A safer society? Legalize drugs
I HAVE WATCHED Eddie grow up in the Lakeview Manor public housing development. Tougher than he could ever want to be, confronting family issues that just make me sigh, he turned to drugs. Now a young man, he has become an outlaw, riding the edge with nothing to lose.
Dangerous to himself, his family, and strangers, he waits for his connection on the corner of a public housing development, in plain view of kids and cowering families. A police car slows up and goes on its way.
Eddie is an addict and a seller. He feeds his addiction by stealing, often violently. He did prison time, where taxpayers fed and housed him and gave him a stigma that made it virtually impossible for him to re integrate into society upon his release. Except as a drug dealer.
He is part of an established food chain, an elaborate, international protection racket. To defend his turf -- maintain market share -- he joins an armed gang, as does his connection, as does the syndicate that supplies his connection, as do those who protect the producers.
At every stage, corruption and violence. Elements of the police and military look the other way. Selected judges and politicians look the other way. The great source of drug demand, the United States, hops into bed with drug runners to pursue its geopolitical aims. Billions of dollars slide around. Those who don't have their hands out have their hands tied. Those without connections get hounded and jailed.
Eddie's use of drugs is the center of a vortex whose ever - widening spirals have devastating consequences for everyone in its path.
It's not safe to park your car or leave your house when he and his gang are around. He has a positive incentive to hook neighborhood children on drugs, and so he does. The drugs he ingests are not controlled. He had a psychotic reaction to a dose of impure heroin and assaulted a neighbor. He is a danger to everyone.
The Housing Authority is evicting his family because of his illegal drug activities. So his mother and young sister face homelessness.
His failure is defined as a personal one; his usage is defined as criminal. He may be arrested, put in expensive jails, and guarded. Meanwhile, politicians puff sanctimoniously about ``cleaning the streets" and ``ridding the projects of drug dealers."
But, in fact, we know that he'll be replaced, as will every corrupt person in the entire international supply chain. There will be inevitable ``personal" failings all up and down the line. The incentives and despair are too great.
But what if we step back and take a radical new look at this, what if we dive down to the epicenter and pull the plug from this dysfunctional vortex? What if we legalize and control the drugs in question: marijuana, heroin, cocaine, to name three? Clinics could dispense these drugs affordably, and some of the $69 billion that Law Enforcement Against Prohibition documents we spend on ``enforcement" and ``interdiction" could go to treatment , for which there is already unmet demand. For the kids, hip anti drug messages could parallel the successful anti-smoking campaign. In the absence of prohibition, drug use may actually decline among the young.
What will our society look like as we transform outlaws into clients?
There will be millions of people on drugs.
There are currently millions of people on drugs.
But there would be significantly fewer human tragedies; fewer broken lives and families; less crime on the street; fewer people in jail (especially minorities); less State Police and State Department corruption. We would live in a safer, gentler country.
Many drug addicts will be cured and live normal lives.
Many will never kick the addiction but will live mostly normal lives, like functioning alcoholics; holding down jobs, remaining in marriages, and raising children; a monkey on their back, but getting by.
And many will remain mired in drugs. They will consume drugs as the morbidly obese consume food -- until they self destruct. Even with legalization and control and all the support in the world. Some folks will simply fail, and their failure will be a small though intense tragedy. But it will be theirs and that of their families. Not ours. Not everyone's.
As long as Eddie lives in fear of the government, we will live in fear of Eddie.
It is time to stalk the politicians and demand that they confront this issue the right and honorable way.
No half way measures. Full legalization and control.
Bill Fried is executive director of the Lakeview Manor Tenant Association in Weymouth. 
