While his woman did not particularly like him working in the drug business, she did like what it provided. This is Ahmed's dilemma. In the inner city world he was raised in opportunities are scarce and often quite limited. He insists he will not go back to dealing. But how to provide for his woman and kids when he gets out weighs heavily on Ahmed's mind.
The fact is -- our laws, police, courts and prisons aside -- selling drugs follows all the precepts of the free market and free-private enterprise. The fact certain powerful elements of society, for one reason or another, have declared certain substances with a robust market illegal doesn't change the fact it's about providing a product to obtain a profit. Like any business there are risks -- in this case, violence and/or prison. Unlike Wall Street finance, the illegal drug business is highly regulated.
Instead of working to be useful members of society, these men sit in prison taking up tax resources. As "cons" they are now marked men. They are POWs in a war that was declared over 30 years ago against the supply side in a supply-and-demand consumer equation. Politically it's a second Prohibition. And it is a full-blown national disaster.
My personal experience with drugs is limited to moderate drinking and a sociable hit of loco weed now and then at a party. Unlike George W. Bush, I will admit I snorted cocaine once in my 63 years of life. It was at a reporters' party in the late 1970s and the coke was provided by a guy I was told worked on the recently elected Philadelphia district attorney's campaign. Everyone snorting lines in the host's bedroom was white.
The Drug War is saturated with corruption and overwhelmed by hypocrisy.
Cesare Beccaria, an Italian, wrote a famous treatise in 1764 called Of Crimes and Punishments that has been highly touted by great legal minds from Thomas Jefferson to William Blackstone to Mario Cuomo. Of course Beccaria's ideas are part of the Enlightenment, which is a major strike against them in these reason-bashing times. Still, Beccaria's treatise is so lucid and sensible it's considered a fundamental text on how a functional society should address crime.
Two of Beccaria's key tenets are important. One, prevention of crime is more important than punishment, and, two, when punishment is administered it should be fairly and swiftly applied. Secret accusations, torture and the death penalty, he argued, are counter-productive since crime is "an injury to society" and not a matter of revenge. A fair, workable society is the goal.
Clerics and theologians, he said, could argue over what was moral or immoral. That was not what crime and punishment was about.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
4
4
3
