Charles, it is not just "drugs" but what kind of drugs that matter. I am surprised that you swallow that war on drugs tripe that all illegal drugs are dangerous. Weed is less dangerous to the smoker's health and his/her surrounding safety than "legal" substances such as alcohol, coffee, or cigs. Heroin and opiates are not very dangerous either, just extremely addictive - but you can be addicted to them for two-three years and still fully recover with no damage to your system whatsover, - which cannot be said about alcohol. On the other hand, coke is extremely dangerous - just two weeks ago a crazed coke addict in my neighborhood killed his girlfriend by slittling her throat with a broken bottle. His reasosn? She refused to give him money for dope.
You may disagree with me, but coke is literally destroying our communities, and disproportionally more so black communities than white communities - so the zero tolerance policy here (even if it ruffles some innocent feathers here and there) is well warranted. It is as if someone denounced th eunderground railroad on the grounds that all laws (even unjust ones) should be obeyed. Moreover, being stopped and frisked is a small price to pay fro coke eradication vis a vis damage created by drug trade (300+ deaths in Baltimore alone last year). My kid went through it - not pleasant when the cops make you stand in your underwear while going through your stuff - but he & his buddies brought it upon themselves by provocative look and behavior. I told him,if you want to look like a gangster, don't complain if the cops take you for the real thing.
Another point - somebody on this list pointed out that cops chasing after small time users is their way to avoid dealing with more serious crimes. Perhaps. But there is no such thing as "born criminals" - crime is a path that starts with small things and leads to more serious things because of social and emotional rewards the prepetrators derive from their criminal careers. Being "tough and mean" earnes peer respect, reinforces delinquent behavior, and often leads to competition who is "tougher and meaner" (read Jack Katz, _Seductions of crime_ which is realy revealing about "social origins" of criminal motivation). Even the lone killers, such as Dahmer, that piece of lawyer shit who just shot 5 people in Pittsburgh (what's his face?) or the Columbine boys do not spring out of nowhere - they either practice what they want to do (e.g. on animals), make other preparations, or at least they say what they plan to do.
The bottom line is that there are plenty of signs warning about more serious crimes. The point is to correctly identify those signs and prevent the potential perpetrator from doing more serious crimes - even if that measn reasonable limits on that hackneyed bourgeois claim of "personal freedom." Im pretty sure that personal freedom does not mean anything for people being viciously killed or injured by criminals.
wojtek