Opinion piece in TIME magazine by Ed Burns, Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, Richard Price, and David Simon – all writers and producers of the amazing HBO series The Wire, which wraps up its five-season run tonight. If you haven’t seen The Wire, get the DVDs and watch them in order from the first one.
The Wire’s War on the Drug War
An excerpt:
What the drugs themselves have not destroyed, the warfare against them has. And what once began, perhaps, as a battle against dangerous substances long ago transformed itself into a venal war on our underclass. Since declaring war on drugs nearly 40 years ago, we’ve been demonizing our most desperate citizens, isolating and incarcerating them and otherwise denying them a role in the American collective. All to no purpose. The prison population doubles and doubles again; the drugs remain.
Our leaders? There aren’t any politicians — Democrat or Republican — willing to speak truth on this. Instead, politicians compete to prove themselves more draconian than thou, to embrace America’s most profound and enduring policy failure.
Our corrupt rulers will pass more laws and send more of us to jail. Then they will go to concerts that reek of pot, hashish and opium. Their heroes don’t obey the laws either. Reagan filled our prisons with Deadheads caught with drugs on the way to shows. His DEA didn’t bust any self-righteous jive talking politicians. We know who these closeted hippies are.
And they will pass more gun laws that will be ignored by the criminals and gang wars on the streets will continue. It’s just another example of prohibtion being a failure…