It's summer. We cook stuff on the grill a couple times a week, so we buy
CHARCOAL frequently this time of year. I'm addicted to French Roast, so we buy
COFFEE FILTERS regularly. Like most folks, we often use
ALUMINUM FOIL to wrap sandwiches and to cover dishes of leftovers, mostly because it's recyclable and plastic wrap is not. We have two cats and go through a couple of bags of
KITTY LITTER a week. Both of us have frequent sinus problems, partly due to the cat dander, so we purchase
SUDAFED and similar products regularly. We frequently end up buying
ALL OF THESE ITEMS TOGETHER in one shopping trip.
So - what's the big deal?
Read on . . .
Well, because federal law makes it illegal to sell products (even ordinary grocery items) knowing, or with reason to believe, that they will be used to produce drugs (the items highlighted above are all somehow used in the production of methamphetamine), a paranoid store clerk might well call the cops on us. And while one might think it would be easy to prove that we purchase all these items for legitimate purposes, any investigation, once initiated, probably wouldn't be dropped until after our house was completely torn apart by investigators searching for signs of a (non-existent) drug lab or even connections to someone running a drug lab elsewhere.
These days, a store clerk, facing up to 20 years in prison and $250,000 in fines, might well be paranoid, especially if he or she works in Georgia and hails from India. According to a report in this morning's NYT, law enforcement officials in Georgia have arrested 49 convenience store owners and clerks in a sting operation. They are charged with selling exactly these grocery items, KNOWING that they were going to be used in drug manufacture.
Of the accused, 44 are recent immigrants from India with only fairly basic understanding of normal spoken English, much less drug slang.
According to the prosecutor, US Attorney David Nahmias, "While those people may not think they're causing any harm, the harm they cause is tremendous. We really wanted to send the message that if you get into that line of business [sxwarren: the convenience/grocery store"line of business"??!!], selling products that you know are going to be used to make meth, you're going to go to prison."
Beyond the obvious xenophobia (note, though, that this is a Federal, not state or local investigation/prosecution), beyond the obvious language barrier, which is being used by the defense in many of the cases, and aside from the fact that a few of these clerks may well have understood what these items were to be used for and were afraid for their personal safety (drug makers/dealers not always being the most congenial of people) - beyond all these considerations lies the question: "Isn't this a pretty stupid way to wage a 'War on Drugs'?!!"
Most of these prosecutions probably won't hold up even in the initial trial. Those that do will likely be appealed, perhaps all the way to the Supreme Court. But it's going to cost a lot of taxpayer/drug enforcement money to find out that these prosecutions, indeed these methods, are misguided and counterproductive. Furthermore, this is money that might be better spent putting more federal agents and local police on the street looking for the actual dealers and labs. Meanwhile, this way a lot of innocent lives are going to be severely disrupted and damaged instead.
So maybe it's time to contact our congresscritters, telling them that this is a deeply flawed policy, an attempt to fight the Drug War on the cheap, that is destined to backfire because it targets and penalizes exactly the wrong people and will cost more money in the long run.