The War on Drugs claimed yet another victim last week when Wake County Alcoholic Beverage Control investigators conducted a drug raid that left one man dead and another wounded.

The deceased was a Texas fugitive by the name of Stephen Scott Thornton; a man who was wanted on federal drug charges for growing marijuana, which he claimed was for medicinal purposes. Thornton had been living in Raleigh for the last several years under an assumed name.

Acting upon a two-month investigation, Wake County ABC agents raided Thornton’s home for marijuana plants, where a resulting shoot-out left Thornton dead and a sheriff’s deputy wounded in the leg according to Wake County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Phyllis Stephens.

While none would argue that Thornton’s actions weren’t illegal, a question arises: at what cost should we continue to enforce the current laws? The fact is, the War on Drugs has already taken countless lives — those of police officers, innocent civilians caught in the crossfire and other unsavory individuals whose crimes still hardly merit the death penalty.

All the while thousands more lives are ruined — particularly those of college students, who are instantly disqualified from federal student aid if they are convicted of a drug-related offense. Ironically, even crimes like rape and murder manage not to warrant this level of attention.

To be sure, Thornton hardly comes across as a pitiable character. The incidents that lead to his first conviction in Texas began with Thornton brandishing a gun on a neighbor who had come to confront him about a violent outburst involving the neighbor’s dog. When police came to investigate the gun incident, they found dozens of marijuana plants inside Thornton’s home.

Thornton pled guilty to charges of illegal possession of marijuana with intent to distribute, yet fled the state while awaiting sentencing.

Compounding this is the fact that Thornton shot at the officers serving the warrant on his home so Thornton’s death is not likely to evoke much sympathy. Yet the question remains — despite Thornton being by all accounts a bad neighbor and potentially a menace, did his crimes warrant death?

Clearly, Thornton sealed his fate when he fired upon one of the officers serving the warrant, and the consequences he paid for it were most severe. However, none of this would have happened were we not stuck with a legal regime which prohibits substances such as marijuana to begin with.

Critics immediately point to the fact that it was marijuana that was responsible for Thornton’s unfortunate end, as well as that of countless others. Yet this same flawed logic would just as soon blame alcohol for Al Capone’s rise, rather than the real culprit: the Prohibition regime which allowed him to monopolize the bootlegging market and fund his criminal empire. Without Prohibition, bootlegging no longer proved to be a profitable criminal enterprise – and the rest is history.

Thus at some point the question must be asked – at what cost do we continue to wage the War on Drugs? While supporters would point to the negative social consequences from the abuse of drugs like marijuana, how many lives — both those taken and those destroyed — do these averted harms possibly justify?

Tell Steve what you think about the War on Drugs at viewpoint@technicianonline.com