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Published:
Baltimore Sun August 3, 2004
Copyright © 2004, The
Baltimore Sun
Take the
violence out of the drug trade; A police
officer's point of view
By Peter Moskos
U.S. ATTORNEY
Thomas M. DiBiagio recently announced the
indictment of seven members of the North
Avenue Boys. He said the bad guys are
"finished."
That's great.
They should be in jail. But it won't help
the community. Other drug dealers have
already taken their place. North Avenue is
no better off.
Three years ago,
I was a police officer at the scene on
East North Avenue when 12 people were shot
at an "RIP party" for a North Avenue Boys
drug dealer who had himself been murdered.
I saw the blood mixed with spaghetti. With
a cigar in hand, I jokingly pointed fellow
police officers toward the buffet spread.
Callous? Perhaps. But I know what anybody
who lives or works in the ghetto knows: No
amount of arrests or federal prosecution
will change the culture of violence among
drug dealers in the ghetto. Surrounded by
poverty and despair, drug-dealing
"gangstas" glamorize a "thug life" and
flaunt money, women and even time-served
for felony convictions.
We've quintupled
our prison population since the war on
drugs began in 1970. Last year, Baltimore
police made one arrest for every six
people in the city. In 1999, in the
high-crime Eastern District alone, with
45,000 residents, there were more than
25,000 arrests.
Police can make
things better. In a city with high levels
of violent crime, arrests can be a good
thing. But arrests won't change the
culture of drug dealers. And police can't
win the war on drugs. Drug addicts have to
buy because they're addicted. But drug
users destroy mostly themselves. They are
not destroying the city. Addicts want to
be left alone to enjoy their high. They
rarely shoot anybody.
Drug dealers are
literally killing the city. Almost all
drug-related murders involve one drug
dealer shooting another.
Drug dealers will
sell. There's little choice. There's money
to be made. And drug dealers aren't
employable in the legitimate job market.
Nobody will hire a convicted felon with
attitude and more gold teeth than
education.
Drug dealers are
doubly bad because they hurt legitimate
businesses. Dealers want to control the
corner. Business owners call police;
vacant buildings never do. Dealers will
break windows, harass customers and
otherwise make life difficult for the few
legitimate businesses that remain in the
ghetto.
Just as Al
Capone's gang killed other bootleggers,
drug dealers are violent because they have
to be. How else can you run an illegal
business with quick cash profits and no
recourse to police, law or the courts?
Nobody doubts
there is a serious drug problem in the
city. The question is whether drug
prohibition helps or hurts.
Prohibition
prevents regulation. We as a society can
choose the way in which addicts obtain
drugs. Most of the violence in Baltimore
is caused not by drugs alone but rather
the criminal way in which drugs are sold.
Drug prohibition is a bad choice because
it leads to armed thugs hawking their
wares on the corner.
The only way to
disarm the drug culture is to take the
profit out of street-level drug-dealing.
Drug legalization and regulation are the
answer. Why leave the profits to those who
perpetuate violent culture?
>Drug
manufacturing and distribution shouldn't
be in the hands of the North Avenue Boys,
or any other group of criminals. As with
alcohol, tobacco or prescription
medication, selling drugs should be the
combined responsibility of doctors, the
government and the legal free market.
In the
Netherlands, drugs are decriminalized.
Customers can walk into certain
cafés and legally buy marijuana,
hashish and hallucinogenic mushrooms. The
result? Fewer murders, fewer drug deaths,
much less money wasted trying to arrest
the entire drug-using population, and -
because education is more effective than
prohibition - lower levels of drug use.
Legalizing drugs
would not be a silver bullet. But drug
prohibition must be recognized as a good
intention gone terribly wrong. The war on
drugs destroys neighborhoods, enriches
drug dealers and promotes a culture
ruining the lives of our cities' youths.
Drug prohibition is a failure. It's time
to try something else.
Peter Moskos, a
former Baltimore police officer, is a
professor at John Jay College of Criminal
Justice in New York City.
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