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| Hayes and Logan -- Brian A. Pounds/ Hearst Connecticut Media |
The first rule in the political handbook is – never attempt to defend the indefensible. The attempt failed spectacularly during the Watergate imbroglio, the dreadful Dred Scott decision that found African American slaves were property rather than persons, and on many other occasions during America’s sometimes checkered history.
On October 2nd, the Hartford Courant carried on
its front page an above the fold story – “GOP commercial blasts U.S. Rep. Jahana
Hayes for her vote on fentanyl. Why she defends her stance” that should
serve as a textbook example of the rule cited above.
The 30 second Republican commercial blasts Hayes as having
voted against a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives, the “HALT Fentanyl
Act”, a priority of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration that, according to
the Courant, “classified fentanyl in the most dangerous category of drugs… The
measure called for classifying fentanyl as a Schedule 1 drug in the same
category as heroin, LSD, peyote, and ecstasy, among others.”
“The commercial opens by showing a police raid as a narrator
describes ‘an epidemic of fentanyl-related deaths’ in Connecticut.
“‘Yet,’ the commercial continues, ‘Jahana Hayes was the only
member of Congress from Connecticut to oppose a bipartisan bill to permanently
classify fentanyl in the most dangerous category of drugs,’ the announcer says.
‘The only one.’”
Elsewhere in the same story, state Republican chairman Ben
Proto said of Hayes’ lengthy explanation, “If you’re explaining that much,
you’re losing. … In the 5th district, where you have large cities like
Waterbury, Torrington, New Britain, and Danbury, we’re seeing more and more
drugs being purposely cut with fentanyl and young people who don’t know it’s
cut with fentanyl, and it’s killing them … The very fact that you had Rosa
DeLauro and John Larson — probably two of the more progressive members of that
caucus — voting for [the bill] should tell you something. Her vote was bad. Her
vote was wrong, and her vote is going to kill people in the 5th district.”
The very same October 2nd edition of the Courant
carries another story – “CT man who sold fentanyl to woman who died
of overdose pleads guilty to narcotics charge” – in which Meriden police “responded to a residence in the city
on the report of a suspected overdose. Emergency crews found a 27-year-old
woman unresponsive in a bedroom, federal officials said. She was taken to an
area hospital where she was pronounced dead… Federal authorities said [the
supplier who pleaded guilty] provided the woman with fentanyl she used hours
before she died. She wrote in the text messages and in a journal entry that it
was her first time trying fentanyl, officials said.”
A Connecticut Department of Public Health
report disclosed in a 2023 data overview: “As of December, there were 1,331
overdose-related deaths in 2023, with 111 in January, 127 in February, 107 in
March, 117 in April, 129 in May, 107 in June, 116 in July, 113 in August, 116
in September, 92 in October, 108 in November and 86 in December. Approximately
83.3% of these deaths involved fentanyl.”
These reliable figures demonstrate the lethality of fentanyl,
certainly no secret to Connecticut politicians voting on issues related to the
drug.
In the Courant story, Hayes disarmingly admits she had
opened herself to political attack: “The NRCC [National Republican Campaign
Committee] is correct. I was the only person in the Connecticut delegation who
voted against it. At the time I took this vote, I knew it would be an attack
ad. I was warned that it would be an attack ad, and I knew that it would be, so
I’m not surprised.”
Then followed Hayes’ lengthy apologia: “My no vote was
because this bill didn’t do anything to provide prevention, treatment, recovery,
harm reduction, or money for law enforcement. Basically what it said was that
anyone knowingly or unknowingly possessing fentanyl in any amount would have a
mandatory minimum sentence with no discretion by a judge or anything. For me, I
come to this work from a very different place than my colleagues. I saw what
the 1994 crime bill did to decimate communities. I know that we cannot
incarcerate our way out of a public health crisis.”
The notion that arrest, arraignment and, most importantly,
conviction, sentencing and incarceration for crimes committed, lacks deterrent
value flies in the face of centuries of jurisprudence, but it appears to have
been warmly embraced by progressive Democrats such as Hayes who will not rest
until every exception to a rule is fashioned into a rule. It has been generally
accepted throughout history that exceptions prove the rule, and we do
not want to throw out babies with the wash water. Conviction and internment
work to prevent crimes.
The measure Hayes voted against would have brought fentanyl under
the umbrella of a category of illegal substances that already requires mandatory
minimum sentencing, including, according
to the Courant “heroin, LSD, peyote, and ecstasy, among others.”
Hayes’ principle objection to the bill was, she said, that
it provided “Only incarceration with mandatory minimum sentences with no
discretion for the judge to even decide, based on the circumstances, if
incarceration was warranted. … We tried this in the 1990s. It didn’t work.”
In the case of criminal prosecutions involving “heroin, LSD,
peyote, and ecstasy, among others,” the American justice system allows judges
wide discretion, and American law makes sharp distinctions between punishments
assigned to users and sellers.
It is the business of a U.S. representative to write and
approve laws. One cannot properly do that job if one makes no distinction
between the baby and the wash water – between rules and exceptions. Would Hayes
favor the automatic repeal of a law whenever the number of people convicted and
incarcerated under the law reached a number unacceptable to Hayes?
We should not assume that every drug related crime is
evidence of innocence because the criminal has ingested heroin, LSD, peyote,
and ecstasy – or fentanyl, a deadly drug now folded into other drugs.
In fiscal year 2010, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, 15,274
criminal cases involved an offense carrying a mandatory minimum penalty. What
would Hayes have us do with a robber who steals her pocketbook and then throws
himself on the mercy of the court because he is a recreational heroine user?
Then too, there is a profound categorical difference, C.S.
Lewis argues persuasively in “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment,”
between retributive justice, a product of the courts, and “merciful” or
humanitarian forced therapy, a product of the psychiatrist’s couch.
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