Former LA Chief of Police speaks out against the war on drugs

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-legalize16oct16,0,4914395.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions


Let those dopers be

A former police chief wants to end a losing war by legalizing pot, coke, meth and other drugs

By Norm Stamper, Norm Stamper is the former chief of the Seattle Police Department. He is the author of "Breaking Rank: A Top Cop's Exposé of the Dark Side of American Policing" (Nation Books, 2005).

SOMETIMES PEOPLE in law enforcement will hear it whispered that I'm a former cop who favors decriminalization of marijuana laws, and they'll approach me the way they might a traitor or snitch. So let me set the record straight.

Yes, I was a cop for 34 years, the last six of which I spent as chief of Seattle's police department.

But no, I don't favor decriminalization. I favor legalization, and not just of pot but of all drugs, including heroin, cocaine, meth, psychotropics, mushrooms and LSD.

Decriminalization, as my colleagues in the drug reform movement hasten to inform me, takes the crime out of using drugs but continues to classify possession and use as a public offense, punishable by fines.

I've never understood why adults shouldn't enjoy the same right to use verboten drugs as they have to suck on a Marlboro or knock back a scotch and water.

Prohibition of alcohol fell flat on its face. The prohibition of other drugs rests on an equally wobbly foundation. Not until we choose to frame responsible drug use — not an oxymoron in my dictionary — as a civil liberty will we be able to recognize the abuse of drugs, including alcohol, for what it is: a medical, not a criminal, matter.

As a cop, I bore witness to the multiple lunacies of the "war on drugs." Lasting far longer than any other of our national conflicts, the drug war has been prosecuted with equal vigor by Republican and Democratic administrations, with one president after another — Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush — delivering sanctimonious sermons, squandering vast sums of taxpayer money and cheerleading law enforcers from the safety of the sidelines.

It's not a stretch to conclude that our draconian approach to drug use is the most injurious domestic policy since slavery. Want to cut back on prison overcrowding and save a bundle on the construction of new facilities? Open the doors, let the nonviolent drug offenders go. The huge increases in federal and state prison populations during the 1980s and '90s (from 139 per 100,000 residents in 1980 to 482 per 100,000 in 2003) were mainly for drug convictions. In 1980, 580,900 Americans were arrested on drug charges. By 2003, that figure had ballooned to 1,678,200. We're making more arrests for drug offenses than for murder, manslaughter, forcible rape and aggravated assault combined. Feel safer?

I've witnessed the devastating effects of open-air drug markets in residential neighborhoods: children recruited as runners, mules and lookouts; drug dealers and innocent citizens shot dead in firefights between rival traffickers bent on protecting or expanding their markets; dedicated narcotics officers tortured and killed in the line of duty; prisons filled with nonviolent drug offenders; and drug-related foreign policies that foster political instability, wreak health and environmental disasters, and make life even tougher for indigenous subsistence farmers in places such as Latin America and Afghanistan. All because we like our drugs — and can't have them without breaking the law.

As an illicit commodity, drugs cost and generate extravagant sums of (laundered, untaxed) money, a powerful magnet for character-challenged police officers.

Although small in numbers of offenders, there isn't a major police force — the Los Angeles Police Department included — that has escaped the problem: cops, sworn to uphold the law, seizing and converting drugs to their own use, planting dope on suspects, robbing and extorting pushers, taking up dealing themselves, intimidating or murdering witnesses.

In declaring a war on drugs, we've declared war on our fellow citizens. War requires "hostiles" — enemies we can demonize, fear and loathe. This unfortunate categorization of millions of our citizens justifies treating them as dope fiends, evil-doers, less than human. That grants political license to ban the exchange or purchase of clean needles or to withhold methadone from heroin addicts motivated to kick the addiction.

President Bush has even said no to medical marijuana. Why would he want to "coddle" the enemy? Even if the enemy is a suffering AIDS or cancer patient for whom marijuana promises palliative, if not therapeutic, powers.

As a nation, we're long overdue for a soul-searching, coldly analytical look at both the "drug scene" and the drug war. Such candor would reveal the futility of our current policies, exposing the embarrassingly meager return on our massive enforcement investment (about $69 billion a year, according to Jack Cole, founder and executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition).

How would "regulated legalization" work? It would: 1) Permit private companies to compete for licenses to cultivate, harvest, manufacture, package and peddle drugs.

2) Create a new federal regulatory agency (with no apologies to libertarians or paleo-conservatives).

3) Set and enforce standards of sanitation, potency and purity.

4) Ban advertising.

5) Impose (with congressional approval) taxes, fees and fines to be used for drug-abuse prevention and treatment and to cover the costs of administering the new regulatory agency.

6) Police the industry much as alcoholic beverage control agencies keep a watch on bars and liquor stores at the state level. Such reforms would in no way excuse drug users who commit crimes: driving while impaired, providing drugs to minors, stealing an iPod or a Lexus, assaulting one's spouse, abusing one's child. The message is simple. Get loaded, commit a crime, do the time.

These reforms would yield major reductions in a host of predatory street crimes, a disproportionate number of which are committed by users who resort to stealing in order to support their habit or addiction.

Regulated legalization would soon dry up most stockpiles of currently illicit drugs — substances of uneven, often questionable quality (including "bunk," i.e., fakes such as oregano, gypsum, baking powder or even poisons passed off as the genuine article). It would extract from today's drug dealing the obscene profits that attract the needy and the greedy and fuel armed violence. And it would put most of those certifiably frightening crystal meth labs out of business once and for all.

