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Since my experience with the so called super virus and my following medical problems, I have received a number of e mails from people who find themselves in similar circumstances.I refer to the troubl

Apparently, there aren’t enough unsolved crimes to keep Albuquerque police busy:

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - The Albuquerque Police Department has turned to the want ads for snitches.

An ad this week in the alternative newspaper The Alibi asks "people who hang out with crooks" to do part-time work for the police.

It reads in part: "Make some extra cash! Drug use and criminal record OK." [MSNBC]

Does this sound at all like something that’s going to make Albuquerque a better place? It’s absurd on its face, a completely sick feeding frenzy mentality that goes a long way towards explaining how we’ve become the world’s leading jailer. The very fact that police are actively seeking sketchy people to rat out other sketchy people shows you exactly how useless and cyclical much of our criminal law-enforcement activity has become.

Worse yet, this is exactly how you incentivize bad people to create bad situations. This is how innocent people’s addresses end up on drug warrants, only to have their doors smashed in, their dogs shot, and their peaceful lives forever tarnished by the long, infinitely clumsy arm of the law. This is how police become detached from morality, collaborating with criminals to create crime.

If there is such a thing as "sending the wrong message" in the war on drugs, it isn’t marijuana reform, it’s police offering people money to take drugs and commit crimes.

I sent this to Barach Obama at change.gov, since he claims to be looking for good suggestions. If anyone else has sent anything, you know this is just a way to harvest email addresses on their part.

Time provides a vivid description of the extent of police corruption in the Mexican drug war:

Few rituals are more futile than the "housecleaning" of Mexico's police forces. So deep, broad and brazen is cop corruption south of the border that removing it makes eradicating rats from landfills look easy. Mexico stages quasi-annual purges of officers high and low — last year it was 284 federal police commanders — and yet every year it seems to find itself with an even more criminal constabulary. This year's scandals, however, are especially appalling…

Time then proceeds to recommend giving Mexico lots of money and technical assistance, while getting Americans to stop snorting so much damn cocaine all the time. It’s really just amazing that any thinking, breathing individual can even look at this and still prescribe 'trying harder' as the solution to this spiraling fiasco. Stop doing that. Just stop. You’re not helping.

Everyone knows pushing a few dollars around won’t do anything. We all know that, so shut up. Just admit you don’t know what to do…or call one of the many reformers who can provide a new perspective. But stop saying the same stupid crap over and over. It’s boring. And it’s wrong.

Here’s an excellent column in The Washington Post calling on Obama to cut funding for our failed drug eradication programs in South America. I haven’t heard anything positive from Obama regarding international drug policy, so I’m glad to see these ideas in The Post, where he might see them.

My name is Cody Allen Burns. I am a junior at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.