by B | POINT: Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?
Under liberal premises, Marcus Mattingly, a Tufts senior and DU brother facing allegations of trafficking cocaine, should be regarded as a tragic entrepreneur who committed a victimless crime. Common sense and reason dictate otherwise.
Cocaine is a powerful and destructive drug. It is not dealt on college campuses in a manner that treats medical conditions or promotes responsible recreation. Mattingly, a 23-year-old with significant post-secondary education, cannot claim ignorance to the effects of his product’s sales. Neglecting for a moment the disastrous mental and physiological consequences of using cocaine, Mattingly must have fully understood how he jeopardized his and the community’s safety by trafficking drugs on campus. In fact, as recently as 2001 there was a robbery by gunpoint in South Hall of two students who kept and sold large quantities of marijuana. The correlation between drugs and crime is significant and causal. It is a risk of which any drug dealer must be aware.
Narcotics trafficking usually involves spreading word to increase sales. Therefore, the availability of cocaine at DU is not news for most Tufts students. Unfortunately, felons have only to keep their ears open to learn where large amounts of drugs and money are stashed—in this case, the heart of campus. This danger, which threatens the life and liberty of the community, was of little concern to Mattingly. Perhaps more troubling is how Tufts heard rumors of a problem but did not investigate it—even though such an investigation might have saved Mattingly from state prosecution and protected the University’s image. On a campus where students are prohibited from possessing “dangerous” items like pepper spray, students reasonably expect frat houses to not be run as crack houses.
It is comical that Tufts liberals would praise Marcus Mattingly for his enterprising spirit in the face of an “unjust War on Drugs.” Perhaps The Apprentice has invigorated Tufts students’ admiration for business heroics, but this student did not combat a great injustice. Even by progressive standards he is an unscrupulous businessman. Had Mattingly distributed Nike sneakers from his DU bedroom, liberals would have staged a protest for his role in destroying the environment and promoting child labor. Yet when shoes are replaced with mind-altering drugs, liberals find a way to look past these concerns and become Adam Smith capitalists. If he is guilty, Mattingly not only consciously invited criminal elements to Tufts (which pose more threat to health than dirty air), but also supported underworld cocaine growers, whose record on human rights leaves much to be desired. It is unlikely Marcus deeply cared about the people of South America who face a civil war funded by cocaine and purchased only “fair trade” product. Liberals claim to be deeply moved by issues that affect the third world and the underprivileged, but when it comes to cocaine, it’s “hands off my snuff.” The hypocrisy in this regard is striking.
Mattingly was trading in the misery of others and will probably be found guilty for his crime. Luckily for him, if he is like most other Tufts students, his upper-class parents will swoop in with a high-priced lawyer to negotiate his sentence down to community service. For all the griping about discrimination and unfair treatment of the disadvantaged, the Tufts community is always willing to pull the strings of privilege to get ahead.
Trafficking and consumption are two very different activities in the drug world, but Mattingly’s recent case has drawn attention to the latter issue as well. Drug legalization advocates argue that trafficking would give way to market economy in some hypothetical libertarian society (eliminating the dangerous criminal element associated with Mattingly’s enterprise). This is a serious theory to consider, but one should recognize its precedent. The logic for legalization of powerful narcotics contends that the government should not interfere with citizens whose actions do not directly infringe upon their neighbor’s life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness. Of course, the indirect effect on personal liberty is evident to anyone who has ever lived in fear in a housing project with widespread drug use. But in the theoretical realm where only direct infringement is illegal, order is thrown out the window. Drunk drivers have done nothing wrong… yet. Neither have owners of .50 caliber machine guns who are tripping on acid (in the privacy of their own home). Responsible citizens who care about individual rights cannot completely ignore the value of social order in an attempt to justify poor decisions regarding drug use.
While one might not necessarily endorse all of the methods employed in the War on Drugs, the alternative—to flood the streets with heroin and coke—would be a catastrophic failure for the nation. Taking Marcus Mattingly off the streets was therefore a step in the right direction.
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