From: lisa@access.digex.net (Lisa Losito)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.drugs
Subject: Reason Magazine
Date: 18 Jan 1994 17:42:17 -0500
Message-ID: <2hhok9$99o@access.digex.net>

Casualties of War-- Drug prohibition has shot gaping holes in the Bill of 
Rights. Author: Steven B. Duke and Albert C. Gross

"At 2 a.m. on June 29, 1991, Tracy White of Los Angeles was awakened by the
explosion of a diversionary grenade set off in a trash can outside her front
door. She stumbled out into the upstairs hallway and was met by a
shaft of light and a man's voice. "Freeze," he said. "Police."

At that moment, her bedroom windows shattered and two men clad in black hoods
swung into the room. Her three infants shrieked in fright. Several guns were
pointed at her. More men dressed in black bounded through the bathroom window.
One ran into an adjoining bedroom and pinned Tracy's sister Yolanda and her
12-year-old daughter behind a door. The youngster tried to squirm free
and found the barrel of a pistol against her head. She closed her eyes
and urinated on herself. "I thought," she later said, "he was going to
kill me."

Such raids and ransackings are standard procedure in most large cities and,
except in the most outrageous cases, they receive the approval of
courts. Police can get search warrants on the flimsiest of suspicion
-- even the word of an anonymous informant. In many cases, though, the
police don't even bother to get a warrant, since they are virtually
unfettered by the risk of successful suits or other sanctions,
especially if they confine their warrantless invasions to poor members
of minority groups.

The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees against
"unreasonable searches and seizures" and prohibits warrants on anything but
"probable cause," is a casualty of the drug war. Other provisions intended to
protect Americans from overzealous law enforcement -- the right to
defense counsel,the right to a fair trial, and the right to property
-- are also in danger. The debris of the war on drugs may ultimately
include shreds of the Constitution as well as splintered doors,
shattered glass, and broken furniture."


So begins this issue's featured article from Reason Magazine. Reason
describes itself as a publication dedicated to "free minds and free
markets" and to the issues of individual liberty without adopting a
right, left or middle of the road political stance.

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