Pubdate: Sat, 12 Jul 2014
Source: Journal Standard, The (Freeport, IL)
Copyright: 2014 GateHouse Media, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.journalstandard.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3182
Author: Neal Simon

THE WAR THAT NEVER ENDS

Several decades from now, when historians look back at the beginning 
of the end of the expensive, wasteful and tragic American War on 
Drugs, Jesse Snodgrass may very well be mentioned prominently.

It shouldn't be that way, of course. An autistic 17-year-old student 
at Chaparral High School in Southern California should never have 
been swallowed up by the American anti-drug industrial complex, but he was.

Want some dollars and cents figures? The drug war is big business; 
bigger than U.S. Steel, as Hyman Roth would say. The federal 
government spent $15 billion in 2010 on the War on Drugs, according 
to the Office of National Drug Control Policy. That's about $500 per 
second. State and local governments spent at least another $25 billion in 2010.

Of course, when Americans spend that much money, they expect results, 
and those startling figures are also readily available. Halfway 
through 2014, nearly 900,000 U.S. citizens have been arrested for 
drug offenses this year. Nearly half of those arrests are for 
possession of marijuana.

If one of the goals of the drug war is to fill up U.S. prisons, that 
goal is being met. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, since 
Dec. 31, 1995, the U.S. prison population has grown by an average of 
43,266 inmates per year. About 25 percent are sentenced for drug law 
violations.

When there's that much money at stake, playing by the rules is 
strictly optional. Jesse's story involving a fake friendship, 
entrapment and arrest in a Riverside County undercover drug sting 
operation, is told in a recent issue of Rolling Stone magazine.

This is how reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely describes Jesse: "Forging 
friendships was normally so hard for Jesse, who had the cognitive 
skills of an 11-year-old and was nearly oblivious to the facial 
expressions, body language, vocal tones and other contextual cues 
that make up basic social interactions. He was slow to draw 
inferences or interpret the casual idioms other kids used, like 
"catch you later," a phrase Jesse had initially found startling, 
since it turned out to involve no catching whatsoever. As a toddler, 
he'd once been terrified for days after his preschool teacher told 
him, "I'll keep my eye on you."

Which means Jesse was the perfect target for Deputy Daniel 
Zipperstein, a cop in his mid-20s posing as high school transfer 
student "Daniel Briggs." During Prohibition, we had Eliot Ness. The 
War on Drugs features characters like Daniel Zipperstein, who 
probably isn't qualified to do anything other than fool stoned-out 
high schoolers.

Deputy Dan spent several months of the school year pestering the 
autistic boy to buy him some marijuana, finally placing $20 in his 
hands and making clear that their "friendship" depended on Jesse 
scoring some weed. Jesse's parents, white-collar professionals with 
two younger children, could not have been more thrilled that their 
son had found a companion.
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