Homeland Security's budget allows for the purchase and training for officials. This training allows them the capabilities to combat the ever increasing sophistry of the drug dealers.
That a high percentage of the crystal meth drug dealers also consume their product is another potentially dangerous situation. The drug itself can lead to paranoia and psychological problems and if the drug dealer is ingesting the drug the result is that many times the environment in which the drug is being produced is one of great volatility, both due to the nature of the chemicals themselves as well as the personalities of the people producing it.
Using crystal meth can cause drastic changes in an individual's character, causing many individual users of the drug to experience dramatic mood changes, violent rages and psychotic episodes.
Using crystal meth also affects more than just the user, the producer or the seller of the product. It also affects friends, families, co-workers and associates, as well as innocent bystanders and the authorities.
Some experts believe that law enforcement agencies should show more attention to the victims of drug related crimes, than what is currently shown. One expert, Thomas a. Constantine, a 39-year veteran in active law enforcement at the local, state and federal level, stated in a recent speech that in his experience, law enforcement officers (dedicated to drug distribution) spend 99% of their time searching out and arresting those individuals involved in the selling and distribution of drugs, and only one percent of the time on the victims of those crimes.
He said; "The area of this work ranges from street level dealers who may make $500 per day, to mid-level crime bosses who make $500,000 per year, to the pinnacle Mafia leaders in Columbia or Mexico who literally make hundreds of millions of dollars per year in drug profits from their organizations. Unfortunately, there are real victims who suffer from these drug sales. These victims are individuals who become addicted to drugs, individuals who die as a result of overdosing on drugs, family members who are neglected and abused, and neighborhoods that are destroyed." (Constantine 2000-page 687)
Constantine feels that if law enforcement agencies were given more leeway to go after low-level drug users and dealers that the overall crime rate would decline.
He also believes that there would be far fewer victims to the crimes related to the drug use that is so prevalent. The figures he espoused in his speech would bear out such a statement.
He said; "Now, I can't tell you what an index crime costs -- I mean there are government costs, personal costs, hospital costs, and intangibles I don't know if you could put a price tag on. But if you put a moderate tag of $1,000 per crime then, in essence, you have saved $750 million if you can reduce 750,000 index crimes. To this day -- in fact I talked about this with the former Dean of the School of Criminal Justice -- nobody has studied this New York City experience, which is probably one of the great social experiments over the last 30 or 40 years in reducing crime and making people's lives a little bit more bearable." (Constantine 2000-page 687).
Constantine was speaking about the lower crime rate experienced by New York City over a five-year time frame when more police were hired, and they were given the admonition to search out and obliterate all drug related crimes, from the street level up to the organized crime level. The program worked in a tremendous fashion, with all crime levels throughout the city from 1993-1998 declining in a dramatic fashion. Constantine also used the city of Baltimore as an example of the exact opposite approach, having the exact opposite results. A former mayor of the city of Baltimore told the public that the police would no longer arrest individuals or groups involved in small scale drug crimes.
In essence, the mayor told the public that it was a complete waste of time to do so. Since that time Baltimore has lost nearly 1200 citizens per month who have moved out to find safer climes. The crime rate has shot up as has drug...
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