Drug Dealers call them "Mushrooms"

This is the name drug dealers use for the kids who get caught in the line of fire and killed when they are shooting it out with each other. In the lingo of these killers, this dehumanizing term refers to kids who seem to sprout up out of nowhere like mushrooms whenever they are targeting their enemies, getting killed in the crossfire. At one time as many as 150 kids were being killed in shootouts in New York City every year, though of course, adults are often caught in the crossfire as well. These kids are just one of the many groups of victims of America's self-destructive War on Drugs, a war ostensibly being waged to "save the kids" but which has in reality turned America's cities into war zones. But drug dealers aren't the only ones gunning down innocent bystanders. Law enforcement agencies making drug busts and commando-like drug raids have amassed their own impressive record of killing innocent people. Drug War Rant, an anti-prohibition blog, tells some of their tragic stories here.

Our drug war results in staggeringly tragic losses. Drugs, when abused, can be dangerous, but they are not nearly as lethal as the drug war itself.

In addition to the blights of an imprisoned population, lost rights, broken families, and economic waste, people are dying in this war. No, these are not deaths from drugs, but from prohibition.

It is important to realize that the vast majority of deaths on the drug war simply would not happen without prohibition. When drug dealers fight it out over territory and they or their neighbors are killed in the process, it is a sympton of prohibition, much as when we suffered the scourge of alcohol prohibition many years ago. Prohibition makes violence profitable.

When drug users overdose from tainted drugs, it is the result of prohibition. When they die from overdoses because they were afraid to seek help, it is the result of prohibition.

Increasingly, people are dying because of the tactics of the drug war. Military operations are being conducted on our soil, and collateral damage is inevitable.

It is estimated there are over 40,000 anti-drug raids in the US every year, many of them targeting innocent people, and each one carrying the possibility of violent confrontation involving live ammo, with the potential for innocent bystanders to get killed. I wonder if the DEA or other drug warriors have a term for the people that get killed during their raids? "Mushrooms" would be too druggy.