TEENAGE NARCOTIC TRAFFIC By ROGER ARNEBERGH City Attorney, Los Angeles
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The narcotics situation is very bad! When I was a boy in school, dope was unheard of; now we have addicts, peddlers and even dope “pushers” in our junior high and high schools. For example, the arrests by the Los An geles Police Department alone, of juveniles, for narcotic violations show the tremendous increase: almost 900% in seven years; and that, of course, is only the arrests. There were many others that we did not arrest, or catch. Nation-wide, the picture is equally bad, or possibly even worse. Recently the situation being as bad as it is, the United States Senate conducted an in vestigation through judiciary com mittees. They conducted many hear ings, interviewed hundreds of wit nesses, questioned over a thousand chiefs of police; and so on. Their find ings showed that the United States has more narcotic addicts, both in total numbers and population-wise, than any other country in the West ern world. The figure of at least 60,- 000 addicts today is far more than the number reported by any other West ern nation. In fact, if the reports of other nations to the United Nations on narcotics is correct, our country has more drug addicts than all other Western nations combined. The names of new addicts are being reported at the rate of over one thou sand per month; and 13% of all addicts in this country are less than twenty-one years of age. In spite of the fact that federal officials have done all within their power under present handicaps and with limited personnel, and local officials have done all that they could do, the illicit drug traffic has trebeled in the United States since World War II. At the present time the incidence is about one to every three thousand persons, (that is the addicts), with the average of about 2,000 persons arrested each month in the United States on nar cotic charges. It (the narcotics traffic) now costs over $500.000,000 per year, to say nothing of the human lives shortened or destroyed and the many crimes that result from the traffic. Our fed eral, state and local enforcement offi cials testified that 50% or more of all crimes committted in the larger cities are attributable to narcotics addiction and the illicit drug traffic. In addition to the direct narcotic law violations, drug addicts are responsible for a large majority of the b u r g l a r i e s , thefts, prostitutions and other offenses to support their drug habit (costing
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from $10 to $1000 a day). Addicts also have been associated with crimes of violence, such as murder, armed rob bery, safe-cracking and rape. We are doing all that we can, from the enforcement level, but we have several problems. The Senate Com mittee recommends that, first: the minimum and maximum penalties be increased for types of violations of narcotic laws, with greatly increased penalties for sales to juveniles; that heroin, which is the most deadly of all narcotic drugs and which is used by 80% of all drug addicts in the United States, should be completely outlawed. Furthermore, smugglers and peddlers are in fact selling mur der, robbery and rape, and should be dealt with accordingly. Their offense is human destruction as surely as that of the murderer; in truth and in fact, it is murder on the installment plan, leading not only to the final loss of life of the one involved, but to the others who acquire this con- tageous infection through association with the original victim. We have had cases where one man has started dozens, in fact as many as forty or fifty known cases of addiction, just by peddling it through schools. What causes these young people to indulge in this self-destroying mania? I think it is a combination of sev eral things. First of all, I think many of our youngsters today have a sense of futility in their lives; their lives lack direction, they are restless, they have misdirected energy, and they need something to fill the vacancy in their lives, to give their lives a pur pose and a direction. In short, they need God; they need to have Christ as their personal Saviour. Public au thorities do not have trouble or prob lems with juveniles who are born- again Christians.
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