Mt. Morris resident accused of selling heroin in Le Roy

It's the same guy. Check the ears, mouth and lines in the forehead. He looks slightly less wasted and a whole lot more threatening now though. Nice tats too, if you fill the skull in orange and make the dagger purple with a red handle and then get the barbed wire colored Pink Gorilla Pink, it will be rockin' dude.
Only 30 and on the road to ruin, but it's not too late to turn things around. Some people can, some people can't.

If his first prison stint was in 2000, he would have been 19. He may be the kind of person who just doesn't get it, no many how many opportunities he's given.

My guess is they caught him dealing drugs in Mill Street Park. I really think they should have a cop sitting there 24/7. It's getting horrible there!

One thing about drugs, you can't sell to anyone who doesn't WANT them. Drugs would cause far fewer problems if people didn't have to rob and steal to support their habits. I say give potheads, alcoholics and addicts whatever they want. The problem will solve itself and the drug cartels will vanish like a fart in a hurricane.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-narco-contract-2011…

Very poetic, Doug. Picturesque, too.

Bille, I just think that whatever we're doing now and have been doing for the past 50 years or so simply is not working. The drug problem parallels alcohol prohibition in so many ways. When prohibition was active, there were alcohol gangs and alcohol related crimes that matched the drug wars. The vast majority of the alcohol was supplied by Canada where it was still legal. It seems as though Canada used to be Mexico in terms of meeting the needs of supply and demand for what people want. Now that booze is legal, it's easy to regulate and control. So many people say if drugs were legal, we'd live in a wasteland of drug addicts. My answer is that booze is legal and not everyone is a drunken alcoholic. Drugs are easy to get now and if someone wanted to do drugs, they could. It's a choice.

Doug, I agree 1000 percent!!!

When I was in high school drug sellers were universally referred to as "pushers". The theory was that kids wouldn't be using drugs except for pushers at the edge of the school yard who would urge them on by giving free samples, get the users hooked and then have a permanent customer base. I'm not saying that Doug's approach is right or wrong, only that it is so opposite of what everyone seemed to believe in the 1970's. The idea was that if you busted the pushers there wouldn't be a problem anymore. My school even had a community-supported a snitch and reward program called "Bust a Pusher", or BAP for short.

It's obviously more complicated than that, of course, but more likely that people selling drugs do so because they see a demand for the product.

I think that the Rockefeller drug laws (the ultimate BAP approach, now somewhat modified) had one major outcome, which is filling the prisons. I'm not sure that public demand for the product has ever been affected by incarceration. So we have a huge prison population in New York (paid for with your taxes) and drugs are still being sold on the street in places like LeRoy. But decriminalization of drug use along with the institution of widespread treatment programs has a long way to go before it catches on, because of the same sentiment that created "Bust a Pusher" - the idea that while we might accept the libertarian idea of adults freely choosing to use drugs/alcohol and having to bear the consequences themselves (so-called victimless crime), when the use involves children (especially yours and mine) the libertarian framework breaks down because we find it hard to let children make choices while under 25/21/16/13 years (take your pick) that may ruin their lives.

Doug.....while I seem to be correcting an error you have it actually supports your argument even further.

Being interested in maritime subjects and history because of my love for scuba diving I have been exposed to some facts that contradict your conclusion about Canada and Prohibition.

Canada had Prohibition laws on the books at about the same time we did, however they were loosely enforced as the way of life up there in those times and especially in the widely underdeveloped interior were condusive to looking the other way. However it was legal to make alcohol and export it. Alot of the "legal" shipping was supposedly destined for european and mexican ports but was dropped off along the way. But the perception that alcohol was legal in Canada during prohibition was not entirely true. Like some of the laws we have here like jaywalking, in the books it is not legal but it was something loosely enforced. Just really a law passed to settle some of the canadian temperance groups there that were in tight with our own temperance groups here in the USofA.... Just a little factoid for you :)

As for the current climate there are a few lessons we could take from the prohibition of alcohol. As pointed out if you make it legal then prices drop it no longer becomes forbidden fruit and that lessens the popularity for some. The wasteland of users that they say we may get.... well that in of itself would be self limiting as intense use would kill off the habitual users. We have laws in place for dealing with legal drugs like cough syrup and prescribed meds that filter (not always sucessfully) out use in areas that could constitute a danger. And we could still make drugtesting legal for employment for jobs where it could be a threat to safety.

