

| why the drug war is evil. A young woman named Rachel Huffman, who lives in Tallahassee Florida was caught twice with small amounts of marijuana. The first time she was referred to drug court, which is basically supervised probation. The second time, charges were never filed. The local police instead intimidated her into acting in a sting operation, threatening her with more than five years in prison unless she cooperated. They (the Tallahassee police) said that the second time she was caught she had about a quarter pound of marijuana, and a few ecstasy pills and Valiums. While this is not an inconsiderable amount of drugs it can never be proven because she was never charged, and it is consistent with the amount of drugs a person would have who was simply getting her own for free by small level dealing to her friends. This would have resulted in at the most several months behind bars and a couple years probation. It may seem long, but this story is very important. The whole story as covered by 20/20 can be found here: http://www.abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=5454035 She was sent with a wire and 13,000 dollars, and nothing else, to buy guns and coke in a deal which the police department had set up. She was found 2 days later, executed, when the police 'lost' her as they were overseeing the operation. Watch the remorse displayed by the Tallahassee police chief during the interview - there is none. In fact, the police immediately began portraying her as a hardened drug dealer. She had graduated from Florida University, and was scheduled to start culinary school in Arizona later this year. Instead, because of a little bit of weed and a police department that could not catch actual bad guys without the help of a gullible and easily frightened college graduate she lies dead. Her dreams are gone and her family and friends devastated - because of what? Has the drug war succeeded on any level other than creating more misery, and harder criminals? There are more gangs, more guns and more people willing to use them, and it is all because of the profits that the illegal drug distribution industry generates. Barack Obama himself addressed this issue, when he talked about gangs possessing AK-47's. They possess them for a specific reason - to control territory. Everyone knows that the drug trade will never stop; the only way to defeat it is to legalize it, and distribute them (drugs) through regulated legal channels, just like alcohol and cigarettes. Instead, we turn the industry over to people who will kill without thought for profit or to stay out of jail - even worse than that, our police forces lie and manipulate people on a casual basis, and one more person is dead who should not have ever been involved in the type of thing the the Tallahassee police pushed her into. The worst thing Rachel did was to have possession of some weed and other low level drugs (according to the police - remember, charges were never filed for the second arrest). The police in this instance are little better than the two men who did the actual killing, but they will get no justice. It is easy to see from the reporting that they never conceived of Rachel as an actual person, valuable in her own right - and that the upper hierarchy of the department has not changed it's views. In a way, that makes the police even worse than the monsters who actually pulled the trigger. I wonder if any of them even feel any remorse? Make them feel that remorse - look into this story. A plant, plain and simple, planted of seed and grown of sunlight killed Rachel in the final analysis, and every time an innocent victim dies from a police shooting gone wrong or caught in crossfire between two gangs, that's what they are dying of - that is what Rachel died of. |