Pubdate: Tue, 07 September 1999 Source: Santa Barbara News-Press (CA) Copyright: 1999 Santa Barbara News-Press Contact: http://www.newspress.com/ WAR ON DRUGS? The world would certainly be a better place for the families and friends of five teen-agers killed in a car crash several days if drug agents had arrested a drug dealer when they had the chance. The teens were killed when their car plunged over a cliff after an all-night party in the Angeles National Forest weekend before last. A college student arrested late last week bragged of selling LSD-laced snow cones to the teens. He said, "It was beautiful." There is nothing beautiful about killing people, and that remark may come back to haunt the 21-year-old drug dealerollege student. Toxicology tests are being performed on the teens' bodies. If LSD is found, and the drug can be connected to the young man making the claim that he sold drugs to the victims and he's convicted of the crime, he faces a mandatory 20 years to life in prison. Perhaps of equal concern to law-abiding citizens is why the drug dealer wasn't arrested sooner. According to U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency records, undercover agents first made an LSD purchase from the student more than six months ago, and he apparently was part of a larger, on-going investigation into drug sales at the University of Southern California. Another undercover buy from that suspected dealer was made July 19 -- and still he was not arrested. We won't pretend to know how best to conduct an investigation into illegal drug sales; authorities may have hoped to catch a bigger dealer. But we do know how wrong it is to allow a criminal to go about his business, one that has the potential for killing people -- which, sadly, is precisely what happened in this case. - --- MAP posted-by: Don Beck