However most arent willing to take those steps as the current mindsets are to ingrained in the public, and lawyers and such would make millions and muck up the whole thing with things like discrimination suits against users and such. So while it could work there are so many practical reasons it still wont due to the nature of ourselves and our society.

Kyle, you're absolutely correct to a greater degree:

Alcohol production in Ontario

Despite having laws until 1927 against the consumption of alcohol in Ontario, the government allowed numerous exceptions. Wineries were exempted from closure, and various breweries and distilleries remained open for the export market.[7] The fact that the "export" might be by small boat from Windsor across the river to Detroit only helped the province's economy.

The Ontario Temperance Act ended prohibition in 1927 and created the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, permitting the sale of liquor in the province though under heavy regulation. Prohibition was current from 1920 to 1933 in the United States.

I remember seeing a documentary about rum-running from Canada to the states, popular in the Detroit area but it also happened along the St Lawrence river as it was easy to hide in the chain of the thousand islands.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_Canada

Of course, most of the prohibition laws were brought about by the moral majority that still believe they have the right to tell everyone else how they should live their life:

In the early twentieth century, much of the impetus for the prohibition movement in the Nordic countries and North America came from Protestant wariness of alcohol.

The first half of the 20th century saw periods of prohibition of alcoholic beverages in several countries:

1907 to 1948 in Prince Edward Island, but for much shorter periods in other provinces in Canada

1914 to 1925 in Russia and the Soviet Union

1915 to 1922 in Iceland (though beer was still prohibited until 1989)

1916 to 1927 in Norway (fortified wine and beer also prohibited from 1917 to 1923)

1919 in Hungary (in the Hungarian Soviet Republic, March 21 to August 1; called szesztilalom)

1919 to 1932 in Finland (called kieltolaki, "ban law")

1920 to 1933 in the United States

Jim, the majority of people that I knew who sold drugs did so to support their own habit. (I do not any longer know anyone who sells or supplies drugs of any kind. During the early 80's I might have known one or two people who did.) With that disclaimer out of the way, the idea that there's such a thing as a pusher is absurd.

The only difference between a huge segment of society that live their life as productive citizens with jobs, family, friends and other people who are in prison for drugs is that the people in prison got caught.

I think we all know people who've done drugs or are currently doing drugs and for the most part, I can't see them deserving of prison. Not for the drug part, anyway. If they're stealing, breaking into businesses, driving under the influence, that's the real crime.

Alcohol consumption in this country has remained fairly stable since 1939- ranging from 58% to 67% of the population.

One cannot legislate human nature. Civilization has been seeking out recreational chemicals from time immemorial. Those who choose to 'catch a buzz' will do so whether the chemical vehicle is pot, ethyl alcohol or peyote. Alcohol statistics seem to confirm that legality does not play a major role in determining usage.

There are two insidious side-effects to criminalizing drugs: 1) illegal drug trade precipitates violent crime and 2) illegal drug trade produces dangerous and toxic products.

One might conclude that the side-effects are a form of Darwinian or Karmic culling of the herd, but we all pay the price: increased healthcare costs, increased law enforcement costs, increased justice/incarceration costs and increased insurance costs.

"...drug arrests have more than tripled in the last 25 years, reaching a record of some 1.8 million in 2005 (Mauer & King 2007); in 1980 there were 581,000 drug law arrests, climbing to a total of 1,846,351 in 2005. 81.7% of these arrests were for possession offences, and 42.6% of arrests were for marijuana offences. Of the 450,000 increase in drug arrests during the period 1990-2002, 82% of the growth was for marijuana, with 79% for marijuana possession alone..."

