Most drug policy reformers refer to it as “drug war propaganda” - but Benton County DA Haroldson has referred to it as “theft by deception” or fraud. For grins, I posted on website describing the April 2007 “Meth Awareness Assembly” at Philomath High School in terms of a public business presentation using testimonials involving atypical [drug use] outcomes selling a product [public support for current drug policy] without disclosure as to the nature of the outcomes. I also explained that a manager [superintendent Tuana] insisted that – since no outright claims were made that lack of disclosure was not necessary. Haroldson seemed very interested in prosecuting requesting more details about the scope of the fraud – until I revealed the “business” identity: Benton County Sheriffs, Oregon State Police, and Philomath School District.

Sadly this fraud is a daily experience across this nation in thousands of communities. That's because District Attorneys refuse to prosecute thousands of school districts and police departments for deliberately misleading citizen taxpayers about the current drug policy that is responsible for so much of the nation's crime, violence and drug problems.

While I would love to see this scam artists prosecuted, all that is needed is for those talking about banned drugs to acknowledge the atypical cases that sell the policy as “extreme examples”. They could not talk about drug-related crime without mention of the black market drug prices – caused by current drug policy. We had crime problems AFTER policy was enacted – not before. Failure to disclose is fraud.

  The only time I've known a DA to prosecute police misconduct that DA ended up in jail - until he was re elected in a landslide. While some parents may insist that we need to lie to kids in order to scare them away from drug abuse [caused by street drugs]. Actually I could scare more kids - without lying. I could teach a ten week drug education course to "at risk" teens at less than half the price of DARE  - and get phenomenal results. I won't be taken up on this challenge either since many of my comments would be prefaced by "Because of the pro crime drug policies supported by public schools, police departments and every major political leader in this country - this is what you will face on the street." There are too high profile criminals in this country for anyone to risk full disclosure on our drug policy.

    If we were really serious about warning our children about the dangers posed by street drugs we would adopt  actual measurable standards and do actual legitimate testing to determine norms for users of these drugs. Then we wouldn't have thousands of otherwise honest professional law enforcement and educators committing fraud to promote a policy that is - by the government's own standards - responsible for over 75% of this nation's crime. We would likely still have banned drugs but they would be different drugs and they would be banned or have restricted access based on science - and not fraud.