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A month in the life of the drug war

by Kurt St. Angelo
@2005 Libertarian Writers' Bureau

Near the end of my Libertarian campaign for Marion County Prosecutor in Indianapolis in 2002, I noted stories by news partners WTHR-TV Channel 13 (NBC) and the Indianapolis Star newspaper that supported my outspoken political position against the war on drugs. There were very few news stories, if any, which did not support my view.

It is my Libertarian view that the drug prohibition policies of Democrats and Republicans are ineffective, wasteful, hypocritical, and destructive. The policies are a leading - if not the leading - cause of crime in America, including violent crimes. As odd as this may seem, Americans overwhelmingly vote for policies that actually promote crime. For example ...

The first notation I made was on October 31 when WTHR reported that two suspects were arrested for shooting an Anderson, Indiana police officer in the hand during an armed robbery of a drug store. The thieves stole tens of thousands of dollars in narcotics including hydrocodone and Oxycontin.

Suspect Jack Lankford, who looked to be in his forties, admitted to being a drug addict since he was 15 or 16. That the police wanted to know if the two suspects were tied to a string of drug store heists suggests that they recognize a causal relationship between addiction, prohibition and crime that leaders of both major parties have not been willing to admit.

On November 3, the Star reported that illegal drug exchanges between the elderly is both common and risky - because such illegal drug users are "out of the loop" of doctor protection. Three days later, the Star carried an article about how between 1997 and 2000, doctors prescribed medications to adults that potentially caused 3,750 serious injuries, birth defects and deaths in children under 2 years old. Statistically, this makes drug companies and doctors hundreds of times more dangerous to children than, say, marijuana dealers.

On November 4, Steve Johnson of WTHR presented a report about car theft. He interviewed inmate Shawn Jackson who admitted to stealing cars to support a drug habit. "Every time a thief takes a car in our state it drives up every drivers' insurance," Johnson said. Given this, wouldn't we be smarter to give Jackson the freedom to get drugs cheaply so that he wouldn't need to steal cars, or as many of them? That's what we've done for decades at methadone treatment centers, with the goal of reducing theft.

On November 5, the Star reported that a woman pleaded guilty to selling her Oxycontin prescriptions. Like heroin and methadone, Oxycontin is an opiate. Some users crush the tablet and swallow, snort or inject the drug for rapid and intense heroin-like highs. Surely this abuse is not rare in the over 7 million OxyContin prescriptions legally filled in the U.S. each year.

On November 8, the Star carried an AP story about seven people charged in drug-weapons plots involving a

Attorney, screenwriter and Libertarian Party activist in Indianapolis

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