"US Federal spending on drug control in 2002 totaled $18.822 billion, over half of which was spent on domestic law enforcement."

"According to the calculations of Harvard Economist Jeffrey Miron (Miron, 2008), the sum of $12.3 billion was spent keeping State and Federal drug law offenders in prison in 2006."

THE INCARCERATION OF DRUG OFFENDERS:
An Overview
THE BECKLEY FOUNDATION
DRUG POLICY PROGRAMME
REPORT SIXTEEN
Dave Bewley-Taylor, Chris Hallam, Rob Allen
MARCH 2009

"Likewise, Lengyel (2006) estimated that New York
state received only about $0.29 in benefits for
every $1 of cost associated with the incarceration
of drug offenders released in 2005."

"Ettner et al. (2005) found that
treatment providedmore than $7 in benefits for
every $1 of cost in a cost-benefit study of
treatment programs in 13 California counties."

Correctional and Sentencing Reform
for Drug Offenders
Research Findings on Selected Key Issues
September 2009
Roger Przybylski
RKC Group
Lakewood, Colorado

"The average processing cost for all felonies in 1987, following the elements of cost from investigation and
arrest, through “screening and prefiling”, to trial, culminating in sentencing, amounted to $33,945 (1994: table 16)."

Department of Research & Evaluation Services
Alliance for Children and Families
September 2006
Sponsored by:
Healing the Divide
New York, NY

There are over 15,500 drug offenders locked up in New York State prisons, representing nearly 38% of the prison population and costing New Yorkers $550 million each year.

C.M. Barons, Thank you.

I dove quite a bit in the St Lawrence river for years. I happen to know several places where wrecks from as far back as the French and Indian war are located. I have somewhere in my storage unit a torpedo bottle that dates back to 1780's with what appears to be a lemony drink popular back then. As well as two bottles of home brewed rum that I found relatively near to a rum runner's wreck just over the canadian border near brockville. They are still sealed and look like coffee now but it's fun to have a little bit of history in my hands now and then. It's the seed that sparks the quest to research and learn such things and opens doors to factual history that often isnt represented in today's common knowledge.

CM of those in prison I wonder how much drug use they still practice while on the inside. I have never researched it but it my general understanding that there is a pretty active and robust drug culture in prison, sometimes even more so than outside.

Kyle: "it's fun to have a little bit of history in my hands now and then. It's the seed that sparks the quest to research and learn such things and opens doors to factual history that often isnt represented in today's common knowledge."

Man, you can say that again. In fact you just did!

Hell, there are still "Dry" towns in NY State as well as in other states.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dry_communities_by_U.S._state

New York

In 2007, referendums were placed on the ballots of two dry and two moist towns, asking the voters to allow the towns to become "wet". Potter, which was previously dry, voted to go wet. Mina, which was moist, voted to go wet. Bovina, which was previously dry, voted to become moist. Franklin, which was moist, voted to stay moist.[16]
After this latest vote, there remain ten towns in New York state that are completely dry, including Neversink, established 1798, in Sullivan County.[17]
The other "dry" towns in the state are: Caneadea in Allegany County, Clymer and Harmony in Chautauqua County, Lapeer in Cortland County, Orwell in Oswego County, Fremont and Jasper in Steuben County, Berkshire in Tioga County and Argyle in Washington County.[16]
The town of West Almond, New York does not allow off-premises consumption, while the towns of Freedom, Hartford, Franklin, Seneca, Caton, Rathbone, Newark Valley, Butler, Rose, Pike, Wethersfield and Middlesex do not allow on-premises consumption.[16]
The towns of Essex, Bovina, Gorham, Richford, Orangeville, and Barrington do not allow on-premises consumption except in year-round hotels.[16

A bag of weed, a bag of weed. Everything is better with a bag of weed. I'd rather sit with twenty smokers than one angry drunk. B.K.

It's the same guy just look at his ears.