So says Tallahassee Police Chief Dennis Jones, anyway. The ABC program 20/20 aired an episode the other day about
Rachel Hoffman, the 23-year-old recent college graduate whom the Tallahassee police used as a confidential informant. Emphasis on the word "used." Rachel, who had only ever sold small amounts of marijuana to her friends, suddenly found herself pretending to be a serious drug dealer because the police pressured her into becoming a CI. She died two months ago during the sting (which failed, by the way), making her innocent victim number God-only-knows in America's failed War on Drugs.
ABC's Brian Ross asked Jones why he insisted on calling Rachel a criminal, when she had never been charged with a crime. Jones' response was simple: a drug user is a criminal.
To avoid being sassy, let's assume Jones means an illegal-drug user; after all, alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, and ibuprofen are drugs. Now,
according to the World Health Organization, more than 42% of Americans have tried marijuana and 16% have tried cocaine (there were no statistics in that report on opiates or other drugs). Even if you assume that there's a 100% overlap of those populations, that is still a huge percentage of Americans to label "criminals." Also, let's look at whom Jones is calling a criminal: The Beatles, Lewis Carroll, Steve Jobs, Salvador Dali, Charles Dickins, Arthur Conan Doyle, Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin, Al Gore, Ulysses S. Grant, Thomas Jefferson, and according to some,
even Jesus. As in Christ.
Bold move, Dennis Jones.
Posted by Ellen Parkhurst