editorial comment Indeed....

With remarks to a civic group in Enfield recently, Superior Court Judge Howard Scheinblum engaged in what is seldom forgiven in Connecticut's public life: candor.

The judge asserted what can neither be denied nor acknowledged -- that public policy on drugs doesn't work. Speaking from his 15 years of experience on the bench, Scheinblum estimated 90 percent of criminal cases in Connecticut are connected in some way to the pursuit of illegal drugs, and he asserted that society would be far better off to let users of such drugs obtain them by prescription and to be charged for them according to their ability to pay.

That is, the judge said, drugs are not the problem, not the cause of thievery, robbery, and violence; drug prohibitionis.

If now-illegal drugs were available to addicts by prescription, many addicts would waste their lives away, but at least they wouldn't be robbing and killing others for money for drugs, and drug dealers would not be killing others over drug sales territory. Most violent crime would disappear.

Sensible as this might seem -- after all, despite drug criminalization, illegal drugs are more prevalent than ever; the legal drugs, alcohol and tobacco, claim so many more lives than illegal drugs; and who really cares how people waste their lives as long as they don't hurt others?-- the judge said any departure from futile drug policy would be blocked by "vested interests." For if drug prohibition crime ended, the judge said, Connecticut wouldn't need as many police, courts, prisons, drug programs and so forth.

Judge Scheinblum's analysis only seems cynical, but it has been borne out by the political action of Connecticut's prison guards union against the transfer of inmates to prisons out of state where costs of imprisonment are lower. The families of prisoners have protested as well, but the union didn't care about prisoner welfare; it cared about losing business.

The judge's analysis also has been borne out by state government's refusal to audit drug-criminalization policy. The policy's failure is obvious, but politicians are paralyzed by fear of the policy's financial beneficiaries and the fear of asking the public to challenge old but faulty assumptions.

As with many other policies in Connecticut that are never evaluated for results, the "war on drugs" is not meant to be won; it is meant to be waged. Even its racially disproportionate casualties are not enough to prompt politicians to engage in candor like Judge Scheinblum's. Indeed, Connecticut's politicians are happy to put half the state's young men of color in prison if the other half can be hired to guard them.


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Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision on prayer in public schools in 1963 right-wing propaganda has complained God has been banished from the classroom. This complaint has been cynical nonsense, since students have remained free to pray in school on their own, the court having construed the First Amendment narrowly, holding it prohibits only school-sponsoredprayer and reverentialBible reading.

But now the principal of South Windsor High School has fulfilled the right-wing caricature. He has banned students from quoting the Bible -- banned them from wearing T-shirts inscribed with biblical injunctions against homosexuality.

Homosexuality, the principal has decided, must not be criticized at school, lest some students get too upset. In this age of political correctness, the illegitimate successor to liberalism, getting indignant trumps everything, and whoever gets most indignant wins.

Yes, biblical verses may be construed as attacks on homosexuals. But the Bible is full of things that may be construed as attacks on particular people -- Philistines, Egyptians, Jews, Romans, tax collectors, bankers, currency traders, heretics and non-believers. The Bible ranges from the sublime, poetic and historic to the pedantic, inscrutable and superstitious. It is the cause of myriad controversies. And it is the basis of Western Civilization.

So, quite apart from the rights of students to peaceful expression, what has become of basic education at South Windsor High?

It seems that educators there have discarded it in favor of propaganda and suppression. Those things are so much easier than having it out in the open about homosexuality and the Bible, so much easier than the candor of a fair intellectual fight.

But a fair fight would be the highest education. It would require critical examination of the Bible, the secular world and their conflicts. It would require students to drop their sloganeering and smug posturing and instead gather evidence, assemble arguments and defend positions. It would require them to think.

It would challenge and engage them, probably more than ever before in school.

South Windsor High School's principal, along with the town's school superintendent and school board, which have approved his suppression of this controversy, can't handle that. No, the indignation standard is school system policy now, and there's no limit to what can be suppressed.

Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester.

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