 people in this country
are locked up, by far the highest rate in the world, well ahead of
such beacons of freedom as Rwanda, Cuba and Russia.

The arrest of Norman Gurley two weeks ago by the Ohio Highway Patrol
perfectly illustrates the tyranny of the drug war and the threat it
poses to the rights of law-abiding citizens. As reported by
reason.com, Mr. Gurley was charged with having a secret compartment in
his vehicle - even though the compartment was empty.

Ohio lawmakers made having a secret compartment in a vehicle a felony
if - and it's a big if - authorities suspect that compartment is used
to transport drugs. The wording of the statute gives police carte
blanche to search vehicles without legitimate probable cause.

So Mr. Gurley faces prosecution only under the secret compartment law,
which could send him to prison for 18 months. Making the creation of
such a space a crime is insane.

But it's par for the course in the four-decade, $1 trillion-plus drug
war, which results in more than 1.6 million arrests per year. More
than half of federal inmates are imprisoned on drug convictions. Drug
laws give police broad powers to seize assets from people before
they've been convicted of a crime, then use those assets to acquire
paramilitary gear to execute nighttime raids on the homes of suspected
drug offenders. Time and again, across the country, police serve
warrants on the wrong homes, or needlessly escalate searches to the
point that innocents are killed, costing taxpayers millions of dollars
more in lawsuit settlements.

And now police can arrest you for having an empty, concealed
compartment in your car? Here's hoping civil libertarians use Mr.
Gurley's case to have the Ohio statute thrown out and perhaps create
some momentum for a reboot of this country's devastating drug
policies, which have done absolutely nothing to limit supplies or use.
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