4.
Tuesday, February 26, 1974
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Drug Hysteria
Drug use and its prohibition has split both society and the generations more than any other issue arising in the '60s. The mysterious aura of drugs, which is so attractive to some, others, has generated a legal obsession, public hysteria and extensive naivete.
The sad part is that the drug hysteria puts a dark cloud over the entire issue so that genuine drug misuse is understood and poorly dealt with.
And drug use has become the whipping boy for every social evil. A layman's drug-revisionist theory of history has been created to explain past evils. Some now claim, for example, that the tenacity of the Japanese kamikazi pilot in World War II and the Chinese soldier in the Korean war was drug induced.
The drug issue has even prompted some all-American athletes to preach sermons via television and they probably know very little about.
Not having directly experienced the heavy drug scene, I claim no special qualification as preacher. But the legal fallacies of drug laws should be of concern to everyone in the community, and the entire issue needs to be put in perspective.
The great fear of the unknown has caused much of the public to lump all drugs and drug use into one category of horror. The distinction between hard and soft drugs and the conditions of drug use are often ignored or misunderstood.
The real question concerns which drugs are truly harmful, and whether conventional enforcement are suited to some drug offenses.
Heroin is an addictive drug which can frustrate a user into desperate theft or murder. Marjuanica, a drug of extreme, sponsors ranging from the President's Commission on Drugs
to Consumer Reports Magazine, to be less harmful than alcohol or tobacco.
The American Bar Association has recommended the abandonment of most marjuana laws. The ABA is hardly a drug-crazed association of no reason; nation's overt and judges simply believe the relative lack of necessity for those laws and the futility of enforcing them.
The widespread use of drugs has made drug law enforcement a ludicrous enterprise. If every drug offender in Lawrence were arrested, there probably wouldn't be enough cells to kill theiller would have to raid every night. The court calendar would be full for years.
Just as with prohibition in earlier era, the drug laws clog the courts with often innocuous cases. The drug trade is properly carry out its legitimate business.
The justice system becomes a grab-bag process in which a handful of offenders are occasionally caught 'and prosecuted. It becomes a game between the people and the police in which the offenders aren't discouraged from their behavior but simply work harder at not getting caught.
The issue needs re-thinking and re-evaluation. The legal process is slow, and there will be no immediate reform in that direction. Paranoid behavior by the drug paranoia be minimized among people in the community.
It should be understood that the drug user is usually not an exotic lost sheep he is a cancer on society. He or she sits beside the woman in the same limitations, playing out life's dramas in the usual ways.
He or she may be among the best students and will have just as much interest in building a livable, comfortable environment with a chance for individual growth and understanding.
Bill Gibson
Miller's Drug Raids Still Big Tavern Topic
By BUNNY MILLER
Kansan Staff Reporter
It was a typical Friday night at a typical Lawrence tavern. The kind of night when there are at least six quarters up on every foosball table and the only way to move in the aisles is to let the mob push you along.
About the only things almost everyone has in common in such a crush of people are (1) they are students and (2) they like to drink beer. But last Friday night many of them expressed another shared feeling.
"Ah, Verrn's just about the nice guy in the world as long as he stays out of Kansas," his companion responded. A response that included their beer cans in a musk roast.
“There ain't all of nice things you can say about Vern Miller,” said a student named Steve. Members of a group clustered around him at the bar nodded their heads. Some laughed and some looked irritated.
Another said, "According to the Peter Principle, he's already two steps above his level of incompetence." More laughter.
Even in the aftermath of his latest series of raids two weeks ago, students generally seemed to regard Kansas as a threat. But several tried to justify his action.
"I don't know if it's really true or not," said a student named Mike, "but I have a friend who was busted by Vern and he said he was a really nice guy who just wanted to show everyone how dumb the laws are."
"Realistically, I can't blame Vern Miller directly because he's just an
enforceer of the laws," said another. "What we need to do is change the laws through legislation."
The conversation around the bar became more serious as one student said, "I'm paying taxes for what Vern does. Hall it if goes for Vern to bust pot with me." The police told little old ladies who play Bingo. I could run the government better than that."
Several suggested that Miller should adjust his priorities.
Another student said that although he thought it was necessary for MME to must harder drugs," he was disposed of all of his arrests involved maruana.
"I think the attorney general a book should be spent on crimes with victims rather than victimless crimes," said a student named John.
"The only time he really needs to bust anybody for drugs is when he catches someone robbing or stealing to support his habit," the student said. "At that point they need to get off the street and get their heads together anyhow."
The crowd at the bar thinned as midnight approached. Someone suggested that the raids could be stopped if the drugs were legalized and he was made with a few cheers and a few shaking beads.
Still others speculated on Miller's timing of the raids. One student said he thought the raids were timed to invade an area under attack from funding in the leisuretime.
