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Pittsburgh Live | By Bill Steigerwald Sunday, January 4, 2004

The War on Drugs killed another 60 or 70 or so Pittsburghers in 2003.

That's not how the front-page headlines and TV newscasts framed their annual year-end accountings of Allegheny County's homicides for last year, the deadliest since the lucrative crack trade came to town in 1993.

According to year-end anecdotes and statistical data provided by police and community leaders, the consensus explanation for the county racking up a record-tying 118 homicides last year was illegal drugs.

What a shocker. Somebody call John Walters, the federal drug czar.



Next thing you know, we'll learn that most of the drug-related killings took place in black neighborhoods, a majority of the dead are black males between the ages of 16 and 30 and white suburban males are the primary buyers of heroin, crack and marijuana.

Pittsburgh's killing spurt isn't unique. Cleveland, Cincinnati and Baltimore had similar spikes in drug-related violence, as the Trib's Dave Conti reported last week.

Drug-related crime is not news, either. For at least 15 years, city cops, suburban police chiefs and national crime experts invariably have told me the same thing -- most violent crime they deal with is related to drug buying, selling or using.

Unless you're dealing drugs, Pittsburgh remains an incredibly safe city. Yet for decades local news reports -- especially on TV - have been scaring ordinary citizens (mainly white, older, middle-class suburbanites) into thinking the city is much more dangerous than it really is.

But grandmas and grandpas aren't getting gunned down on the city sidewalks by drug dealers or anyone else. As usual, the demographics of most of the killed and most of the killers fit the familiar movie/TV news stereotypes.

Of the 118 homicides last year in Allegheny County, 74 were in the City of Pittsburgh and 44 were in a handful of suburbs like Wilkinsburg (7) and Penn Hills (5). As it is every year, most suburbs had zero homicides. Of the city's 74 dead, 56 were black men and seven were black women. Of all 2003 homicide victims, 12 were white males and 18 were white females.

Last year's local body count in the War on Drugs was higher than usual because the city's drug gangs are said to be smaller and disorganized and engage in endless revenge killings. Otherwise, this year was pretty much just like every other one in our mindless $20 billion-per-year crusade against (some) drugs.

After 30 years of "drug-related" homicides it ought to be painfully clear that aggressively prosecuting the War on Drugs inflicts heavy costs on a free society in terms of wasted economic and human resources and lost individual liberties that far exceed its benefits.

Like Prohibition, our futile efforts to stop the use and sale of illegal drugs has only made drugs incredibly profitable for the conscience-free street thugs willing to provide them to our insatiable market. Young blacks from our cities kill each other competing to distribute them -- just as young Italian, Irish and Jewish hoods did with booze in the 1920s.

No one should absolve the killers of responsibility for their horrible crimes of violence.

But the prime cause of the weekly procession of senseless deaths in Pittsburgh last year was not high-quality dope, urban poverty, single-parent households, racism, under-paid social workers, inept police work, lousy public schools, low church attendance, poor self-esteem, rap, Mayor Murphy's fiscal follies or the Bush tax cuts.

It was the War on Drugs itself.

Logosnote: I have no idea how an article from January showed up on my newshound tools page, but since I don't recall seeing it before, here it is now. This message bears repeating anyway. If something were made illegal based on it's harm to society, the war on drugs would be against the law, and marijuana would not...

This item is reinforced by the one that appears right below ittitled "Marijuana Prohibition Claims Another Life."

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The more I learn, the less I know.
THC Ministry | The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ | The Reluctant Messenger of Science and Religion
True religion is real living, living with all one's soul, with all ones goodness and righteousness. --Albert Einstein

 

Abomonog

Doesn't matter weather the article is from January or yesterday, it's still old news.

The national death toll from the War on Drugs surpassed the overdose rate 5 years ago and the gap has been widening ever since.

But we all know the freedom is not worth risking our precious necks to achieve, so we just sit around sacrificing our brothers and sisters lives in the name of apathy.

"GIVE ME LIBERTY, OR GIVE ME A P4 WITH 512 MEGS OF RAM AND A BROADBAND CONNECTION SO I CAN COMPLAIN TO STRANGERS ABOUT MY LACK OF LIBERTY!"
-Probably what Patrick Henry would have said had he been alive today.

APATHY RULES..... NOT!!!

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It's all fun and games until the flying monkeys attack!

OccultPizza

I just read some of the government transcripts for this years platform.

The one alarming fact. The government is trying to push through a $80 billion dollar hardline for the War on Drugs this year.

WAKE UP!!!