Drug Policy Opinion: Page 26

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Drug Policy Opinion

Statements found in Court opinions regarding illicit substances. Public policy considerations, individual predilections of the Justice writing the opinion, the objective and subjective views on the the drugs, the drug use and the drug war... All of these can be found in this section.

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Richards v. Wisconsin (1997)
Opinion by: STEVENS

We recognized in Wilson that the knock-and-announce requirement could give way "under circumstances presenting a threat of physical violence," or "where police officers have reason to believe that evidence would likely be destroyed if advance notice were given." 514 U.S. at 936. It is indisputable that felony drug investigations may frequently involve both of these circumstances.

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Richards v. Wisconsin (1997)
Opinion by: STEVENS

This Court has encountered before the links between drugs and violence, see, e.g., Michigan v. Summers, 452 U.S. 692, 702, 69 L. Ed. 2d 340, 101 S. Ct. 2587 (1981), and the likelihood that drug dealers will attempt to dispose of drugs before police seize them, see, e.g., Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23, 28, n. 3, 10 L. Ed. 2d 726, 83 S. Ct. 1623 (1963).

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Richards v. Wisconsin (1997)
Opinion by: STEVENS

The Wisconsin court explained its blanket exception as necessitated by the special circumstances of today's drug culture, 201 Wis. 2d at 863-866, 549 N.W.2d at 226-227, and the State asserted at oral argument that the blanket exception was reasonable in "felony drug cases because of the convergence in a violent and dangerous form of commerce of weapons and the destruction of drugs." Tr. of Oral Arg. 26. But creating exceptions to the knock-and-announce rule based on the "culture" surrounding a general category of criminal behavior presents [...] serious concerns.

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Richards v. Wisconsin (1997)
Opinion by: STEVENS

...[W]hile drug investigation frequently does pose special risks to officer safety and the preservation of evidence, not every drug investigation will pose these risks to a substantial degree.

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Vernonia School District 47J v. Acton (1995)
Opinion by: SCALIA

That the nature of the concern is important -- indeed, perhaps compelling -- can hardly be doubted. Deterring drug use by our Nation's schoolchildren is at least as important as enhancing efficient enforcement of the Nation's laws against the importation of drugs, which was the governmental concern in Von Raab, supra, at 668, or deterring drug use by engineers and trainmen, which was the governmental concern in Skinner, supra, at 628.

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