"Well, all I know," he said as he made his way toward the door, "is that a lot of people are sleeping better now that Vern's already been here."
Percv Knocks Search Procedures
By SEN. CHARLES H. PERCY, R-III
Shabbily clad, unshaven agents of the Justice Department's former Office of Drug Abuse Law Enforcement barged into the homes of Mr. and Mrs. Herberg Giglotto and Mr. and Mrs. Donald Askew of Collinsville, III. on April 23, 1973.
without leveling charges. That, too, was a mistake.
The agents kicked in the doors without warning, shouted obscenities and wielded weapons with known weapons. Terrified, the militants Askews were forced to stand by their houses were ransacked, their personal weapons was destroyed and their lives were threatened.
At no time during the raids did the agents satisfactorily identify themselves or explain the nature of their authority. Only later did they discover they had raided the wrong premises. Then, they simply left—no apologies, no explanations, no offers to compensate the families for the damages done.
Two days before the raids, some of the same federal agents invaded the home of John Meiners of Edwardsville, III., sacked his belongings and jailed him for three days.
These facts were revealed in testimony during recent hearings of the Senate Government Operations Committee in Chicago. But these aren't the only examples of mistaken drug raids that have taken place recently.
Similar incidents have taken place with terrifying frequency in recent years. In the name of law and order, murder,抢劫或故意伤害 have powerful tactics in making unaccounted and unlawful forcible into the dwellings of law-abiding citizens. Probable cause for search warrants is often required.
It is a national disgrace that such raids were conducted in the first place. It is a challenge for the government to prohibit the victims of these raids from suing the government directly for the damage done to their homes and persons or for the pain, suffering and humiliation they endured.
The increasing incidence of mistaken drug raids can be traced to passage of the so-called Federal No-Knock Statute, which requires that persons who Abuse Prevention and control Act of 1970.
The law permits unannounced forcible entry by federal agents pursuant to a "search warrant relating to offenses in which the defendant is charged, the penalty for which is imprisonment for one year." ("This includes more possession of marijuana in a number of states.") It was said that no knock raids, with their incarceration laws, would make drug seizures safer and sure.
Some safeguards were written into the legislation to prevent capricious raids but, unfortunately, the safeguards have proved insufficient. The law is logic underlying the law has proved faulty.
Requirements of court-issued warrants didn't prevent the Collinsville raids or any others from taking place. And police in such cases must have been armed, most sweeping no-knock laws in America — have discovered that surprise raids save only about 20 seconds and actually increase the likelihood of shootouts between surrogates and their unarmed police assailants.
Illegal trafficking of natrocites constitutes a grave national problem. Where big-time drope pushers are destroying the hearts and minds of America's young people, every
measure should be taken to enquire vigorous enforcement of the law. As long as the use of harmful drugs continues to harm a sizeable percentage of our population, it is imperative that we find new and better ways of enforcing existing drug laws.
But, in the midst of efforts to limit the availability and use of illicit drugs, an erosion of the fundamental individual liberties that have been the primary buttress of America from its beginning can't be allowed.
When homes of innocent families are broken into and ransacked—under circumstances involving gun-toting terrorism, personal abuse, the shouting of obscenes, property and threats to the lives of the victims—liberates have been seriously abused.
If this is the legacy of no-knock, it is the legacy of bad law. It is a law that breeds lawlessness and it must be changed.
"AH-HA! I KNEW WE'D FIND SOMETHING ON THIS RAID IF WE LOOKED CLOSE ENOUGH!!!"
High School Erupts After Drug Raid
By KEN RINGLE The Washington Post
WASHINGTON—the seven strangers who walked into Garfield High School in Prince William County, Va., didn't really mean to start anything—they were just teachers from Lane High school in Charlottesville paying a visit.
The student grapevine didn't know that, and within minutes the word was out—the visitors were narcotics on a drug shakedown of Garfield's 2,800 students.
Suddenly lockers and cars began emptying and small, anonymous bags of marijuana began turning up in washrooms and hallways. Non-smoking students began handling over other bags they said they found.
The Garfield cross-country team returned with a sack of marijuana they reportedly threw into the river.
Principal Samuel P. Cox blamed the sequence of events on student uncertainty over a police drug raid, Dec. 4, which netted 11 adults and 12 juveniles—five of them Garfield students—on charges involving use or sale of marijuana and hashish.
As the day went on the rumors tumbled over each other, mushroomed into mini-proteins. Demonstrations, window breaking and spray-painting vandalism spread in this week and was capped by a rash of false fire alarms, according to school officials.
Of the students at Garfield, Cox estimated that 50 per cent had experimented at one time or another with some drug, but only about十10 per cent" were regular users.
Clark said there was irony in the incidents of the last 10 days in that they came during a year when students at Garfield had been showing an increasing willingness to report the presence and use of drugs among their peers.
