WASHINGTON — A woman who injured nearly 50 people when she plowed her car through a street festival while high on crack cocaine was sentenced to 25 years in prison Tuesday.
If drugs only hurt the person using them, it wouldn't be a problem. But anyone who thinks that the only person getting harmed is the user needs to re-evaluate exactly what happens to the rest of society when a a person becomes a drug addict.
According to prosecutors, Bell had gone on a crack binge in the 24 hours before the street festival, consuming $700 worth of the drug. She then placed her 7-year-old daughter in the back seat of her station wagon and headed toward Unifest, a church-sponsored street festival in
At speeds of up to 70 mph, Bell made two passes through the area, knocking people to the side and under the car. A police officer who tried to pull her over said she was laughing as she drove. Her station wagon was finally stopped when officers crashed their scooters under the vehicle and a man jumped through the window to put the transmission in park.
You cannot tell me that a drug user only harms themself. The damage done by addicts to the rest of society runs pretty deep, from the economic cost of treating the addicts, to the physical cost done by the addicts, the the damage that cannot have a price put on it done to the people who have to deal with the addict day in and day out. And while the War on (some) Drugs has been a resounding failure, I can't in good faith say that we should just legalize everything, because that would create an entirely new set of problems that I think would be worse than the ones we're dealing with now.
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