AlterNet: The Killing of Rachel Hoffman and the Tragedy That Is Pot Prohibition

[marmar]

The Killing of Rachel Hoffman and the Tragedy That Is Pot Prohibition

By Paul Armentano, AlterNet. Posted July 29, 2008.

Police caught Hoffman with pot but promised to drop charges if she agreed to go undercover in a drug bust. She was killed soon afterward.




Rachel Hoffman is dead. Rachel Hoffman, like many young adults, occasionally smoked marijuana.

But Rachel Hoffman is not dead as a result of smoking marijuana; she is dead as a result of marijuana prohibition.

Under prohibition, Rachel faced up to five years in a Florida prison for possessing a small amount of marijuana. (Under state law, violators face up to a $5,000 fine and five years in prison for possession of more than 20 grams of pot.)

Under prohibition, the police in Rachel's community viewed the 23-year-old recent college graduate as nothing more than a criminal and threatened her with jail time unless she cooperated with them as an untrained, unsupervised confidential informant. Her assignment: Meet with two men she'd never met and purchase a large quantity of cocaine, ecstasy and a handgun. Rachel rendezvoused with the two men; they shot and killed her.

Under prohibition, the law enforcement officers responsible for brazenly and arrogantly placing Rachel in harm's way have failed to publicly express any remorse -- because, after all, under prohibition Rachel Hoffman was no longer a human being deserving of such sympathies.

Speaking on camera to ABC News' "20/20" last week, Tallahassee Police Chief Dennis Jones attempted to justify his department's callous and irresponsible behavior, stating, "My job as a police chief is to find these criminals in our community and to take them off the streets (and) to make the proper arrest." ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/93082/the_killing_of_rachel_hoffman_and_the_tragedy_that_is_pot_prohibition/

[ixion]

1. It's the so-called 'Drug war' not drugs that are destroying our social fabric

the sooner the idiotic and failed 'war' on drugs end, the sooner we can start healing as a society.

[aspergris]

2. crazy case

first of all, the fact that she was facing 5 years (assuming the statute matches the actual MATRIX FOR CONVICTION) for what she held was ridiculous. that weight would get her probation if not deferred for first offense in my jurisdiction.

second of all, that informant assignment was RIDICULOUSLY dangerous and not well plotted at all - to use a newbie minor doper for that type of buy would SCREAM setup. I worked undercover a long time myself fwiw, and you don't just go in w.o a rep or a decent legend and try to buy that kind of size. I worked for 4 months before I evne considered buying a gun, for instance.

[Clovis Sangrail]

3. 20 grams isn't "a little pot"

and it's *way more than you're likely to find on an "occasional" smoker.
That's over 1/2 ounce.

I've known a LOT of regular smokers that never have more than 1/8 or 1/4 at any given time.
I think pot laws are monumentally stupid but let's not be misleading.

[tazkcmo]

4. 20 grams is a SMALL amount!

Less than an ounce (28 grams) which is a VERY COMMON amount to purchase. In fact, there are ALOT of people that will pool their rescources to buy in larger quantities to save money. Think buying in bulk. An ounce of weed wuld last the average toker less than 2 weeks while I know some that can make that last a month or more. Of course, I also know folks who would rip through that oz in less than a week. No misleading here. And 5 years?! WTF?

[Clovis Sangrail]

6. not for an 'occasional' smoker

I haven't smoked in *years, but I used to smoke and sell the stuff... back when dimes would weigh in over a gram and it was *way less potent than now.
(long past any statute of limitations)
In general, the only people that bought more than a few grams were regular or heavy smokers.
(not 'occasional' or even 'average')

As for an 'average' toker going through an ounce in 2 weeks???
I still know a fair number of people who smoke regularly... and none of them could even come close to being able to smoke that much even if it was free.
Modern pot is so potent the 'average' person would be useless for the solid 2 weeks.
- I do know 1 person who might smoke that much... but he isn't the 'average' toker by any stretch.

[conscious evolution]

17. Back when dimes wieghed less than a gram?

Boy,what a ripoff.
Seroiously.If you were selling >1 gram dimes I would have laughed in your face.Thats not even enough to roll a decent joint.
The cops in this case should be charged with negligent homocide for sending her to her death the way they did.

[Clovis Sangrail]

21. 2 things

1st:
Even if you're talking about 1/8 of rollable pot... (what kind of fool rolls bud?)
1/8 ounce = 3.5 grams
Are you saying you'd only get 3 joints out of an 1/8?
That's > $16 a joint (at $50 for an 1/8)
0.o

2nd:
When I was selling I was selling over a gram in a dime.
dime = $10 ... so less than $10/gram
unless you're buying serious ditch weed you won't find anything close to that price these days.

my assertion stands... 20-25 grams is a lot of pot for somebody who is a 'casual' user.

[EOTE]

19. A good sized spliff weighs in at around a gram.

Assuming one spliff or joint per day, that 20 grams would be gone in 3 weeks. And most regular smokers would have no problem going through an ounce in two weeks even if it was super potent stuff. Most regular smokers I know can smoke an awful lot of KB in one setting and you'd probably not even know they were stoned.

