Held to answer

Just say no to drug enforcement.

That’s what the Oregon legislature is contemplating if it wipes out regional drug task forces.

Why don’t lawmakers admit that the war on drugs is over; the dealers and their drugs won. The timing’s good, what with all the attention that Whitney Houston’s death is receiving.

The co-chairs of the state’s Joint Ways and Means Committee have proposed cutting more than two dozen Oregon State Police detectives from the drug task forces that help law enforcement in small, rural counties.

For some counties, it will not only virtually eliminate drug enforcement but cut other criminal investigations as well.

This being Oregon, the proposal has been hailed by some who think the best way to fight drug addiction is by legalizing drugs. To hear them tell it, all the government needs to do is legalize drugs, sell them, tax them and we’ll all live fat and happy off the profits.

Under that scenario, what would happen to drug gangs in this country and in Mexico? Would they lay down their weapons and search the help wanted ads on Craigslist and Monster.com for a new line of work? Or would we end up with an escalated drug war like they have in parts of Mexico?

It’s too late – by several decades – to take a rational approach to controlling drugs in America. Too many people want drugs.

Shortly after the proposed cuts in the regional drug task forces were announced, a drug team in Southern Oregon seized what may be the largest heroin stash ever in that part of the state. Officers arrested two California residents and seized 47 pounds of heroin on a commercial bus headed for Vancouver, Wash.

According to the Medford Mail Tribune, a police lieutenant said the heroin was probably intended for major markets up north, but that some of it would have trickled back down to feed “Southern Oregon’s growing appetite for black tar heroin.”

In his State of the State speech last month, Gov. John Kitzhaber bemoaned the 18,000 children who are born at-risk every year in Oregon. What makes these children at-risk? For many of them, it’s drug-warped parents.

Either Kitzhaber doesn’t know that, or he thinks the answer to drug addiction is more “treatment.” The best evidence that treatment may not be enough is the concurrent growth of substance abuse programs and the never-ending market for drugs. (Even rich and famous celebrities who have access to the finest rehab programs don’t always succeed.)

Perhaps the lawmakers pushing to cut the regional drug task forces have grown blasé about drugs – doesn’t everybody know somebody who’s got a drug problem? And isn’t there something a tad blue-nosed about suggesting we should say no to drugs? Saying no to drugs is not cool. (Even though the most cost effective way to fight drug abuse is to never get addicted in the first place.)

Look how the word “dope” has evolved; it’s now slang for “good.” Even the mainstream media accommodate direct quotes from subjects (especially celebrities) who praise something as being “dope.”

It’s hard to find an upside to a society where too many are strung out on something, where drug dealers are free to break sales records.

Who will at least try and slow this down? Law enforcement.

Take away that option, or deplete officers’ ranks so badly that they’re ineffective, and what do you have left? Something that’s worse than what we have now – unless you’re a politician with a certain mindset.

In that case, what’s worse than drugs and their related crimes and costs to society? Voter mandates.

Disbanding the drug task forces may be just another backdoor attack on prosecutors, which has been under way since then-Gov. Ted Kulongoski created by executive order the Commission on Public Safety before he left office.

Kulongoski was annoyed that voters kept passing initiatives to strengthen criminal sentences. These mandates deprived the legislature of revenue to spend elsewhere. Many politicians in both parties resent the public telling them how to spend tax money. This commission was supposed to fix that by helping the legislature persuade the public it was time to overturn Measure 11, which mandates minimum sentences for certain violent felonies.

Kitzhaber took it from there, appointing the seven-member commission (Kulongoski was a member). The commission dutifully held four day-long public hearings and produced the desired recommendations.

But the timing wasn’t right – the legislative support wasn’t there – so Kitzhaber, et al, have retreated until 2013 when they will try again.

Meanwhile, some legislators continue to chip away at law enforcement, like threatening to take away regional drug task forces.

When Kitzhaber’s office ordered agencies to offer budgets cuts, the Oregon State Police complied. State Sen. Jackie Winters (R-Salem) co-chair to the Legislative Ways and Means Subcommittee on Public Safety, said the cuts to the drug task forces would be among the least-harmful to public safety.

Winters, whose late husband was an ex-felon, served on Kitzhaber’s Commission on Public Safety. Her primary concern at the two meetings she attended was what to do with elderly prison inmates. She seemed to believe that the state could save money by letting them out.

Aside from the fact that many of them remain incarcerated because they have committed serious offenses, where would they go and who would take care of them if they were freed? Probably the state.

Likewise, the state – and the public – will pay one way or another if America’s drug culture doesn’t change.

– Pamela Fitzsimmons

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