Not mentioned in my previous blog concerning the raid at San Diego was information provided from the Los Angeles Times:

"University police began the investigation a year ago after a 19-year-old female student died of cocaine and ethanol intoxication, San Diego State President Stephen Weber said at a news conference Tuesday morning at the district attorney's office."

In other words, another polydrug user overdose. It is unclear whether cocaine or alcohol that caused death, yet cocaine, being the illicit "drug," bears all the blame - mainly because, in my opinion, alcohol has a lobby, cocaine doesn't.

How many arrests does the D.E.A. estimate it will take to prevent the next overdose?

"According to the DEA, the seized evidence included 4 pounds of cocaine, 50 pounds of marijuana, 48 hydroponic marijuana plants, 350 Ecstasy pills, 30 vials of hash oil, methamphetamine, psilocybin (mushrooms), various illicit prescription drugs, a shotgun, three semiautomatic pistols, three brass knuckles and $60,000 in cash."

When Customs is seizing tons of cocaine at the border, the DEA arresting almost a hundred people, and only seizing the amounts listed above is a joke - except that the penalties faced by these students will not be funny. The amounts above are a single grain of the beach of drugs coming into and already on the streets of the United States. The people arrested represent the same grain on a beach of people participating in this illicit distribution and use network.

How can anyone other than a complete lunatic think that this approach is somehow successful, considering the overdose came after almost four decades of the same failed drug prohibition policies? And why would interdiction be more successful than making naloxone more available (not that it would apply in the present case, there is no known drug to counteract alcohol overdose), an approach opposed by the federal government?

We don't get more answers though, we get more posturing, more sensationalism, and more hiding of the truth: did the female student last year die from asphyxiation or depressed breathing (alcohol related death), or heart attack (cocaine related death)?