Ricin gravy, ricin beans — but no ricin letters please.
This week, charges against suspected ricin terrorist Paul Curtis were dropped amid new developments in the case.
Curtis, a middle-aged Elvis Presley impersonator from Mississippi, was accused of mailing ricin-laced letters to President Barack Obama, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss) and a local judge.
If you don’t watch “Breaking Bad,” ricin is a toxin 1,000 times more deadly than cyanide, according to the BBC. An amount equivalent to a few grains of salt is enough to kill a person.
Is it just me, or does this seem like a much bigger threat than bombs?
Bombs can be crudely and relatively easily constructed from household items, as we learned from Boston. Thanks to CNN and the Internet, most of America can probably make a pressure cooker bomb by now.
But ricin-laced letters? Anthrax-laced letters? This should be our major concern, right?
Let’s look at this comparison as objectively as possible.
Bombs — dangerous to build and difficult to transport. Ricin — extremely easy to transport; just put it in an envelope and attach a stamp.
The realization that you can mail death is quite terrifying — especially for average, everyday Americans who don’t have the luxury of a paid security force to inspect all the mail that gets delivered to them.
Since Curtis has since been acquitted of all charges, that means one of two things: He did it, but the government can’t prove it; or, the more likely scenario, the real culprit is still at large — ready, willing and able to mail more ricin wherever he or she chooses.
But why should we care more about ricin than the Boston bombings?
Because currently, the Boston death toll sits at four with many more injured. If the unidentified suspect chooses to mail more ricin letters, the event could easily surpass the Boston death toll.
A package laced with ricin could be shipped to anywhere in the U.S. and a small amount is capable of causing devastating death and suffering.
Cracking down on chemical and biological terrorism should be equally as important as preventing conventional terror through bombings and explosions.
But the American priority in the war on terror has been stopping radical Islamists who typically use suicide bombing and hijacking as primary tactics.
However, I feel as though added emphasis is needed for domestic, secular terror cells who may be more likely to use highly lethal but inconspicuous chemical or biological weapons.
It’s become increasingly obvious that some Americans with enough education are capable of producing these chemical agents on their own, at home with relative ease.
Catching the ricin perpetrator should be a top priority, not something that’s shelved and pushed back until the government has time.
Boston was bad, we all know this, but if you listened to any of the former FBI agents, you know it could’ve been much worse.
Ricin doesn’t go boom. Neither does anthrax. But they are just as lethal as a bomb, if not more.
Americans have to remember that terrorism is not a Middle Eastern, Islamic phenomenon. Sometimes, it’s just some crazy guy from Mississippi.
Parker Cramer is a 22-year-old political science senior from Houston.
