Reform in Idaho: Education or prison?
Controlled by his philosophical abhorrence of raising taxes, the governor has proposed a number of questionable proposals to cut spending. The latest of these is his full endorsement of the Schools Superintendent to reform education by increasing class sizes and adding 770 good and a few bad teachers to the unemployment ranks. Perhaps his idea is to dumb down the populace to keep electing Butch, Luna, and others of similar persuasion to public office.
Has it occurred to the guy to take a look at the prisons and the laws that put people behind bars. With the costs of incarceration now running at more than $100,000 per year per inmate, it should stimulate some serious rethinking.
The rigid law and order mindset was recently illustrated by a speech given by our sheriff in which he told of his determination to put every druggie in prison. Unfortunately, this nation has gone down that path before and found that it did not work.
When I was a lad in the days of prohibition, I loved to hike in the hills behind our ranch, but that changed when we moved closer to town. Years later, I learned that Dad was threatened by a bunch of bootleggers, including the county sheriff, who feared that I and my friends would stumble on to their still back in the hills. Meanwhile, booze was readily available to anyone who wanted it, and gangs murdered each other for the privilege of providing it. With the repeal of the 18th Amendment, alcohol is now a legal drug, and in spite of the problems presented by drunks and alcoholics, society manages to cope with it.
As with alcohol, addictive drugs were also available until outlawed a hundred years ago. When our youth began to smoke marijuana in the 1930s, a smear campaign against it resulted in it too being outlawed. Now we are filling our prisons with addicts while their suppliers are murdering each other with such zeal that the gang warfare of the prohibition days seems like a Sunday school picnic. Even the Mexican army is being outgunned.
Would it not make more sense to decriminalize the use of narcotics. Set up free rehabilitation centers where drug users could voluntarily get free help and even free drugs to help kick the habit. This and the taxation of narcotics would tend to take the profits out of narcotics, thus drying up the market. Marijuana would be readily available to those needing it for medical purposes. No longer would prisons be operated to punish those who were only hurting themselves. Then law enforcement and the detention industries would be left free to deal with the true criminals.
The taxpayers would save a bundle.
JOSEPH HENRY WYTHE
Sandpoint