Time Machine: Back to 1988, Zero Tolerance...

[madmusic]

A New Mission Impractical: Zero Tolerance for Users
By RICHARD LACAYO
SUBSCRIBE TO TIMEPRINTE-MAILMORE BY AUTHOR

Posted Monday, May 30, 1988
Sometimes it's the little things that count. How little? In San Diego last week U.S. Customs agents seized Atlantis II, an $80 million research vessel once used to explore the wrack of the Titanic, after a routine search turned up traces of pot in the shaving kit of a crew member along with two marijuana pipes. The ship was returned, but only when its owner, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, agreed to send Customs officials a letter supporting the antidrug campaign and promising to tighten security. Zero tolerance strikes again.

Even as some Americans were asking whether drugs should be legalized, a Reagan Administration under fire for fumbling the drug war was pushing penalties to unheard of lengths. Zero tolerance, as the two-month-old policy is called, directs the Coast Guard, Customs Service and other arms of the Federal Government to enforce existing laws to the utmost degree. That means seizing vehicles, boats and planes if just a speck of any controlled substance is found on board. By last week the Coast Guard and Customs had grabbed some 1,700 conveyances, including the $2.5 million yacht Ark Royal and the good ship Monkey Business, famed as the holiday vessel of Gary Hart and Donna Rice. Those two ships were also returned, but the fate of hundreds of less celebrated transports still hangs in the balance.

Laws that permit federal authorities to confiscate criminal assets have been used with great success in recent years to hit Mafia bosses and drug dealers where it hurts -- in their profits. But the law allows government agencies to carry out "administrative seizures" that do not require the owner to be convicted of any crime. Police and federal agents in New York City and Los Angeles have been using that method to impound the cars of drive-in drug buyers whose purchases would bring merely a misdemeanor charge in court. U.S. Customs Commissioner William von Raab, who proposed zero tolerance to the White House drug-policy board after a successful pilot program in San Diego, says its purpose is likewise to put pressure on drug users who ordinarily are not reached by criminal penalties. "We have legalization of drugs now," says Von Raab, "because people aren't being prosecuted."

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,967486,00.html

[Mythsaje]

1. Oh, yeah...

I remember this crap.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

2. Oh yes, the war on _some_drugs

just like our current war on _some_terrorists.

Hypocricy will bring the GOP down, hopefully sooner than later.

[pnorman]

3. "administrative seizures" that do not require the owner to be convicted of any crime.

?????? That's totally new to me. From a civil libertarian viewpoint, I'm uneasy when the feds pull that on people who can easily afford crack lawyers. But for the others??

pnorman

[madmusic]

4. administrative regulation is amazing.

They do not have constitutional protections and any "compelling state interest" as long as it is "rationally based" will survive constitutional scrutiny. They simply say it is not punishment and therefore is not a criminal sanction, and therefore is not subject to the same rights criminals have. It's a neat trick.