Today's Injustice

I've had a lot going on this week and still have a long list of links to read through, so I'll be doing a two-week Drug War Roundup next weekend, but I just saw this story on Headline News and had to comment.

She was new in school, a demure blonde with a sob story.

With her mother dead and father chronically absent, the girl said, she needed to get high to kill the pain. For three months, students at Falmouth High bought her story and sold her the drugs she said she needed.

But yesterday, the real story emerged.

The girl who some students yesterday said they knew as Keane was in fact a fresh-faced cop whose three months at Falmouth High School culminated before the start of classes yesterday when nine teenage boys were led out of their homes in handcuffs on charges of selling her marijuana and ecstasy.

So just imagine that you're a male high school senior. You meet an attractive girl who's new to the school who pays attention to you and tells you about the problems she has and that she wants to buy some marijuana. You've never done drugs yourself (or have maybe tried it once or twice), but you know who to ask to get some. You do it, and now you're a criminal.



The sad thing is that these kinds of undercover police tactics have existed for years at predominantly black high schools through the United States. Just read the story of JamesOn Curry, who lost his basketball scholarship at the University of North Carolina because of an undercover cop who pressured him into getting marijuana for him. This kind of policing has been no small part of the alarming incarceration rate of young black males. It's sad that it had to happen in a Cape Cod beach town before we see it on Headline News, but lets use this opportunity to ask ourselves if this is really the best way to fight drug use among teens.