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Why are teen prostitutes “victims” who need to be “rescued” and drug users “criminals” who need to be “punished”?

Here’s the story in the Miami Herald.

FBI Deputy Assistant Director Daniel Roberts said, “The goal is to recover kids. We consider them the child victims of prostitution.” Well that’s awfully sweet of him to say. Sounds to me like the FBI is codling prostitutes! Suspicious.

And if, like “they” say, we’re winning the war on drugs, shouldn’t we start on war on prostitutes? That would solve the problem. Besides… just think… if it weren’t for all the prostitutes walking the street, my little John wouldn’t have been pressured into sleeping with that whore! Let’s have mandatory life sentences! Now that would send the right message and keep our streets safe. Either we’re going to get tough with prostitutes or they’ll be prostitutes in your neighborhood!

They say sarcasm doesn’t translate well into writing. So I’d like to make it very clear.

Three years after the police killed Kathryn Johnston the case is almost finished winding through court. Johnston is one of those names you should know, another victim of the war on drugs.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has the whole story. It includes these lines:

“Tesler said when he joined the narcotics unit, he was told to ‘sit, watch and learn’ from superiors who cut corners to meet performance quotas for arrests and warrants. ‘I was a new part and plugged into a broken system,’”

“Smith said his moral compass failed when he began to think ‘drug dealers were no longer human.’”

That line is nothing new coming from me. But it is something new coming from Fernando Cardoso, Cesar Gaviria, And Ernesto Zedillo. Who the hell are they? Just the former president of Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico. In the Wall Street Journalthey write:

Over the last 30 years, Colombia implemented all conceivable measures to fight the drug trade in a massive effort where the benefits were not proportional to the resources invested. Despite the country’s achievements in lowering levels of violence and crime, the areas of illegal cultivation are again expanding. In Mexico — another epicenter of drug trafficking — narcotics-related violence has claimed more than 5,000 lives in the past year alone.

The revision of U.S.-inspired drug policies is urgent in light of the rising levels of violence and corruption associated with narcotics. The alarming power of the drug cartels is leading to a criminalization of politics and a politicization of crime. And the corruption of the judicial and political system is undermining the foundations of democracy in several Latin American countries.

The first step in the search for alternative solutions is to acknowledge the disastrous consequences of current policies. Next, we must shatter the taboos that inhibit public debate about drugs in our societies. Antinarcotic policies are firmly rooted in prejudices and fears that sometimes bear little relation to reality. The association of drugs with crime segregates addicts in closed circles where they become even more exposed to organized crime.

Read the whole op-ed here.