Marion Barry’s Trial and Black Leadership
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Your editorial regarding Mayor Barry (“The Prosecutors Went Too Far,” Aug. 14) urged sentencing Barry to the maximum allowed for his single misdemeanor cocaine possession conviction--a $100,000 fine and a year in jail. You said that this would send a strong warning that the U.S. government does not tolerate casual drug consumption by any American. What an extraordinary lie!
Every day we’re bombarded with commercial messages promoting the use of alcohol and tobacco products, which are not only casual drugs, but also the worst killer drugs in our society!
Each year in the U.S. alone, tobacco (federally subsidized at that!) kills 390,000 people, alcohol more than 50,000, and yet all illegal drugs together only 3,500. The government’s claim that more than 23,000 people will die this year in the U.S. “war on drugs” is very misleading, as it includes mostly people that die from bullet wounds, not from the effects of drugs. Those people are dying from the effects of laws prohibiting freedom of choice (i.e., turf battles reminiscent of those spawned by Prohibition), not from the pharmacological effect of the drugs themselves!
Barry should receive only probation, as does most everyone guilty of a first-time possession charge. His worst offense was his hypocrisy in not calling for an end to today’s prohibition.
SAMUEL J. NEWELL
Los Angeles
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