In June, Jaquaz Walker, 17, was shot and killed by Charlotte police in the parking lot of Hidden Valley Elementary School after a failed drug bust.
- Flickr (Creative Commons)
At the time, Walker was with Davion Drayton, also 17. According to police investigators, the pair met an undercover officer and an informant to conduct a pot sale; things went south, police investigators say, and one or both of the teenagers fired at the officer, who returned fire and killed Walker. Drayton was not injured. Now, at Walker’s family’s request, the SBI will investigate the shooting; the results of the SBI probe will be given to the DA’s office, which will decide whether to take the case further.
This has to be said: the death of anyone – on either side of the law – resulting from the sale of marijuana is simply insane. Sadly, it’s part of this country’s national insanity, panic, delusions or whatever you want to call it, about drug use.
We have become so used to hearing stories like this one, stories in which young men die during failed drug deals or arrests, it’s sometimes hard to remember that things don’t have to be this way. Or realize that the tragic absurdity of the “war on drugs” doesn’t have to go on forever. It’s past time for Americans to come to grips with the fact that the war on drugs is a complete failure. It obviously does not stop drug use, which was the original intent, if anyone can remember back that far; it created a massive bureaucracy that wastes billions a year; it brought an epidemic of violence among drug profiteers to America’s city streets; and it produced “drug lords” – a title that wouldn’t even be possible without the war on drugs.
Maybe at some point, our governmental system will work again and actual laws, based on how life is lived in America today rather than on fantasies of the mythical “golden age” of the 1950s, will be passed to end the stupid policies that, over and over, culminate in the deaths of young men like Jaquaz Walker. Yes, it sounds unlikely, but there is always hope. The war on drugs seems like a permanent, immutable part of American life. But at one time, so did Jim Crow laws and blatant racial discrimination, even during the civil rights struggle, the days when Dylan sang lyrics that could have been written to fit today’s realities: “How many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died?”
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This article appears in Aug 7-13, 2013.
I don’t care if it was weed or heroin. If in the midst of being apprehended, they fired at police…I don’t feel sorry for them in the least. They knew they were breaking the law. Sounds like it was in the immediate vicinity of a school too. They knew there would be repercussions from firing on someone. I hope the survivor is prosecuted to fullest extent of the law. This doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not weed should be legal. We can discuss all day whether or not weed is harmful. The fact remains, as of right now, it is illegal. You want to demonize something or someone, demonize the human garbage that would rather take a life than receive a court summons. Pull a gun gun and fire at police…suffer the consequences.
If we learn anything from history, it is that we never learn anything from history.
I agree that the death of the young man appears to be the result of initiating a gun battle with the police. But I can’t help but remember the cell phone tower repair person who police claimed they had to shoot in self defense.
The 18th Amendment should have taught us two lessons. The first being that it is a really bad idea for conservative politicians to circumvent the liberal courts by amending the constitution. The second being that criminalizing an activity that is generally accepted in the population does nothing but create a huge, often violent, black market. We learned neither of those lessons. As long as someone wants to buy it, someone will be willing to sell it. Neither laws nor amendments can change that. Just look through history at conservative attempts to prohibit alcohol, prostitution, homosexuality, drugs, teen sexual activity, and coming soon…tobacco. Which of those activities have they managed to eliminate?
We exhibit the same lack of historical memory every time we stick our CIA or military nose into the business of yet another Third World country to overthrow a government we don’t like. Which one of those has worked out and how many of our brave young people have paid the price for that arrogance? Why do our arrogant politicians have so much trouble understanding why President Putin is so angry about us putting missiles in Eastern Europe? Have they forgotten that WE brought the world to the brink of WW3 because the Russians were putting missiles in Cuba?
I repeat:
If we learn anything from history it is that we never learn anything from history.
Perhaps if instead of opening each legislative session with a prayer and the pledge of allegiance, we could open it with a daily history lesson.
I was unaware that the Russians and Putin were within the scope of this story. This isn’t seven degrees of seperation. While your argument is not without some merit, I fail to see how it points, realistically, to the war on drugs being the culprit here. I doubt that the Cuban Missle Crisis or Teenage Pregnancy are direct factors involved in this instance. Lets say, weed is legalized. This transaction no longer involves weed. It involves, coke, ecstasy, crack, or whatever. They weren’t selling weed because of their wholehearted belief that weed should be available at CVS over the counter. They were selling it because of your, “supply and demand.” They were selling it because rather than earn money, it was easier to circumvent the law and make money the easy way. You cannot honestly think that at some point, a line doesn’t need be drawn. Marijuana may not be where that line is. Maybe it begins at cocaine. Maybe it starts at tobacco. I am not sure. I don’t mean to stray off topic. My point is, it wouldn’t matter what the sale involved. At one point, someone decided to pull a gun and fire at police officers. It makes zero difference which side of the marijuana legality argument you stand upon. If you know you are breaking the law, and when caught in the act by law enforcement, you decide to try and take someones life so that you can avoid prosecution, well….you then suffer the consequences. Do you suggest that the officer, given the fact that the original offense merely involved weed, just try and dodge bullets? Should he not try and defend himself? The person that made a conscious decison to shoot at police, made his own bed.
I fail to see….realistically….how homosexuality, prostitution, teen pregnancy, Russia, and any of it’s missiles, had a direct impact on the decision to kill someone in order to get away.
Bill, I don’t think this exact incident is a good example for making the point of the article either and agree with a lot of your points, but I think its a bit of a fallacy to assume that if they were not selling weed they would have been selling coke, crack or ecstasy instead. The market for those things is not nearly as large as that for weed, and dealing in them has a few more natural deterrents. If weed were legal (I actually believe in drawing that line much more generously with regard to other, harder drugs too, but for the sake of this argument lets say its just weed) you can certainly theorize that this particular incident would have still happened another way, but you can’t deny that the overall total occurrence of similar incidents nationwide would drop significantly.
Mr. Gaines:
Since my many examples seemed to distract you, let me sum it up:
Criminalizing an activity that is generally accepted in the population does nothing but create a huge, often violent, black market and we should have learned that lesson when the passage of the 18th amendment launched a huge growth in violent organized crime.
The “war on drugs” is just a repetition of that mistake and has resulted in the same problem.
To be perfectly clear. I do not now, nor have I ever used drugs. I do not approve of recreational drug use. However, being a liberal, I do not believe that everything that offends me must be criminalized and fought by the government at all costs.
DLP – does the final sentence in your 3:59 post also apply to guns?
Thanks for the comments. At this point, whether one of the 17-year-olds pulled a gun and fired at the cops is unknown and awaits the SBI’s investigation. But, as tragic as the result of the failed bust was, who fired first isn’t particularly relevant to the point of the blog post. If one of the kids had shot and killed the police officer, it would be just as tragic — and, more to the point, it would be just as much the result of the imbecilic war on marijuana as was the teenager’s death. The point was that the war on drugs, particularly when it comes to pot, is beyond stupid as a govt policy and has resulted in too many deaths. Dying because of pot — whether it’s one of the dealers or one of the cops — is a waste of life. A waste of life that didn’t need to happen, but DID because of the drug war.
This death had nothing to do with the sale of marijuana. It was caused by 17-year-olds illegally possessing handguns and having a willingness to use them.
Garth:
Ask me that question when we are discussing an article on gun control and I will be happy to try to explain where I stand on that. This article is about criminalizing morality.