Pubdate: Mon, 13 Jun 2005
Source: San Antonio Express-News (TX)
Copyright: 2005 San Antonio Express-News
Contact:  http://www.mysanantonio.com/expressnews/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/384
Author: Robert P. Owens, Special to the Express-News
Note: Author is former Chief of Police
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?233 (LEAP)

REGULATION OF ILLICIT DRUGS GAINS SUPPORT

How would you go about getting four U.S. district court judges, a former 
governor, the mayor of a major city in Canada, a sheriff of a Colorado 
county, a former New York City police commissioner, a former attorney 
general of Columbia, S.C., and two former police chiefs in U.S. cities to 
agree on anything?

How about legalizing drugs and subjecting them to regulation, much as we do 
with alcoholic beverages?

All the officials mentioned above are members of the Board of Advisors of 
the international nonprofit educational organization known as Law 
Enforcement Against Prohibition, or LEAP. This organization of more than 
1,500 former "drug warriors" has members in six countries who speak from 
their unique law enforcement background about the futility of continuing 
the costly, corrupting and counterproductive "war" on drugs.

Let's look for a moment at another prohibition, one that promised a sober 
work force to fuel the powerful industrial engines that were to become the 
fulfillment of the American dream. Known as the Volstead Act for its 
congressional sponsor, it became the law that we now refer to as Prohibition.

With all its hoopla, the act fell well short of curing what many 
characterized as a national alcoholic binge. Law enforcement became a major 
target for corruption, and the tax burden increased, as did government 
spending. It led some drinkers to switch to opium, marijuana, cocaine and 
other substances. And, lest we forget, it created a generation of "bootleg" 
millionaires.

Today it is common to hear, from all sides, that it is easier for high 
school youths to buy a baggie of marijuana than a six-pack of beer. One 
question seldom heard from modern-day Prohibitionists is why, after more 
than a half-century of fighting the "drug war" at a cost in the billions of 
dollars, are we still searching for solutions?

We know with a fair degree of accuracy where the drug crops are grown, 
where they are processed and how they arrive on our streets. More than 100 
metric tons of cocaine was intercepted in 2003 to our borders. Yet 
according to a U.S. government report, more than 250 metric tons reached 
users here.

When we look at what is being done about this social disaster, we learn 
from the FBI Uniform Crime Reports of 2003 that drug arrests lead the top 
seven categories of arrests in this country. As many of my former "drug 
warrior" colleagues can attest, we made our contributions to the prison 
system by locking up drug offenders of all types, including other law 
enforcement officers.

Just as the Prohibition era of 1920 to 1933 corrupted local officials and 
law enforcement officers, so too does the current prohibition. Add to this 
the enormous profits going into the coffers of the ruthless narcotic 
traffickers beyond our borders, and we have a nation seemingly giving aid 
to the enemy while clogging prisons with its own countrymen and women.

Then we have the international cartels, gangs, paramilitary groups and, 
lately, the communist guerrilla forces in South and Central America that 
are taking advantage of the huge profits in the drug trade. It seems even 
the ideology that unites "workers of the world" can spare the time to enjoy 
the profits of the drug trade.

In the course of discussing legalizing narcotics, the perfectly reasonable 
question arises: If drugs are legalized, how can we keep them out of the 
hands of children? The answer can only be: just as we do now in keeping 
them from Oxycontin, morphine and other drugs that have legitimate uses.

And, yes, it is an imperfect system that is often abused. But at least it 
is a mechanism that can be tuned and changed in the face of abuse.

It beats by a country mile the narrow controls on cocaine, marijuana, 
heroin and illicit drugs we have today.

These controls are almost entirely a response by the legal system, which 
has as its major tool the ability to punish.

The parallel with the story of the man with only a hammer as a tool, who 
sees everything as a nail, is hard to avoid.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom