Drug talk
Toolbox
Published: March 24, 2008
There’s a rare chance for Rutland residents to see their federal representatives in action today, when U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy brings a hearing of the Judiciary Committee — in the persons of he and Sen. Arlen Specter, the five-term Republican from Pennsylvania — to the Howe Center.
The topic, unsurprisingly, is drugs: specifically drug-related crime in small American cities. The sharp uptick of violence surrounding drug deals and alleged drug deals in the past several months is what brought Leahy’s traveling show to town.
One of the abiding questions in Rutland’s situation is the role of federal prosecutors. Typically, they stay above the day-to-day of relatively minor drug offenses. But in a community where most of the crime is relatively small-scale, that means the federal judiciary is relegated almost exclusively to an after-the-fact, punitive role. Certainly federal agencies such as the FBI and others are key to interdiction efforts, but most of the prevention efforts are left to state and local agencies.
Given the circular nature of the drug trade — narcotics, by their addictive nature, create a demand among users, that demand in turn attracts more dealers, who make more drugs available, creating more abusers — there will always be a necessary role for prevention as well as punishment. Waiting until the cycle gets “big enough” to get involved almost guarantees that it will happen.
Today’s hearing is a chance for Leahy and Specter to probe whether the federal law enforcement community can create more bang for their buck in small, rural states like Vermont by changing their focus to include more prevention.
It’s also a rare, almost unique, opportunity to see in person the hearing process that most of us only see on television.
It’s probably just as well that there aren’t likely to be too many viewers glued to C-SPAN on the Monday morning after Easter, or Rutland could wind up being the face of what is a national problem. And clearly, too much attention to drugs being a “Rutland City” problem is going to create a whole new set of problems.
Let’s say the city police department puts forth a massive effort during the next several months and succeeds in scaring off drug dealers. Unless that is supported by similar efforts across larger jurisdictions, “Rutland’s drug problem” is quickly going to become Rutland Town’s, Castleton’s, Mendon’s and Brandon’s drug problem.
Many small Vermont communities have no local police or just a few constables and rely on state police. That force, faced with its own staffing shortages and with relatively fewer officers available in any given place than the city force, will be hard-pressed to respond to the kind of movable threat that out-of-state drug dealers create.
Without a coordinated effort, from Leahy’s committee down through the local beat cop and neighborhood watch programs, expect to see Vermont’s drug problem grow until the federal prosecutors have plenty of cases “big enough” to keep them busy.
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