The Wire’s Last Will and Testament

“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right,” wrote Thomas Paine when he called for civil disobedience against monarchy — the flawed national policy of his day. In a similar spirit, we offer a small idea that is, perhaps, no small idea. It will not solve the drug problem, nor will it heal all civic wounds. It does not yet address questions of how the resources spent warring with our poor over drug use might be better spent on treatment or education or job training, or anything else that might begin to restore those places in America where the only economic engine remaining is the illegal drug economy. It doesn’t resolve the myriad complexities that a retreat from war to sanity will require. All it does is open a range of intricate, paradoxical issues. But this is what we can do — and what we will do.

If asked to serve on a jury deliberating a violation of state or federal drug laws, we will vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence presented. Save for a prosecution in which acts of violence or intended violence are alleged, we will — to borrow Justice Harry Blackmun’s manifesto against the death penalty — no longer tinker with the machinery of the drug war. No longer can we collaborate with a government that uses nonviolent drug offenses to fill prisons with its poorest, most damaged and most desperate citizens.

This is The State Of . . . the minds of David Simon (pictured above) and Ed Burns, creators and writers of The Wire. The Wire ended its five season run last night. It was pleasure to watch and talk about. I (rich) thought the last episode gave us closure and symmetry. By far, including The Sopranos, the best TV show of the decade. I wonder, though, what will happen to some of the great actors on the show. What kinds of roles could Michael (Tristan Wilds) and Dookie (Jermaine Crawford) get? Or Kima (Sonja Sohn), Bubbles (Andre Royo), and Lester (Clarke Peters)? And the splendid and frightening Marlo (Jamie Hector)?