Pubdate: Thu, 26 Jan 2009
Source: Boston Globe (MA)
Copyright: 2009 Globe Newspaper Company
Contact: http://bostonglobe.com/news/opeds/letter.aspx?id=6340
Website: http://www.boston.com/globe/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/52
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v09/n000/a032.html
Author: Jack Cole

VIEW OF FUTILITY FROM THE FRONT LINE

Your editorial "Wrong front for the drug war" captures in miniature 
the self-defeating absurdity of our current "prohibition," a.k.a., 
the war on drugs. As a former participant who arrested more than 
1,000 young people in that trillion-dollar effort, I can attest to 
its futility and moral bankruptcy. Besides making America the most 
heavily incarcerated nation in the world, it now funds international 
terrorists while preventing desperately ill people from getting medical relief.

It certainly doesn't prevent dangerous drug use.

Even more infuriating, there are viable alternatives that involve a 
tightly controlled, regulated market. A growing number of European 
countries have shown that the crime, disease, and death associated 
with heroin addiction can be profoundly lessened by treating 
addiction as a health problem rather than a sign of immoral character 
requiring police intervention.

As Richard Holbrooke puts it, drug eradication is "the single most 
ineffective program in the history of American foreign policy." As 
the cops at Law Enforcement Against Prohibition put it, the war on 
drugs is the single most dysfunctional policy since slavery.

Jack A. Cole

Medford

The writer is executive director of Law Enforcement Against 
Prohibition, and a 26-year veteran of the New Jersey State Police, 
with 14 years in undercover narcotics. 
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