Pubdate: Wed, 04 Dec 2002
Source: Middletown Press (CT)
Copyright: 2002 Middletown Press
Contact:  http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?brd=1645
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/586
Author: John Zorabedian
Cited: Efficacy http://www.efficacy-online.org/
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition http://www.leap.cc/
Students for Sensible Drug Policy http://www.ssdp.org/

LOCAL, NATIONAL GROUPS CALL FOR END TO 'WAR ON DRUGS'

MIDDLETOWN -- Peter Christ and Cliff Thornton are two men with very 
different backgrounds: Thornton was a substitute teacher in Hartford's 
schools, and Christ is a former police officer in western New York 
state.  But both men have reached the same conclusion -- that the 'war on 
drugs' is a massive failure that only deepens the national crisis of 
addiction and drug-related crime.

After 20 years on opposite sides of a war that has cost over $1 trillion in 
30 years, with millions of casualties on both sides, the two men, and many 
more around the country, are pursuing campaigns to decriminalize illicit drugs.

"No matter how many (drug offenders) are locked up, the problem doesn't go 
away ..it gets worse," said Thornton, an educator for a Hartford-based drug 
law reform group. "The drug war is a colossal waste of resources (and) we 
must dismantle this monster."

Speaking to a large group of students at Wesleyan University Tuesday, 
Thornton and Christ explained their shared perception of the so-called drug 
war as a policy that not only fails to keep drugs off the streets and out 
of schools, but leads to the incarceration of large sectors of the 
population -- mostly poor people and minorities.

"The average drug user in the United States has a 40-hour per week job and 
is white," said Thornton, who cited reports from Amnesty International 
condemning U.S. drug policy for its violations of human and civil rights. 
"But the faces of prisoners are overwhelmingly black and brown."

African-American men make up only 3 percent of Connecticut's population, 
according to Thornton's group, Efficacy, but constitute 47 percent of all 
inmates in the state's prisons and halfway houses.

Prisons themselves are "largely violent, drug-ridden places," he said, 
where inmates are not likely to get the treatment they need."

Although Thornton likened the "war on drugs" to "class and race warfare," 
Christ said he views the prohibition of drugs as a matter of practicality 
- -- prohibition simply doesn't work.

Alcohol prohibition ended in the 1930s, "not because alcohol became benign 
..but because we realized the policy (of prohibition) caused more problems 
than (alcohol did)," said Christ.

A founding member of the national group Law Enforcement Against 
Prohibition, Christ said he wants to see drugs legalized as a way to reduce 
drug-related crime and to regulate dangerous drugs.

Comparing drug prohibition to abortion and gambling laws, Christ said 
legalization will not cause an increase in the number of drug addicts.

"I want to regulate and control drugs in this country," said Christ. "You 
can't regulate the black market."

The forum was sponsored by the Wesleyan group Students for Sensible Drug 
Policy.

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