[edshuck]

This reply is both a bit off topic .... and not.

Recently, there was an execution in San Quintin. That is the big state facility across the bay from San Francisco.

The guy had been nominated for a Nobel. Seems once he was in, and had a date with the grim one, he wrote childrens books warning of the dangers of gangs and drugs.

Bravo for him.

What got him there was the execution style killing of 4 people, not in the drug or gang scene.

He was also the cofounder of the Crypts - a black gang that he founded in Los Angeles and has now spred across the US. Their thing is drugs.

So everyone came to protest. Some saying "kill him", some saying give him life in prison.

They gave him the needle.

Next up was a guy who had been given life in prison and THEN he ordered the murder - from jail - of three people.

There were a few protesters. No news cameras. So the rent a rant group stayed home.

He was blind and deaf. Bad heart lungs and kidneys. In his 80s.

But he is the greatest argument against life in prison for some folks. They tried that and it just did not work.

I do not have an answer. But I do know that drugs have ripped society very badly.