Pubdate: Thu, 27 Feb 2014
Source: Chico Enterprise-Record (CA)
Copyright: 2014 Chico Enterprise-Record
Contact:  http://www.chicoer.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/861
Note: Letters from newspaper's circulation area receive publishing priority
Author: Garry Cooper
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v14/n188/a08.html

LAW ENFORCEMENT BENEFITS FROM COUNTRY'S DRUG WAR

Helen Harberts' letter challenging my letter was a perfect example of 
the law enforcement community breaking out the big guns to continue 
the drug war and the expansion of the law enforcement industry's key 
role in it.

Harberts is a political operative for the law enforcement industry 
and its powerful unions. She has been a prosecutor and probation 
person for 25 years. She knows well that in California, for instance, 
that the prison guard union alone is the second largest political 
power in the state and when combined with the other law 
enforcement/prosecution political action committees, that they have 
more influence and contribute more money to their causes, including 
drug policies, than any other political power in the state. She wants 
you to believe that these poor little unions have no influence 
whatsoever. People of her like mind, and the financially powerful law 
enforcement unions that she advocates for, is why we are in this mess 
in the first place.

Thanks to Harberts and her ilk, we have a cartel war at our border 
larger than the Vietnam war, we have cut our school budgets and 
after-school programs, which encourage drug use in teens, so we can 
afford new prisons, and we have police "resource officers" that kids 
don't trust instead of trained child psychologists in our schools, 
all of which she supports.

The current marijuana situation may not be ideal, but persecuting and 
prosecuting our citizens for the good of Harberts and her cronies really sucks.

- - Garry Cooper, Durham
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom