Yesterday, on the 4800 block of Florence Street, 5 total individuals were arrested and charged regarding an LSD ring -- $28,000 worth of the untaxed substance was confiscated along with $10,000 in cash. Two of the individuals were students at Drexel University.
The police were made aware of the LSD ring due to two students who were arrested on their own charges and then allowed to opportunity to work as informants to eleviate their own charges.
The story has been made juicier by including that Raphael Zappala, one of the men arrested, was the son of a prominent anti-war activist, Celeste Zappala, who began protesting in 2004 when her son (and Raphael's brother) was killed in Baghdad within the National Guard.
Zappala worked at Philadelphia's Coalition Against Hunger and was depicted as an "upstanding" person, according to a friend Chris Robinson, who connected LSD use to being unable to act in a civil manner, "It doesn't sound like him. He always seemed very upstanding . . . I've heard him speak several times at public meetings."
This event shows that the drug war is alive and well in Philadelphia, and that many people are taking the opportunity to work as informants for the police, despite their own beliefs on the matter. When it comes down to being put in jail or saving yourself, principles get put aside and it becomes man against man in a never ending cycle. Instead of possible rehabilitation, ex-dealers are forced to stay in the game and even get involved in situations in which they may not usually be present to lessen their sentence. This example shows how fear and intimidation is used to prevent those who may be the most driven and outspoken drug war activists to cave into the system, lay low and even work against what their beliefs.
While some articles on this occurance attempt to explain the effects of LSD, there is no conclusive evidence LSD is even a harmful substance to the human body, as has been proven with "legal" drugs, such as cigarettes and alcohol. Many misconceptions have been emphasized, such as flashbacks and "becoming a hippie," but these seem to only be media ploys to hype up the story.
Comments