Check out the area around Madison St. McDonald's on 1st hill.
It is way beyond obvious street dealing.
Some days you have to run the gamut to get by druggies.

Do they also take interns at the Stranger as a diversion too?

Just asking.

All but a few over-50 people want to end this Drug War farce over MJ and sell it in stores like we do the far more addictive tobacco and beer/wine.

The Drug War isn't intended to stop drug use. It's sole purpose is to feed the American public's craving to deliver punishment. It doesn't even matter if they get the right people or not, as long as somebody's being punished. Hard.

If it were JUST marijuana we were talking about here Will, that would be one thing, but, in my neighborhood at least, you got's crack, meth, and probably heroin all being sold on the street, none of which are going to be decriminalized or legalized anytime soon, probably never. So, this makes a lot more sense to me than simply locking up the same user/dealers over and over again.

@3 - no, it's to employ all the people that were Revenuers, Fnarf. Try cracking open a history book.

So the new strategy seems to be that when the threat of prison doesn't stop someone from selling, asking them to stop will. How does that work?

Our group provides services for these folks (the drug dealers). I'm really curious how the legal stuff will go down. Arresting entrenched dealers doesn't eliminate the illegal activity. Would trying to work *with* them help reduce the overall negative impact they have on the community?

This sounds like David Kennedy's Ceasefire strategy. Here's a summary of it from a few years ago: http://www.newsweek.com/id/182534

The New Yorker had a great article on it in June: http://www.macmahan.com/documents/Seabro…

And Mark Kleiman has a new book on this approach in general, "When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment."

It's like a battle between economics and sociology. Incentives (prison) has failed, so maybe bolstering norms will work.

Meanwhile, if you jaywalk, drive down Third Avenue at the wrong time of day, walk your dog without a leash in the wrong park, burn a log in your fireplace on the wrong day, do a lap dance within five feet of a customer, or celebrate with a cold beer your return from Iraq as an intact 20-year old, you can expect a stiff fine. Perhaps the police should be suggesting to such enemies of the state that open market dealing of heroin would be a more productive and less penalized activity.

The police wave their sticks when they know they can gouge you for breaking the law, or when one of those idle 'he's got a gun' calls allows 30 of their squad cars to pool at a given location for several hours and do nothing ERRR stand off.

It's when things get real dangerous that they're nowhere to be found.

The real answer is to get serious about the pot decriminalization and just let the pot offenses off the hook. Then get serious about filling in that extra space with all the chronic thieves and violent offenders that are causing the actual crime problems in this city.

@7, to find out how this works read the New Yorker article at the link posted by @9.

The best way to stop street dealing is to stop busting any kind of drug deal done discreetly in a bar or something. If there's a place where dealers and users can do business without being fucked with, they will go there.

If you're thinking of ways to control peoples' behavior, you should move to North Korea and stay there.

What I mean is, if you accept the premise that the state has a legitimate interest in what people inject, snort or stick up their asses, and you look for a less destructive way to force good choices on people, you're looking for a contradiction.

14. Wouldn't quite work because bars are private businesses and there's still a lot more hassle involved (don't catch the bartender's attention or any patrons' attention; you'd probably have to buy a drink and be sure you can find a quiet, dimly lit alcove) than dealing on the street.