Daily Mail- A massive drug sweep of the University of Alabama campus in Tuscaloosa has resulted in 99 arrests, including 61 people currently enrolled as students. The raid of the university campus and several halls of residence was carried out by the West Alabama Narcotics Task Force early Tuesday morning.  University spokesperson Cathy Andreen said the students arrested will be referred to its judicial affairs process, after which they will receive sanctions up to and including expulsion. Officials have confirmed that 99 people have been arrested in total, with the majority of charges related to the sale or possession of marijuana and the possession of drug paraphernalia. Police also found drugs including cocaine, LSD, ecstasy, mushrooms and prescription pills, reports AL.com. Several guns and thousands of dollars were also seized. Warrants were executed by the task force beginning at 4 a.m. on Tuesday with assistance from the Tuscaloosa County Sherriff’s Office, the Tuscaloosa Police Department, the Northport Police Department, the University of Alabama Police Department and the U.S. Marshal task force. Confidential informants were used to make purchases during the investigation, said Tuscaloosa Police Chief Steve Anderson. Anderson said the department hoped the arrests would bring drug arrests down and would send a message that his department will not tolerate drug sales.

 

You really have to give everyone involved with this investigation a lot of credit, because it takes a lot of astute police work and a special kind of intuition to be able to find drugs on a college campus. I’m especially glad they were able to get US Marshals to storm into dorm rooms at 4 AM on a Tuesday, because who knows what could have happened if one of those kids had been tipped off and decided they weren’t going to give up his bong without a fight? Now instead of having student’s lives ruined by falling victim to the destructive side affects of marijuana, we can construct of life sized of version of Guess Who?: College Drug Dealer Edition and ruin their lives instead.

I get that what these kids are doing is illegal and if they were stupid enough to get caught then I guess they deserve the punishment, but at the chance of sounding like philosophy major with a Ron Paul sticker on the Macbook he carries around in a hemp bag: Who the fuck cares? If you’re going to act like you really care about the well-being of your students then you should probably go after the shit that actually has a chance of adversely affecting them. If they’re really serious about protecting their students then they should start posting cops at the door of every frat party and install Breathalyzers at the entrance to every underclassmen dorm .  I was paying seniors 50% markup on a shitty handle of vodka most weekends during my freshman year and that brought me close to serious physical harm a good infinity times more than weed ever could. All this bust really does is make it more likely that kids will to go to actual drug dealers to get shit, and when they can’t find a connect they’ll probably just decide to drink more because our brains are developed enough to make responsible decisions. Drug arrests down, stomach pumps up.