Last week, I ran an excerpt from Dan Baum’s essential book Smoke and Mirrors about how the death of Len Bias led to the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, what might be the most militant, draconian crime-fighting bill ever passed by Congress. Much of Baum’s book is told from the point of view of Eric Sterling, a congressional staffer who helped write most of the 1980s drug laws, but who has since become a vocal opponent of those laws.

Yesterday, Sterling and Julie Stewart from Families Against Mandatory Minimums had an op-ed in the Washington Post arguing that, sadly, the legacy of Bias’s death hasn’t an end to the use of illicit drugs, but an exploding prison population, violence, and increased drug use — all caused not by Bias’s death, but by Congress’s overreation to it.

Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page covered similar ground this week.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 25th, 2006 at 9:49 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.