GETTING CAUGHT
Most people believe
that they will not get caught. Teenagers, in particular, have the feeling that they are "beyond the
law" But it does happen. It happens to grandmothers, teenagers, lawyers,
doctors, and the most ordinary people
on the face of the earth.
Many drug arrests come from the most random events
imaginable. In Virginia, an officer stopped a car for having something hanging
off the rearview mirror. He became
suspicious, legally searched the car, and found major quantities of cocaine. Another drug transporter thought he had the
perfect scheme and filled fruit juice
cans with cocaine, then resealed them. It
is a regular practice for tourists to bring back food from vacation in the Caribbean, and he expected to walk right through
customs. What he did not realize was that customs officials knew there was no
reason to bring
canned fruit juice from the Caribbean, where it is
expensive, to the United States, where
it is cheap. He was arrested and convicted for transporting millions of
dollars' worth of cocaine.
Even grandmothers are not immune to arrest. A pair
of DEA agents working a bus station in
North Carolina noticed an elderly woman behaving oddly. When they approached her, she moved away and they became suspicious. They conducted a legal search and found
a large quantity of cocaine in her luggage.
A college student came back to her dorm room to
find the place crawling with campus
and city police. While she had absolutely no role in any illegal activity, a
friend of her roommate had come to town from another college with a shipment of drugs. Another student,
obeying the honor code, had called the
campus police. Fortunately, the innocent student was not arrested because the roommate cleared her, but
it was a very close call.
The law-enforcement community is actually quite
sophisticated in its drug-enforcement
efforts. DEA agents work all over the world trying to prevent the transport of
drugs into the United States. They have agents working major and minor airports, and even bus stations. The highway patrols of most states have drug interdiction units
looking for suspicious vehicles. This
is not a trivial effort, and it results in so many convictions that both the state and federal prison
populations have grown dramatically.
Yet everyone realizes that most countries are
overrun with drugs. It is usually easy
to buy the most common illegal drugs in many areas of cities and on college campuses. So why is the legal
interdiction effort perceived as
failing? It is not exactly failing, but rather it is being overwhelmed. Many, many people are caught in the
legal system, but there is always
someone else to replace each person caught. Routine usage of cocaine, crack, or heroin can be a very
expensive habit, and the only way that
most people can maintain such expensive behavior is to turn to dealing. As we
say elsewhere in this book, cocaine and opiates can be extremely reinforcing, and they are also expensive in the quantities
that habitual users consume. The combination of dependence and expense often
leads users to become dealers until they are stopped by medical intervention, arrest,
or death.
What does this have to
do with the average reader of this
book? Anyone who can read this book
no doubt has the ability to do
honest and legal work and have a
successful life. Such a reader might feel that she is above being caught, or just not in the "wrong" circle of friends. This
naiveté might be the most dangerous attitude of
all, because, like most jobs, illegal
drug dealing depends on knowledge, skills, and having a network of people. Most casual dealers do not have
the knowledge or, fortunately, are
not willing to do what is necessary to involve themselves fully in the drug culture. Thus, they approach the
whole issue as amateurs, and like many amateurs in anything, they fail
miserably. Only in this case, the stakes are much higher. They can get caught,
lose a lot of
money, become victims
of criminal violence, or become heavily dependent on the substance they are dealing.
As we all know, some
people think they have few opportunities and only a short time to live. They will deal drugs no matter what anyone says. In their lives they see jail time as just
the cost of doing business. However,
a district attorney who has prosecuted thousands of drug cases had just one bit of advice: people with
families, an opportunity for education,
and a supportive network of friends have so much to lose from being on the wrong side of the legal system
that they should never become
involved with it. A felony conviction can strip a person of so many opportunities in this society and can cost
families so much in
pain, suffering, and
financial loss that no amount of money or drug experience
is worth the risk.
