Tough judge convicts drug laws
Tuesday, November 29th, 2005
By Chris Fitzsimon
If Nixon could get the United States to recognize Red China, maybe Burley Mitchell can get North Carolina to recognize the problems with drug Prohibition.
Mr. Mitchell isn’t an aging hippy whose brain is befogged with cannabis residues. He was a longtime justice of the N.C. Supreme Court, and four years its chief. Before that, he was a judge on the Court of Appeals, secretary of the N.C. Department of Crime Control, an assistant N.C. attorney general, Wake County district attorney and a Marine.
This is the man who says we’re wasting money and lives by filling up prisons with people who need treatment, not punishment, for their drug addiction. He calls the “war on drugs” here and across the country “a total failure.”
Mr. Mitchell says it’s time to think about decriminalizing drugs. That would drain the huge profits from illicit dealing, reduce related crimes, cut the cost of police and courts, and spare taxpayers the huge expense of building even more prisons for petty crooks and those they hook. It would free up money that could help people kick their addictions.
Those are familiar arguments, but they rarely get very far in this country. The potential dangers are obvious, and politicians are deathly afraid of being called “soft on crime.”
But Mr. Mitchell is no longer a politician. He can forget the advice a wise older lawyer gave him early in his career: “Burley, you know, it is permissible in life if you every once in awhile have a thought cross your mind without expressing it.” (more…)
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