Workplace pre-employment drug screening and massive prison building programs have evidently proven a workable short-term political stop gap measure in a domestic U.S. culture built upon ever-shorter-term thinking, ever-more immediate gratification and quicker fixes. Trouble is, like most near-sighted popular political solutions, there lurks a potentially dark, long-term rebound/swing of the pendulum capable of rendering the "medicine" into a deadly concoction with largely unforeseen repercussions.

What am I talking about? Our personal safety as citizens in a nation whose noble proclamations about human rights, democracy and the right to the pursuit of happiness are silently careening toward a steep, unguarded precipice few seem interested in seeing. Denial can be so warm and fuzzy in our busy workday lives. We automatically adjust our seat comfort and select the perfect CD for the trip as our vehicle closes in on sudden airborne weightlessness.

I should pause here for a moment to establish my personal perspective on this issue. I am, and for quite a while have been, a resident of California. Sort of long ago and happily far away, I was a lobbyist and field salesman in Texas, employed by a Northern California-based, now defunct (read: gobbled up by a bigger Swiss fish Syntex/Roche) pharmaceutical company whose medical diagnostics division (Syva) had essentially cornered the market on drug testing with a highly accurate enzyme/antibody urine metabolite screening methodology/technology still widely in use. I am no longer employed in that industry. As every soulless corporate or government bureaucrat knows, a young man (read: formerly me) with a new family to feed makes for an almost indefatigable working tool. I was a jackhammer for the holy buck. I tirelessly persuaded legislators of the merits of routine probation and parole drug testing. I was a voice for the "right" with regard to pre-employment drug screening. I bought off and sold every argument whose ostensible purpose was to mitigate workplace drug abuse in the name of workplace safety, improved worker efficiency, decreased theft and whatever else sounded good about just how "bad" drugs are.

First it was coined "drug abuse"…. then "substance abuse." Slowly at first, but then with increasing clarity, it dawned on me that the only thing abused by those combinations of the alphabet's letters is logic. It's self abuse. No one abuses drugs, liquor or cigarettes. Everyone with addictive impulses (born of environmental social circumstance and probably reinforced by genetic predisposition) abuses themselves with these things and often ultimately, others. An increasingly overburdened justice system which responds to its ludicrously bulging case load with an increasing number of public proofs that the average individual is actually guilty until proven rich and innocent until proven broke, is in my opinion, among the biggest abusers of all. The state of Texas, for example, with its unabashed history of arrogant, chest-thumping pride about everything (except the general physical barren ugliness from Oklahoma to Mexico, New Mexico to Louisiana), stands as a perfect example of what abuse is all about. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice, or TDCJ as it's known in The Lone Star State, has a long history of abuse. If you need a reference point, I would recommend reading An Appeal to Justice Litigated Reform of Texas Prisons by Ben Crouch and James Marquart (University of Texas Press, 1989).

The executioners in both Huntsville (home of the TDCJ) and Austin, Texas, could not possibly be more proud of their self-proclaimed courageous stance in liquidating prisoners by the hundreds, relative to every other state in the United States. The horror is not so much in Texas' numerical leadership with this practice. Face it: many of the incorrigibly 'bad to the bone' knowingly bought their fate/needle into the next dimension (and I am not writing this because I weep too heavily for them as a result of their acts of callous disregard for the lives of innocent citizens). No, the horror is that despite the newest technologies -- ranging from PCR to RLFP DNA testing, especially in conjunction with an increased focus upon forensic controls on sample chain-of-custody -- it is more than possible--in fact, probable--that quite a few innocents have been executed in Texas. At least the state of Ohio has faced up to this issue. Worse, the possible next President of the United States, now on the campaign trail while serving as the Governor of Texas, refuses to admit that it's even possible that anyone innocent has ever been whacked by his state, at least, not on his watch. Puh-leeze. Bill Clinton's "but I never inhaled" was pathetic enough, but now we've fallen to this?

To be balanced, my home state of California with its oft-abused three strikes rule and notoriously brutal L.A.P.D. state prison guards betting on the outcome of inmate fights (shamelessly pumping hot high-powered rifle lead into the victor to stop the hand-to-gland exercise 'yard' combat) is hardly any different and certainly no more noble than that of Texas. Further, the scandal which broke in the L.A.P.D.'s Rampart Division, wherein one "bad cop," Rafael Perez, was convicted of building his career portfolio with bogus charge-filing, evidence planting and ultimate imprisonment and subsequent release of 80 proven poor people ("legal experts estimate scores of other cases are likely to be overturned…" L.A. Times 5/20/00), cannot go without mention here. To the horror of bureaucrats and elected officials alike, it now turns out that Perez is the tip of the iceberg. Now, the focus has turned toward some 40 more "Perezes" in the Rampart Division. Most are still on active duty. Multiply 40 by the number of people the Rampart Division officers have falsely imprisoned, then squint hard and try to figure out which among them have been handed vicious sentences under the three strikes rule on a bogus third strike charge.

New York and its baton-up-a-poor-Haitian's-wazoo scandal, followed by the multiple cop street execution of an unarmed guy who spoke marginal English, can't go without mention here.