Cox and assistant principal George E. Clark agree that only very rarely are any hard drugs seen in the school. Most of the marijuana and occasionally a little LSD.
"More and more of them are turning the stuff in when they find it and voluntarily reporting users. They've noticed what this is happening, and we know that age and they're getting feel up," said Cox.
Strict NY Drug Law Bucks Trend
Kansas Staff Reporter
By BILL GIBSON
Kansas Stiff Reporter
The American Bar Association last fall recommended the legalization of marijuana, and almost simultaneously New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller signed the strictest drug law the nation has ever seen.
The contradiction reveals the still volatile nature of the drug issue and the inability of American law-makers to agree on how to handle it. It appears that the legal status of narcotics in the near future will be subservient to laws, seeaw of liberalization and backlash.
But many states, notably Rhode Island and New York, have maintained their tough sanctions against marijuana and have imposed even stricter penalties for hard
The reduction of penalties in many states for marijuana and hashish indicates a greater public tolerance for some soft drugs. More and more state legislatures have reduced possession charges for these drugs from a felony to a misdemeanor. This would increase recompetition for these drugs, once controlled dangerously that legalization was unthinkable.
Griff and the Unicorn
by Sokoloff
The reduction of marijuana penalties may have been encouraged by studies and recommendations of prestigious organizations. The National Conference of Commissioners on Marijuana, the American Medical Association, for example, recommended such reductions.
At its 1973 convention, the American Bar Association went a step further and proposed complete removal of criminal charges for possession of marijuana in small amounts. Many jurists favored the removal of criminal penalties because they believed that marijuana would burden court systems. Some expressed concern that the open disregard for marijuana laws by millions of people undermines respect for all laws.
The new drug laws of the various states do not indicate a general trend toward permissiveness or敲 enforcement. They do not explicitly mention distinction between soft and hard drugs.
drug violations. The New York law provides a drug mandatory life sentence for the sale of an abused child.
Many college communities and some states have significantly reduced criminal penalties for soft drug offenses. The governor, Eric Johnson, Arch, Morh, last year voted to charge a maximum $5 fine for marijuana possession, payable by mail. In Berkeley, 90 per cent of the voters passed a "marijuana initiative" that made the state enforce their lowest priority.
Until the legislature reduced the status of soft drug offenses, 800 persons were in Texas jails on marijuana charges. Thirteen were serving life sentences and a black activist, Lee Ots Johnson, was serving up to 30 years for passing a bond to a narcotics law enforcement officer. The possession penalties to a maximum six-month sentence and a $1,000 fine.
Last year the Georgia legislature reduced its marijuana law to a misdemeanor. Up to that time virtually all of the state's narcotics laws were amended to combat marijuana sale and use. Now only
20 per cent of the state's anti-drug campaign is directed against pot.
Oregon is the only state to eliminate all criminal charges for simple possession and use of marijuana. The offense is now similar to a parking violation. No criminal record is kept, and the maximum penalty is $100.
Generally, marjuriana charges have become less severe. But in many places enforcement practices are still rigid. Maine police have stepped up their battle against poli-warming campers. During the summer they baked more than 154 vacationers and 200 inmates. In Massachusetts 47 per cent of all drug arrests are for marijuana offenses.
The severe and controversial New York drug law was designed as a deterrent for drug use and sale. Under the law, conviction for the sale of addictive drugs or hallucinatives such as LSD brings a mandatory life-term sentence. Those paroled will be placed on strict probation for life.
Many New Yorkers, incensed by the crimes committed by the city's estimated 125,000 addicts, breathed a collective sigh of relief after the signing of the new law. But the law has been much criticized by people outside and outside the law enforcement system.
Some New York policemen have complained that the new law is a "kill a cop" plan because it encourages宦佣 dealers to kill officers rather than submit to life imprisonment.
Possession of one ounce of marijuana can be punished by imprisonment for up to 15 years, although more lenient rules are applied to first-time offenders. Plea bargaining—pleading guilty to a lesser charge—has been severely restricted.
Many law enforcement officials are concerned with the possible connection between hard and soft drug use. Some argue that more studies of the effects of marijuana need to be made before enforcement is reduced.
Prosecutors are concerned that the restrictions on plea bargaining will dangerously burden New York City's struggling court system. To alleviate this problem, Rockefeller pushed through a $66 million appropriation providing for new judges, prosecutors and courthouses. Critics say it won't be enough.
Critics of the New York law have pointed out that the courts have always had the power to severely punish the big narcotics barons but the difficulty has been getting enough evidence for convictions. The new law will only punish the small offenders, the critics say, and will have no effect on the narcotics syndicates.
The New York law represents the deterent approach to solving drug problems. The comparative successes of this rigid law and the various liberal soft drug laws should determine the nature of future drug legislation.
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