[Clovis Sangrail]

22. just because most people you know could do it doesn't make them 'average' tokers /nt

[EOTE]

23. And what makes you think you know what an "average" toker is?

I'd hazard a guess that the people I associate with are far closer to what an "average" toker is. Because I've known people who would easily go through an ounce in less than a week, I just don't consider them to be "average" either. They're certainly on the far end of the scale. I've known people who smoked weed like hard core nicotine addicts smoke cigarettes.

[Clovis Sangrail]

25. the only basis I have to judge is

when I smoked and sold (and got to see the smoking habits of a lot more people than just my friends)

and now? just what I hear from a lot less people... and most of them fall into what I would have considered back then 'casual' smokers.
They smoke maybe a few times a week.
These type of smokers weren't my best customers but by far there were more of them than people buying 1/4's every week.
Unless the amount people smoke has gone up drastically I think I've still got a reasonable idea of what 'average' is. If anything I'd expect the amount that most people smoke has gone down just because the quality and price has gone up so much.

Then, and I assume now, the people who smoke everyday and find it normal to do 10 or more bong hits at a time are stoners...
out of the average and definitely not casual smokers.

That's not a value judgement on my part - just an observation.
I really don't care if or how much somebody smokes.

[BridgeTheGap]

5. In Kentucky, anything under 4 ounces is considered a misdemeanor

20 grams is a small amount. Most people that buy 1/8 or 1/4, do so because that's what they can afford. It's generally cheaper to buy by the ounce.

[Clovis Sangrail]

8. I'm not saying 20 grams should be legal or not

just that it's way more than you'd expect to find on an 'occasional' smoker

[NashVegas]

7. She Was Holding Way More Than 20 - More Like 200

You have to do some link following or Googling to get to the initial stories.

I got into some arguments with other posters in a previous thread; the bottom line is that NORML is nuts if they think a dealer makes a good poster child.

[BridgeTheGap]

11. It's the practice of busting people and turning them into informants that really sucks

There are way too many horror stories associated with this practice. But it's about the only way the cops have of nailing anyone.
A guy I used to work with was approached by someone he knew and asked if he knew where he could get some coke. The guy I knew didn't use or deal, but he knew people who did. They went to a house. Shortly after the coke came out, the cops came in. The guy I knew got in serious trouble, felony charges, etc. The guy who wanted the coke was an informant. Shortly after this incident, the informant told the police that they guy I knew was threatening him and his family, which was total bull shit.
These practices are despicable.

[NashVegas]

16. Your Story Is An Illustration

In the previous thread about this, I gave my take on why I doubted very much this young woman was an innocent. It's a tragedy, yes, but I knew several low-level dealers as a youth and most were total weasels. In their defense, they kind of had to be as they're the most vulnerable in the chain ... take your case. Far healthier to set up some rube than to roll their distributer.

[EOTE]

18. Are you kidding me?

Assuming it was regular schwag, that amount would go for about $50 around here. It wouldn't make sense to procure an amount smaller than that unless you were dealing with KB.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

9. There may be compelling arguments for changing the law, but this isn't one of them.

I think that marijuana should probably ee legalised, but I don't think this case is relevant to that.

:-The rules that would have prevented this were already in place, they just weren't followed; so changing the rules as a response won't do much good.
:-This is a one-off or at least rare; compared with the other consequences of legalising pot - positive and negative - the number of people affected by cases like this is negligable.
:-Even if pot were legal, if they had wanted to the police could have picked on someone they'd caught for something else.

There are good arguments both for and against legalising marijuana (I think it should probably be legal, but I think it's foolish to use it). But this case isn't germaine to them.

[TNOE]

10. You should have seen this on 20/20

then - and you would be changing your mind. She was a college student from a good family - yes, she dealt pot to her friends.

But the police illegally entrapped her (against her contract with the intervention program) - sent a little 20 or 21? year old girl on an undercover drug deal with a gun which she had never used or had been trained on. She was executed with that gun. The police "lost her" (or weren't even following her). The police should be sued out their asses for what they did to her.

And yes, the bottom line is - she should not have even been in this much trouble - IT WAS JUST POT FOR GOD'S SAKE.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

12. What point do you think I'm making?

All of what you say may be true, but none of it is relevant to my claim, which was that while this may have been a tragedy, it isn't a compelling argument for the legalisation of cannabis.

Yes, the police should be sued - in some ways, that strengthens my point - if this had been legal and proper practice, *then* there might be more case for changing some laws (although laws about using civilians as agents, not laws about the legality of cannabis).

Also, on an entirely unconnected point, I'm not sure that describing a 23-year-old drug dealer as a little girl is justifiable. That doesn't, of course, mean that getting her killed was justifiable, though.

[Greyhound]

24. Only the publicity is rare, this happens almost every day somewhere in America.

But you are right that this indicative of a much larger problem, that being that our police have become alienated from the communities they are supposed to serve. The us vs. them mentality is not the historical norm, but has been instituted to generate fear in the population.

[Wizard777]

13. Police have also done this to teenagers. Sometimes without their parents knowledge.

One of the MSM news shows did a story on it back in the 90's.

[Time for change]

14. I blame those who make these stupid laws rather than those charged with enforcing them.

[tuckessee]

15. I guess that makes you guilty since you've perobably voted for drug prohibitionists.

The cops are innocent because they only follow the orders of the legislature.

The legislators are innocent since they can only do what the public wants and allows.

That leaves you and others who have voted for these legislators as the guilty parties.

[Time for change]

20. What is your point?

Try to answer that without snark.