Archive for May, 2009

From the Grand Rapids Press:

GRAND RAPIDS — The family of a Grand Valley State University student [Derek Copp] shot by police said he did nothing to provoke gunfire in a drug raid at the student’s off-campus apartment.

“All he had time to do was cover his face from a flashlight in his eyes, and they shot him,” George Copp said today.

“From what I understand, half the kids in the school may smoke pot,” George Copp told WOOD-TV. “And he does, he may, too, but he’s not a drug dealer. He’s a good kid, and he shouldn’t have been shot for that.”

I agree with George Copp: Derek didn’t deserve to get shot. But should we take his statement to mean that, if Derek had been selling marijuana, then he would have deserved to be shot? That’s probably not what Mr. Copp meant. What he probably meant was, “I cannot believe that my son was doing anything that warranted his being shot.” And he’s right. And he would still be right even if Derek had been selling drugs. Just like people who buy drugs, people who sell drugs do not deserve to be shot by police officers who have kicked in their door in the middle of the night.

Al Pacino portrays cocaine dealer Tony Montana in "Scarface"

Mr. Copp’s comment reveals the degree to which some people have bought into the drug warriors’ propaganda. Drug dealers are portrayed as scary, evil criminals, who are deserving of the harsh, pseudo-military actions that the police take against them. The reality is more complex; the line between a drug “dealer” and a drug “user” is not a hard one. If you consume beer or wine, do you share it with friends who come over to visit? If you split a case of beer with a friend, do you let them give you some cash in return? If you smoke, do you let friends bum cigarettes off of you? Have you ever sold a pack to somebody who couldn’t get to the store? The answer to these questions is probably yes. Does that make you a liquor or cigarette “dealer”? Because you definitely don’t have a license to sell liquor or cigarettes, so perhaps the cops should kick down your door in the middle of the night and shoot you in the chest.

People do the same thing with illegal drugs that they do with legal drugs: they share them with their friends. Except that because the price of illegal drugs is artificially inflated by prohibition, people are much more likely to demand payment in return. Derek Copp might not have been making a living selling marijuana, but if he smoked marijuana at all, then it is essentially guaranteed that he shared it with his friends in a way that is legally and morally equivalent to “dealing”. Is he shooting people on the street? No. Is he making anything more than a pitiful profit? Probably not, because all of the margins in drug distribution are added in at the top. Margins to the street dealer are low, and street dealers rely on volume, which Derek doesn’t have, because he’s not doing this full time (or even part time, really). Congratulations, dad, he’s still a “drug dealer”.

But even if Derek had never sold or shared a single bud of marijuana, it wouldn’t matter, because the act of buying drugs is morally equivalent to the act of selling them. A dealer without a buyer is just a person who’s sitting on an impractically huge stockpile of drugs. The dealer and the buyer are equal partners in the exchange, and each is as morally responsible for the transaction as the other. So, I guess what I’m trying to say is that everyone who buys and sells drugs deserves to get shot in the chest by a police officer who kicked in their door in the middle of the night.

No. Wait. That was sarcasm. That’s the opposite of what I’m trying to say. My point is that the buyer and the seller of drugs are both “good kids,” as George Copp would say—at least insofar as their only crime is that of possessing and distributing prohibited substances. If one of them is out there murdering people on the street corner, then they should be brought to justice, but the morality of that act is separate from the morality of the buying and selling of drugs. If drugs and violent crime are often associated with each other, then that’s because of prohibition, not because of anything inherent to drugs. When was the last time you heard of an epidemic of violence over alcohol or tobacco distribution? Philip Morris doesn’t have to pop a cap in anyone’s ass. They can just take you court.

The buyer of drugs and the street-level dealer might be innocent of any violent crimes, but like any black-market item, if you follow the drug distribution chain far enough, you’ll find violence. If the buyer and the seller are morally equivalent, then does that make them both transitively responsible for the acts of violence that are committed to bring their product to market? If Derek Copp smokes Mexican weed, is he partially morally responsible for the Mexican police officers who were murdered by the drug cartels who produced the weed? The drug warriors, in their passion to condemn everyone and everything associated with drugs, would say yes, and hang Derek for his ten-thousandth-share of the murders. But be careful. Would you like to apply that standard to everything in your life? Would you like to be held morally responsible for the third-world laborers who worked in a sweat-shop to produce your sneakers? Would you like to be held morally responsible for the Africans who died so that De Beers could sell you a lovely diamond engagement ring? Oh, and oil. Lovely, lovely oil. If there’s a bloodier natural resource on Earth, I don’t know what it is, and we all use it. Even if you don’t own a car, basically every single thing you own was transported to you by burning oil. As Shakespeare wrote, “Use every man after his desert, and who shall ‘scape whipping?”

All marijuana prices in this article were looked up on the Internet, so if you’re sitting there going, “What the fuck this guy is getting ripped off,” or, “Shit, I wanna know who that guy’s buying from,” blame the Internet. No, I cannot hook you up with some weed.