Tuesday letters
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AmeriCorps, football games and gun control in today’s letters to the editor.
Pick of the Day: Stop an unwinnable war on drugs
Re: “Radford professor faces drug charges,” March 14 news story:
I see the war on drugs has claimed another victim.
Police entered Radford professor Taj Mahon-Haft’s residence through an open door reported by a neighbor. Inside, they allegedly found bath salts, sometimes used as “artificial marijuana” and recently banned by the Virginia legislature, as well as marijuana. Mahon-Taft later turned himself in, was arrested and released on $5,000 bond. He awaits an April 12 hearing.
Congratulations, officers. Due to your diligence, yet another taxpaying citizen faces potential loss of employment and career, in addition to incarceration and fines, for possibly getting high in the assumed privacy of his own home. If so, he will join other nonviolent drug users wasting time and economic resources of police and courts while rapes, assaults, robberies, stabbings and shootings continue to be reported almost daily in The Times.
Studies indicate there are as many drug users today as there were when the war on drugs was declared 42 years ago by President Richard Nixon. After billions of dollars wasted and millions of lives ruined, isn’t it time we stopped this insanity?
TREVOR ROE
FERRUM
March 19, 2013 - 6:12 AM
In all seriousness Al,...
The whole incident could have been avoided if the neighbor had simply walked however many feet and hollered in the open door: “Your door is open! I’m closing it!” and closed it.
And the police LIVE for such situations as the “possible intruder.” It is a free pass to get in your place and look through your stuff.
My neighbors live to call the cops on me for just such offenses (the “door ajar”).
We all know that is a bunch of bull… any intruder would have closed the door so as not to arouse suspicion.