Idiotic legislation of the week

And the award goes to New Mexico, Rep. Steve Pearce, and his "CLEAN TOWN Act" , a/k/a HR 6155, the "Communities Leading Everyone Away From Narcotics through Online Warning Notification Act." Pearce seeks to create a "drug offender registry" based on the sex offender registry model. Thankfully, so far he failed to find any co-sponsors for this folly.

As, Stop the Drug War points out in a subsequent editorial, "this registry is effectively a taxpayer-subsidized advertising campaign supporting drug dealing." Billed, as is usual, as a way to "protect" our children against drugs, what it would do is create a searchable database for kids who are looking to find a dealer.

As the editorital points out, most kids get involved in drug use through their friends, not by dealers hanging out in the schoolyard and they buy from each other. Giving them access to a database of the names and addresses of people who might be able to hook them up with better drugs at lower prices seems to me to be an exceptionally foolish idea.