letters to the editor

Agency rules pushed us into drug prohibition

In his July 7, 2022 column, publisher Roger Harnack bemoans excessive “law-making” by agencies.

I would join with him, pointing to the Harrison Narcotic Tax Act of 1914. Congress wanted to raise revenue by taxing the flow of narcotics from doctor to patient.

Naturally, they assigned this revenue measure to the Treasury Department to administer.

Evidently, the agency saw more growth potential in enforcing a prohibition than in just collecting a tax, because it inserted drug prohibition into the administrative code they had been charged to write.

Although the act stated in the enforcement section that “nothing in this section shall pertain to a doctor, surgical veterinarian, or dentist in the course of his professional practice only,” the agency wrote that giving narcotics to an addict is not a professional practice.

Which was contrary to fact — in that day, it was expected doctors would continue to work with their addicted patients to stabilize their addictions, allowing them to continue to be successful in their family life, profession, and civic engagements.

In 1919, Congress amended the act to counter the agency’s administrative code, but got out-manuvered at the Supreme Court.

Under the agency’s rule, America alone entered into drug prohibition, while Europe stayed with legal drugs for 56 more years. America developed a large drug problem during that half century, while Europe did not. (Source: Drug Addicts Are Human Beings:The Story of America’s Billion Dollar Drug Racket: How We Started it, and How We Can Put a Stop to it, by Henry Smith Williams, MD, 1929)

Wiley Hollingsworth of Pullman

Schoesler left pursuit data out of his column

In a recent op-ed, state Sen. Mark Schoesler alluded to a new “bad law” that prevents law enforcement from pursuing criminal suspects in most situations.

He cherry-picks a paragraph from an op-ed in the Seattle Times written by one of his senate colleagues, Marka Dhingra, who happens to be the first Sikh elected to a public office in the U.S. (The Sikhs are a persecuted religious sect in India.) She has also been a deputy prosecuting attorney for King County for 20 years.

I looked up her guest editorial and it seems Schoesler left out plenty of valuable information.

In the last seven years, 30 state residents have been killed in high-speed chases, nearly half of them passengers or innocent bystanders. Most recently, in March of 2020, in Chehalis, a dismounted Washington State Patrol trooper was purposely hit and killed by a fleeing driver doing 100 mph. Spike strips eventually stopped him.

His crime? Shoplifting.

Nationally, between 1980 and 2015, 11,500 people were killed in police pursuits, with 5,000 as passengers or bystanders.

Two weekends ago, a motorcyclist in Spokane Valley tried to outrun police and was hit and killed in an intersection.

His crime? A traffic violation.

Schoesler, partisan as usual, made certain to blame this so-called “bad law” on Democrats. But when lives are at stake, would it hurt, just once, to be a team player?

Bruce Pemberton of Palouse