What Are We Smoking?

In the land of the free and the home of the brave, we seem to think that we can make everything that scares us disappear by criminalizing it. And if punishing people for their behavior fails actually to mitigate the scary problem, the answer is clearly to make the punishments harsher, and give the police more leeway to search, seize and destroy. Never is the concept of outlawing everything we dislike itself reconsidered by serious government officials, so by the middle of this brave, new century, if the act of breathing is not outrightly illegal, it will likely be considered probable cause for the cops to search you.

In an effort to expedite our plunge into a totalitarian abyss, the city of Washington, D.C. brings you Neighborhood Safety Zones:

D.C. police will seal off entire neighborhoods, set up checkpoints and kick out strangers under a new program that D.C. officials hope will help them rescue the city from its out-of-control violence. . . . At least six officers will man cordons around those zones and demand identification from people coming in and out of them. Anyone who doesn’t live there, work there or have “legitimate reason” to be there will be sent away or face arrest.

Yeah, I feel safe. Don't you?

Certainly, violent acts like murder are genuine crimes that are genuinely frightening, and D.C. is apparently experiencing a lot of them lately. But how is it, exactly, that this policy by panic could even have been conceived, much less debated and considered, in the United States? Here's a hint:

A city councilman who represents some of the affected neighborhoods -- in the District's northeast quadrant -- was cautiously optimistic about the proposal's potential to "crack down on ... open-air drug markets." But the local lawmaker, Harry Thomas, did express worries about DC "moving towards a police state." [emphasis mine]

Yes, there are some concerns about the emergence of a police state, but hey, if we can finally stop people from doing drugs, might it all be worth it?

Folks, the so called War on Drugs is an unmitigated disaster whose ultimate side effect is the virtual abrogation of the Fourth Amendment. While I certainly can't claim to know precisely what has caused the recent spate of violence on which D.C. now feels compelled to crack down (pun intended), at some point we need to recognize that it is our response to drug use that aggravates violent crime, not the drugs themselves.

As a Libeqrat, I'd consider outlawing the ingestion of any chemical that would make an otherwise non-violent person suddenly turn violent. Otherwise, each and every individual should have the right to act in any manner that does not infringe upon the rights of non-consenting others. You wanna do drugs? To borrow a slogan: Your body; your choice. We'd all better wake up to this reality soon, lest we all find ourselves living in the discomfort of Neighborhood Safety Zones.