APP.COM - High time to change strategy in drug war

As a child growing up in a period when the Jim Crow South was under increasing pressure from Northern moralists and the Eastern media, I was always curious why the moral leadership of the South -- such as local ministers and business leaders -- did not step up to the plate and offer the black population its due: voting rights, desegregation of truly public places such as the government schools, and peace from the tyranny of the local police powers.

Similar moral issues are involved in the "war on drugs." Why is it that local religious leaders, the press -- which is normally so willing to being "progressive", and others in position to have influence -- and the obligation -- are unwilling to point out the corrupt, insidious, and ugly nature of this program? It is an obvious fact that the feds are corrupting the local police authorities with their federal grants and so forth; the effect is to turn the local police into a subsidiary of the federal authorities. Where is the opposition from the local leadership? Is it not clearly wrong to lock up non-rights-violating persons? Why is moral blindness such that otherwise reasonable people claim to think to the contrary?