Justice & Law Quote by Bill McCollum

McCollum’s line is a small act of political jujitsu: it narrows the expectations we place on police while quietly broadening the menu of “solutions” without naming any that might cost real money or political capital. “You can’t expect” does a lot of work here. It’s less an argument than a boundary-setting maneuver, preemptively managing public disappointment and insulating law enforcement from being blamed for an unwinnable, endlessly renewable crisis.

The subtext is a rebuke to the popular fantasy that the drug problem can be arrested away. By framing drugs as a “problem” rather than a crime, the quote nods toward public health, treatment, and prevention. But it also preserves ambiguity: the listener can hear compassion (addiction isn’t solved with handcuffs) or a hard-edged realism (police are stretched thin; don’t ask for miracles). That flexibility is the point. Politicians traffic in phrases that signal reform while avoiding a concrete commitment to harm reduction, decriminalization, or massive investment in care.

Context matters: McCollum comes from an era when “tough on crime” rhetoric dominated, and drug policy was often sold as a war with law enforcement as the frontline troops. Against that backdrop, the statement reads like a cautious corrective, not a radical pivot. It concedes limits without conceding the deeper critique: that the “drug problem” is also a story about poverty, pain management, mental health, and a market that adapts faster than any police department. The quote works because it sounds pragmatic while quietly shifting responsibility to everyone and no one at once.