Combined with treatment, education and other public health programs for drug abusers, regulated legalization would make your city or town an infinitely healthier place to live and raise a family.

It would make being a cop a much safer occupation, and it would lead to greater police accountability and improved morale and job satisfaction.

But wouldn't regulated legalization lead to more users and, more to the point, drug abusers? Probably, though no one knows for sure — our leaders are too timid even to broach the subject in polite circles, much less to experiment with new policy models. My own prediction? We'd see modest increases in use, negligible increases in abuse.

The demand for illicit drugs is as strong as the nation's thirst for bootleg booze during Prohibition. It's a demand that simply will not dwindle or dry up. Whether to find God, heighten sexual arousal, relieve physical pain, drown one's sorrows or simply feel good, people throughout the millenniums have turned to mood- and mind-altering substances.

They're not about to stop, no matter what their government says or does. It's time to accept drug use as a right of adult Americans, treat drug abuse as a public health problem and end the madness of an unwinnable war.

 

i read this somewhere...I think its good that we have someone from the 'other side' finally realize how ridiculous the war on drugs actually is...maybe this is the beginning of an attitude change, maybe our quest for freedom and liberty will soon be over.

hopefully...

 

right the fuck on!


i read somewhere that a reporter heard Ashcroft admitting whata miserable failure the drug war was too, although i doubt hed ever publicly say it.

 

It seems like the movement is getting larger and larger, and the opposition is getting quieter. Maybe they are starting to realize they have run out of ridiculous arguments.

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." -Schopenhauer

 

Man, I would love to hear Asscroft say that. Truth is though, those people have a hugely vested interest ($$$$$$) in keeping it illegal. It's going to take a grassroots movement that works its way up to the federal level. Which California really perpetuated with Prop. 215.

I fucking love Cali.

 

u actually think 1 person speaking out who has no authority/power under his belt besides an old "title" is going to make somthing happen?

 

No, but the more people that are exposed to ideas other than prohibitionist agendas, the more chance there is of a changing public opinion. One person leads to more people speaking out, people thinking, people changing opinions, and ultimately changing laws. But I guess the concepts of society and democratic change is over your head.

I haven't seen you contribute one positive thing around here. Why don't you go away? Fucking troll.

 

no^

 

And furthermore, no, I don't think that one person speaking out will make change. But a former Los Angeles Chief of Police has a LOT of respect from all kinds of anti drug zealots, and he certainly could in fact directly influence political change.

 

I must say I love Seattle, I made a trip out there with my buddy stayed at the westin, everyone is so nice down there, I love it, pot was right there on the streets and very easy to get, and ALL OF IT WAS GOOD- I love that town and one day I will move there.

As to the speech above-very true ( i dont know about meth or heroin or coke though thats a very radical move, i hate drugs that minipulate your life their bad for you)

 

Yeah Seattle has a law making pot the lowest police priority.

As for the hard drugs, I am not sure how I feel. I do think that efforts should be more concentrated on treatment, rather than prosecution.. But I am not sure about all out legalization of the hard drugs.

 

Nice Write-up, but good luck to him. As soon as he mentioned Meth, Heroin, and Coke he shot himself in the foot. I totally agree that you have the right to put any substance you like into your body. While I dont advise anyone to do any of those three, do as like. Unfortunately, the public and the anti-drug assholes are just going to use that against him. Believe me, I would love to have everything legal, but a change like that can't happen all at once. Start by legalizing pot, because of all the drugs scheduled, I'd say thats one of the safests ones. Maybe then work on psychadelics like mushrooms, DMT, and peyote, natural ones that are physicly safe but hold danger of a bad trip. To just demand that all drugs be made legal will be seen as way too radical by the public eye and they'll dismiss everything he says.

 

We already have legal meth.
It's called pseudo-ephedrine, which can be converted to meth quite easily.
And psuedo-ephedrine is available in many easily available cold/flu medications.

Basically, anyone who wants the drugs mentioned can already get them. Legalizing them would mean they'd be free-er of impurities, take $$ away from organized crime, and free up billions of $$ and manpower to fight REAL crime and set-up re-habs (like with the #1 drug problem in this country--alcohol--they have AA).

 

And...
There was nothing in the article that said the cop was chief of police of LAPD.

At least 1 County Sheriff in N. Calif. is pro-pot. His wife is a med-mj user and he grows his own at home.

In Holland, they noticed that when marijuana use was decrim-ed all the way down, marijuana use went down.
Also in Holland (and several other countries) they have programs that give heroin addicts the drug for penny's.
That means junkies will no longer have to steal to support their habits.
At the clinics where these drugs are made available are programs to help an addict kick the habit. They realize you can't make a person stop taking those drugs unless the person wants to stop.
In this country, there are almost no programs to help addicts, making it harder for people who want to quit do so.

 

Yeah...I agree that it all should be legalized...because marijuana is NOT where a MAJORITY of the violence comes from...so, just making that and only that legal wouldn't help much...and it's not the drug that causes the violence if you ask me...it's just the person is willing to go to violent lengths to GET the drug...take away the violence to get it, take away the violence.

 

I dunno man, Coke and Meth can make some people pretty fucking insane.

 

I'm hardcore anti-meth, heroin, pcp, and ghb. Dangerous, and impure.

 

Yeah, you're right Ranger I lunched

It's Seattle

 

Same can be said about alcohol but it legal right?

 

I wish more of our lawmakers would become pro-pot (such as Dennis Kucinich).