HARSH SENTENCES FUTILE IN DRUG WAR

A federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia, Leonie M. Brinkema, recently
sentenced four young people to terms in the penitentiary ranging from
46 months to 20 years.

The four, whose ages ranged from 19 to 21, were convicted of drug-war
crimes relating to the possession and distribution of heroin.

Faced with what the Washington Post described as "grim-faced"
prosecutors and "bewildered" defendants, Brinkema imposed the harsh
sentences because four other young people had died from "overdoses"
of the heroin.

What idiocy. All that Brinkema has accomplished is compounding the
tragic deaths of four young people by destroying the lives of four
other young people. Will those harsh jail sentences reduce the supply
of drugs? No.

Will they deter others from possessing, distributing, and ingesting drugs? No.

Will those harsh jail sentences bring those four dead young people
back to life? No.

So, what's the point of those long jail sentences? They have no point
at all, except to just impose harsh punishment on people for having
the audacity to engage in peaceful, consensual behavior that hasn't
been approved by public officials.

It's just part and parcel of an immoral and destructive 35-year-old
"war," one in which drug agents, judges, and prosecutors continue to
mindlessly play out their respective roles, year after year after
year, and act as though they are doing something constructive.

Thirty-five years ago, I graduated from law school and began
practicing law in my hometown of Laredo, which is located on the
border in South Texas. Among the first cases I was involved in was a
federal drug case in which our client and two of his friends, all of
whom were about 20, were charged in a one-count indictment with
conspiracy to distribute heroin. No one had touched any heroin. They
simply had talked about acquiring it and had committed what
prosecutors called an "overt act" in the attempt to acquire it.

All three of them were convicted in federal court in San Antonio and
had the misfortune of being sentenced by a federal judge, John Wood,
who had earned the moniker "Maximum John." The reason for the
nickname was that in drug cases, this judge didn't much care what the
range of allowable punishment was because his personal rule was
simply to slap drug-war defendants with the maximum allowable punishment.

Apparently Wood believed as Brinkema did - that harsh jail sentences
in drug cases would accomplish something constructive.

I'll never forget the satisfied look of Maximum John and the
grim-faced assistant U.S. attorney as the judge glared down at the
three defendants and imposed on each of them the maximum possible
punishment: "Twenty years! Twenty years! Twenty years!"

And for what? Did it win the drug war? No. Today, the drug-war
situation in South Texas is 100 times worse than it was when I was
practicing law there.

And Maximum John's decision to damage or destroy the lives of those
three young people obviously didn't deter the four young people who
appeared before Judge Brinkema and whose lives have now been damaged
or destroyed by long jail sentences.

Maximum John was ultimately assassinated because some drug-war
defendants were angry over the fact that he had forsaken his role as
a judge and was actively cooperating with prosecutors to secure
drug-war convictions.

Another tragic casualty in the war on drugs. What a meaningless death.

Like the Energizer Bunny, the drug war just keeps going on and on and
on. Law-enforcement officers keep arresting people and confiscating
assets. Grim-faced prosecutors continue prosecuting. Judges continue
sentencing. And hardly any of them ever stops to think about the
sheer idiocy of what they are doing.

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom
Foundation (www.fff.org )