That’s an intriguing idea headed for the Baltimore City Council – to fine suburban drug addicts an extra $1,000 if they get arrested trying to buy dope within the city limits. It’s a commuter tax for junkies. Maybe we could put some billboards up along the interstates: “Coming to Baltimore to cop dope? Fines begin at $1,000, double in school zones.”

Intriguing idea, tempting to embrace.
But, ultimately, just more political grandstanding.

It’s said that only 15 percent of Baltimore’s heroin and cocaine customers come from out of town, but I suspect the true percentage is much higher than that. Word always was that druggies came up from Virginia, bypassing Washington and Prince George's County, because they believed the heroin and cocaine here – like the houses -- are better and cheaper. Same was supposedly true for the southern Pennsylvania customer.

Some years ago, I sat with a police major in an unmarked car on the west side of town, near a closed-up corner store called Cry Baby Deli. (The sign on the old store said: "Eat More, Cry Less.") At Cry Baby Corner, the city cops conducted a reverse sting -- instead of buying dope, they presented themselves as sellers. They pushed the regular dealers off the corners, set up lookouts and established an open-air market. This was midday, broad daylight, and they got busy right away.

They arrested 53 people within a couple of hours, including a 30-year-old guy from Cockeysville and a 36-year-old guy from Gaithersburg. Others came from Essex, Middle River, Woodlawn, Marriottsville, Crownsville, Jessup, Ellicott City, Linthicum and Columbia. They came in Chevys, Hondas and Volvos, and one arrived in her daddy’s Lincoln Navigator. Several vehicles were impounded.

I turned to the major and said, “Who says suburban people only wanna go to Harborplace and Camden Yards?”

Reverse stings are great conceptually but not so constitutionally. The red flag of entrapment goes up and, truth is, few such cases ever get to court.
What they do is inconvenience suburban dopers and get them to think twice – if “think” is the appropriate verb – about coming into the city to buy their opiates.

That’s why it’s tempting to embrace the additional fine being proposed in City Council.
But the ultimate problem with this idea, as with almost any idea in the realm of drug enforcement, is this: You’re not killing demand by arrest. The demand remains.
Drug addicts get arrested. They go to jail. They come out of jail. Minus treatment, most drug addicts go back to using dope. And that’s reality -- no matter what zip code they come from.