(November 11, 2004)  The jury has spoken and what they have said should serve as notice to every South Carolina elected official. On October 30th in York County, South Carolina a jury found an admitted opium addict who had 300 grams of opium in his home, NOT GUILTY! This jury did what every future jury in South Carolina must now do - they ignored the evidence presented by the state, and judged the law instead. The prosecutor, who accused the defendant of drug trafficking even though there was no evidence other than the drug itself to support his allegation, wanted to send the defendant to prison for 25-years. To put this insane sentence in perspective, 30 years is a common sentence for murder in South Carolina.

Thankfully, the jury recognized how ludicrous a 25-year sentence would be and unanimously fulfilled its function and duty to society by serving as the final determination of the effectiveness, fairness, and necessity of the law in which the defendant was charged. This jury demonstrated jury nullification - the last line of defense for the people against the government. I salute these patriotic jurors, while I despise the prosecutor, E.B. Springs for saying in regard to the opium, "just having it in the community is like toxic waste." That's a typical exaggeration used by prohibitionists to strike fear in the otherwise uninformed public.

I'm certain the prosecutor believes that the 300 grams of opium in question represents something sinister and evil, but the substance itself is not a threat to the community. It is the prohibition of the substance that has created the sinister and evil environment, the black market. Prohibition, the catalyst for the black market, creates crime. It does not reduce it. This was the case in the 1920s with alcohol, and it is the case now with currently illegal drugs. If the black market is eliminated, sinister and evil becomes regulated and controlled. Regulated and controlled fosters law and order. It also saves the taxpayers tons of money.

According to the South Carolina Department of Corrections, in 2001 - 2002 the cost to incarcerate an inmate in a state penitentiary for 1 year was 13,023 dollars. Assuming that with inflation the cost per year to keep a person in prison today is 13,750 dollars, the state was asking the jury to spend 343,750 dollars to lock this defendant away. I wish I had a better way to frame this but - spending that amount of money over 300 grams of opium is just damn foolishness. But why stop here? Let's look at the BIG picture.

Referring back to the South Carolina Department of Corrections statistics, in 2003, there were 23,428 state-level inmates with 22% of the inmate population being incarcerated for drug possession, which computes to 5,154 inmates. The cost to the taxpayer to warehouse these otherwise non-violent offenders in 2003 was 70,867,500 dollars. [Seventy Million, Eight Hundred Sixty-Seven Thousand, Five Hundred Dollars] Remember, this is only the cost of incarceration. The cost of law enforcement and prosecution is not included. We're talking about MAD MONEY here! So what's the cost of law enforcement and prosecution? In 2000, nationally, the states and federal government combined spent approximately 38,000,000,000 dollars [Thirty-Eight Billion Dollars] in an effort to prevent drug use.

Staggering profit margins and the lure of easy money exists solely because of existing drug laws. Violence related to the trade of illegal drugs exists for two reasons:

1)    The money involved in the black market is of such great magnitude that the traders need to protect their assets. They do not have the benefit of turning to law enforcement, code, or commerce regulations to settle disputes.

2)    The greater the penalty for trafficking, the more likely it is that those persons involved in the trade will resort to desperate tactics to avoid prosecution. If the profit potential is removed, the illegal trafficking will cease immediately. Basic economics demands this truth and history proves it. In 2004, we do not have many alcohol bootleggers because there's virtually no profit potential in that activity.

What sort of profit margins has our government created for the trafficker? According to the United Nations and others, illegal drugs create enormous profits. The UN reports that in 2001, a kilogram of cocaine base in Colombia averaged 940 dollars, and a kilogram of cocaine averaged 1,565 dollars that year. In the United States in 2001, a kilogram of cocaine averaged 21,500 dollars, with an average street price of 70 dollars a gram (in powder form; the average price of a gram of crack in 2001 in the US was 65 dollars). Source: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Global Illicit Drug Trends 2003 (New York, NY: UNODC, 2003), p. 260. With this amount of profit available, is it any wonder that the black market exists and that people are willing to become violent to defend this activity?

It is time to stop the madness of the 35-year War on Drugs. It is a failed experiment that has caused far greater harm than the drugs themselves. Politicians need to stop pandering to zealots, set religious fervor aside, and end this travesty immediately. In South Carolina, Governor Sanford should give full pardon to every non-violent drug offender currently detained at any state prison - regardless of the amount of substance seized at the time of arrest. By so doing, South Carolina would have an additional 71 Million Dollars for education or treatment. At the same time, we need to eliminate the crossfire created by the black market by establishing safe distribution zones in unpopulated areas in every county of the state. The state should award business licenses for a certain number merchants in each county. Said merchants should then be granted the opportunity to purchase the substances as they would any other commodity. Each distribution point would also serve as an opportunity for the chemically dependant to get help for their addiction. Rarely do addicts seek help for their addiction until they come in conflict with the law, but this is too late. Intervention should occur before any related criminal consequences, not after. That's the point of intervention. But when the crack addict is buying on the street, the supplier doesn't hand them a pamphlet or supply them with phone numbers to a treatment center. Distribution points would serve as non-violent interventions that would be far less dangerous than what our police officers currently encounter on the street.

Obviously, the state will tax and control the substance, and the drug dealer will be OUT OF BUSINESS for good! Neighborhoods that once were controlled by street thugs will be reborn. The average dealer will have to get a real job and pay taxes - or starve. And for the drug addict - how do we as a predominantly Christian nation and Christian state reconcile how we treat this segment of the sick? What would Jesus do for the drug addict? I don't think He'd do what we are doing, that's for sure. From all that I've read, He'd love them until they could love themselves, and then He'd love them some more. Think about it.

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