[BC] War on Drugs

[Dave Hultsman]

In a message dated 12/21/2011 4:15:58 P.M. Central Standard Time, thebeaver32 at gmail.com writes:
>End the war on drugs. Declare victory or defeat, and pack up and go home. Legalize drugs, regulate and tax them. It won't affect the number of people using them, but it will allow them to purchase their "fix" without resorting to crime. And the losses to businesses like ours will go down to near zero.
 
I am not for legalizing drugs in any case.    But the system of the DEA and Drugs police of all types have become corrupted in many cases.  It started out as a good thing but has gone bad and costs increase every year.
 
One of the reasons is that the federal laws grants state, city or county police forces authority to keep cars, cash and items confiscated from any drug dealing.  The cash confiscated or obtained from the sales of confiscated goods does not go into the city, county or states general fund, it goes into a type of "slush fund" which is controlled by the department.  This should be illegal. All funds should be handled like tickets & citations and go into the general income fund.  Then the money is used correctly and monitored. Also, in most cities when drugs are confiscated many end up missing from the properity room before trial.  Lawyers at one time were winning cases by requiring the showing of the actual evidence, obtained from the person prosecuted. When unable to produce the evidence the case was dropped.  In an actual case I am familiar with the person was guilty of the charges. The police dropped all charges since the arresting office was fired because of "improper conduct" and could not be a witness in court.  The guilty party lost an automobile and all of its contents because of the delay in getting thru the system.  After being in jail for several months awaiting trial and finding out that the charges were dropped, he tried to get his car and tools back and found that were sold at auction.  In my opinion that's the breaks but its not really fair.  He was too poor to legally challenge.
 
Just my opinion
 
Dave Hultsman
 

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