Whip drugs now? Dude, it's one big pipe dream

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By JAN GLIDEWELL

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 28, 2000

What the war on drugs needs is a catchy name.

Remember? There was Jerry Ford's Whip Inflation Now, which, if nothing else, at least gave us those nifty WIN buttons, a big seller until Jerry swine-flued his way into oblivion.

Then there was Jimmy Carter's Moral Equivalent Of War on the energy crisis (which probably would have been more effective were it not for the unfortunate resulting acronym, MEOW).

And remember when the Republicans last time out were hyping the Contract With America, which many of us perceived as a contract on America? It went the way of most contracts -- off to loophole land.

For the war on drugs, given recent local and national hi-jinks, may I humbly propose, The Mouse That Giggled.

Or, as comedian Dennis Miller puts it, anyone who thinks America is winning the war on drugs needs to ask himself why we have a television channel that shows cartoons 24 hours per day. Think a lot of kids are up at 3 a.m. feeding a Huckleberry Hound jones?

The high cost of warfare may get higher in Pasco County where the sheriff just got sued for his deputies searching a few . . . oh, say 10,000 . . . people who two years ago were attending the Zen Festival, an alternative music show near Zephyrhills.

The courts have ruled that people who dress funny have rights, too, and that deputies still need probable cause before they can roll the Fourth Amendment up and smoke it after dinner.

The fact that someone wants to hear music is not necessarily evidence that he or she plans on incorporating drugs into that experience. I have, for instance, never hear anyone yell, "Crank it up, dude!" at a chamber quartet recital.

Now the feds want the right to snoop in our e-mail and Internet chat, just in case what we want to chat about is illegal. Initial assurances are that it will all be done by computer programs that will just look for key words, which doesn't seem bad until you want to invite your Internet inamorata out for a Coke and find yourself spread-eagled against your computer monitor.

Chat about bailing out of an airplane and misspell it as bale; say you'll give something a shot; offer to run some lines (a thespian term) with a fellow community theater member or quote Hamlet as saying the time is out of joint -- and the drug police will be at your doorstep.

Apparently, gigs is a key word to excite suspicion up Ocala and Citrus County way, where a candidate for state attorney wants the incumbent fried for not investigating a subordinate's use of the word when talking to the roommate of a friend of his. The roommate had alleged ties to a drug ring and the challenger says the "gigs" were a code word for drugs.

The explanation given was that the guy just likes to fish, and gigs are fishing equipment, but more allegations are being doled out on a daily basis as the campaign continues.

Hope the guy doesn't plan on gigging any bufos marinus toads. The substance they secrete when they are excited (and being stuck with a gig qualifies as exciting) is a controlled substance.

Really.

The Dade City Police Department actually did have a major drug bust this week, confiscating 13.5 ounces of marijuana, an ounce of cocaine and about 6.3 ounces of methamphetamines from a guy who was wanted on drug trafficking charges in Texas.

But for every real arrest like that, there are a dozen silly ones, and we continue to spend billions on the greatest losing effort since Sisyphus started messing around with his rock. (Careful, don't write "rock" in your e-mail, or the DEA will think you're talking about crack cocaine.)

One thing you can depend on: As long as the war is being lost, the corrections/legal/law enforcement establishment will need more money. If and when it ever starts winning, it will explain that it must be doing something right and that it needs more money.

Hey, why don't they just line up people and ask to go through their pockets?

It wouldn't exactly be a first.

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