They 'Shut Down' the Drug House, But the Problem Remains

    You can concentrate on numbers or you can concentrate on results. And, when I say numbers, I mean meaningless numbers, number you generate though they don't really solve the problem.

   Take meth houses. If you clean the house out, getting rid of drug paraphernalia, easing the offending renters out, and getting the property to test negative, you can say, "Look, we shut down this meth house." You can count all the meth houses you have shut down and proclaim what a good job you are doing.

  But, are you. Often the penalty for drugs is a relative slap on the hand.  We've gone through a stage where we've acknowledged throwing everyone in jail for drugs doesn't work and just overburdens our prisons. There's no room to lock up the real criminals if the jails are filled with harmless drug users, goes the argument. 

   So, we let them off easy.

   But, the police can still say they shut down a meth house. Th meth is gone, the paraphernalia gone. The criminals are off the property. The police usually don't actually test for meth in the house before closing it for cleaning (if paraphernalia is found and a confession is offered, that's all they need) , but they do test after the cleaning. So, they can say what was a meth house before, now tests negative.

  Chock up a number, but have you really accomplished anything? The drug user simply moves to another location. You haven't solved the problem, you've simply relocated it. Even if you do get the drug user on a probation program, so he or she must test for drugs on an on-going basis, that won't come until after it's worked its way through the court system.

  And, supposing they do test positive and you send them to jail for three or four months, they spend their time in jail, then are back on the streets.