ABOUT 36 years ago, when I first opened my business in Montego Bay, I was located downtown on lower Union Street.

I had enough money either to rent a shop or rent somewhere to live, so I chose to rent the shop.

Because of this decision I was forced to sleep in the shop. This, of course, was not allowed by the landlord, so I had to rise very early before the other tenants in the building came and realised that I was, in fact, living in the shop.There was no space to put a bed, so you had to rough it on the floor.

This lasted well enough until I came second in a fight with a “forty leg” that looked like he was on steroids.

I then started to stay at some of the short-time motels to catch some rest. This didn’t work well as, after three hours, they tell you to leave as the purpose of their facility is not to sleep at all, but to engage in other activities that three hours are more than enough to accomplish.

I met a drug addict when I was there. You could call him a crackhead, which was the unkind terminology for people addicted to crack cocaine.

His name was Bunny. He was quite articulate and, like all crackheads, he lived on the streets. However, he had incredible contacts at these short-time hotels that would allow you to sleep for six hours.

Unfortunately, it was demand and supply dependent and I suspect the owners knew nothing of it.

He would carry me to his contact and we would carry out the nefarious deed of paying for six hours sleep on a three-hour bed.

Many years have passed and I often wondered, not only what happened to Bunny, but what was Bunny before crack destroyed him?

Since the crack epidemic I have had to engage with many crack addicts. Some were intelligent people, some were just plain stupid. All were manipulative bastards.

I have known many addicts. Only crack brings out this manipulative demon. I can’t understand why.

I have known a few heroin addicts. There are characteristics that are unique to them that we can one day discuss. The crack addict is the manipulator.

A person addicted to crack will talk to you for hours, listen to your counsel, appear to be understanding, and the only thing they have up his/her sleeve is to get that money from you at the end of the conversation. He/She is not even listening to you, and doesn’t care what you’re saying.

The addict also becomes soulless. Good women become whores, straight men become homosexuals, all in the name of satiating the desire for crack.

What I find confusing is that the law doesn’t treat dealing in crack in keeping with the impact of the product.

You can find yourself getting 40 years for distributing heroin in the United States. I have seen people get five and seven years for crack distribution in that same jurisdiction.

Locally, it’s normally a slap on the wrist.

I arrested a man for selling it about 20 years ago and he got a $10,000 fine.

I am not sure what the sanctions are now.

It’s a Parish court offence relative to the quantity that is recovered and the dealing of said quantity. So sentencing is limited to three years.

The issue is that you don’t need a lot of crack in one place to operate a crack house. So those arrested selling it usually don’t serve long sentences.

You can, however, get years for a toy gun.

The destruction that crack use causes is immeasurable. The human suffering can’t be calculated.

You see, you have the user who loses his soul and the only purpose in his life is to get the next hit off his crack pipe. Then you have his parents who usually don’t realise that their child is virtually dead and it is a demon occupying their body.

It is only after years of being deceived that they realise the addict may look like their child, but that’s about as far as it goes.

Then there are the brothers and sisters, cousins, and children of the addict who suffer both from watching him/her melt and from him/her robbing them blind because, trust me, “dem thief”.

In countries like Singapore, Taiwan, China, Saudi Arabia, and quite a few more I can mention you can be executed for dealing in crack cocaine.

Well, to be frank, you can be executed in quite a few of those countries for dealing and possession in several types of narcotics.

I don’t like capital punishment, but after you destroy someone with a product that you sell to make some ‘pot scraping’ you deserve to die.

Not too long ago I arrested a man for dealing in crack cocaine. I asked him how does he feel selling a person a product and watching that person deteriorate from a normal person to a dirty, stinking zombie with one purpose in life?

He replied to me that he has never sold crack to someone who had not used it before.

So I guess he was saying that he was only helping to destroy people who were already destroyed.

There is probably a special place in hell waiting on him.

Quite a few years ago I interviewed a man who had a considerable distribution network for crack cocaine. I asked him a similar question that I had asked the aforementioned man. His reply was, “Mi a duh my business, mi nah force nobody to buy it.“

He was killed violently some years later and I remember thinking, “Hmmm, karma.”

The justice system has a duty to provide for remedies that include retribution.

We all know a crackhead or two. We all know a person who was normal, used crack, and was a predator after.

I want to ask you, do you think that five years in prison is adequate for the destruction you observed?

Crime has a particular dynamic in controlled societies, versus free societies. This is not just limited to communist countries versus countries with a democratic system of government.

Indefinite remand acts exist in several countries that are not communist. Some are Arab, some are in our region.

It is difficult to compare crime in these two environments because the power of the police is significantly more in a controlled society.

The fact that countries that embrace democracy will still execute for drug possession means that there is a very strong argument that they are taking it far more serious than we are.

When the United States was really fighting the crack epidemic it gave some proper sentences for disputing crack. Why the dial back?

Jamaica has really turned around our crime. A lot had to do with the revised Gun Bill that gave sentences for gun and bullet possession that would make a person who commits treason blush.

If we really value preventing the creation of more Bunnys then it is time to create laws for narcotic distribution, especially crack cocaine, laws that land you in jail for 40 years, irrespective of quantity.

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