So the world isn't perfect. The problem is, Texas, California and New York are themselves simply exposed because it's expedient for the national media at large. The problem is long, wide, deep and often from Hawaii to Florida. The prisons are bulging with masses (now over two million) of seething anger and overcrowded hatred. Temporary drops in the U.S. crime rate as a result of massive incarceration levels (the world's highest) are sure to be met with compensatory skyrocketing increases in rape, murder, car theft, assault, etc. as these people--most of whom come out WAY nastier than they went in--are ultimately released into the public domain due to overcrowding and simple term expiration, probation and parole in the next few years to come.

My point: An enormous percentage of incarcerations (both lawful and unlawful) are due to drug possession and distribution. As a nation, our politicians and dutifully stupid media seem to love to point at the supply coming from South America or Afghanistan or wherever. They love to "DECLARE WAR!" to protect our borders against this "external menace." Meanwhile, we, the United States, the world's very premier bastion of capitalism, play ostrich-head-in-the-manure-pile denial games with the simple economic reality that supply will find demand just as sure as Newton found gravity.

If you think the solution is in "legalizing drugs," think twice about what's pulsing through the neurons and arterial system of the unshaven, maniacal fuckwit on your tail at 75mph out on the freeways. Booze behind the wheel is a bad enough societal nightmare. Therefore, that ain't the answer, brothers and sisters. Don't even go down the "it's only illegal 'cause they can't tax it!" argument. This isn't fantasyland. It's freeway land.

I propose that the solution exists in intelligently redirecting both public and private resources. Somewhere between cleaving a bit of the U.S. defense budget and tweaking every filthy-rich do-gooder old money foundation with tax incentives to provide public works (infrastructure improvement; roads, bridges, dams, parks) employment projects for the poor and homeless in America, there might be a chance at changing the direction of an up and coming generation of potential future inmates. That's what we ought to be thinking about with our "budget surplus." As far as the current crop of borderline and yet-to-be incarcerated are concerned, we all know there is some truth in the commonly accepted folk wisdom which states "Idle hands are the devil's tools" (it dates back to Chaucer's Tale of Melibee c.1386). Don't tell me unemployment is actually low because the press propaganda says so. Any fool knows that after a mere six months of unemployment benefits cease to be paid, the unemployed cease to be counted. They become non-persons. Who do you think populates movie theatres, bars, bookstores, libraries and coffee shops M-F 9-5? Wander in to one of these places on a day off and think about it. Who are all of these people? All the unemployment rate tells you is the rate at which U.S. corporations are whacking lower-level employee livelihoods so that these big brand names can suddenly redeploy ex-employeen now-unpaid salaries and (tax-game) benefit resources for treasury stock buy-backs. Then, they pay all top executives even more, because layoff announcements dramatically raise stock prices, and stock price rises ensure fatter bonuses based on stock option incentives granted by boards -- themselves composed of other top executives -- to top executives, especially The Kings (CEOs). The wolves take care of their own. Everyone else is praised as an asset in glossy annual reports right up to the day Security escorts them from the building, sans keys, cards, etc. The only real securities are the assets held by the brokerage firm which has retained the CEO's account.

Further--and I know this won't ride well with myopic "right to lifers"--people born as a direct function of everyone's healthy, natural, genetically encoded sexual/drive passion into a world unwilling and never-ready to welcome them with warmth, love, care and a generational history of the same, are, shall we politely say (with maximum fractiousness), at a slight competitive disadvantage in the class-conscious world of capitalism. Noble democratic ideals become a rightful target for mockery to these people; especially those scratching their heads at the constitutional phrase "all men are created equal." The seeds for revolution are thus sewn when it dawns upon the disenfranchised that one second after creation, nothing and no one is, was or likely will ever be, even remotely "equal." It is an ideal.

As the middle class shrinks, the ranks of the poor/under-employed grow, the rich insulate themselves in gated tract mansions with long driveways or multi-level-with-a-view urban museums featuring security cameras and doormen in monkey suits, and the wanna-be-rich ("upper middle class") do the almost-same with gated communities, featuring a guard-in-a-box. Neither history nor human nature changes or so much as blinks. The French Revolution had its roots in the simmering discontent of the disenfranchised masses. We can only build so many prisons and count on so many more months of "economic expansion" (…for whom?). Our justice system needs a legislative enema and our drug demand problem can only be effectively and lastingly replaced by policies directed at bringing those completely outside of "the system" in, just enough to find self-esteem through the viable opportunity to work, instead of numbing the natural need for it, self-respect empathy for others, love of family etc., with narcotics. Harry Truman was oh-so-right when he said; "The only thing new in life is the history you don't know."

Hopefully, it will not take a home invasion robbery and/or rape of your daughter/wife/ sister/mother/grandmother, murder of your son, or carjacking by some insanely angry tattoo-covered, three-fourths life-institutionalized thug temporarily out on parole to assist you in seeing the rationale behind this article. Will it take the modern equivalent of millions of pitchforks and burning torches crossing the moat for us to see?

Copyright © 2000 Marc V. Mulay All Rights Reserved

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