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http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/511/two_thirds_oppose_SWAT_raids_kathryn_johnston_zobgy_poll 

Feature: On the Anniversary of Kathryn Johnston's Death, Poll Finds Most Americans Oppose Use of SWAT-Style Tactics in Routine Drug Raids

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A year ago this week, 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston was gunned down by Atlanta narcotics officers when she opened fire on them as they kicked down her door in a "no-knock" drug raid. The killing has had immense reverberations in the Atlanta area, especially since it opened a window on corrupt and questionable police practices in the drug squad.

But if the raids are popular with the viewers of the likes of DALLAS SWAT, they are not necessarily as popular with the American public. According to a poll of 1,028 likely voters commissioned by StoptheDrugWar.org (DRCNet) and conducted by Zogby International in October, a solid majority of respondents said such tactics were not justified for routine drug raids.

Here is the exact question asked: "Last year 92-year old Kathryn Johnston was killed by Atlanta police serving a drug search warrant at an incorrect address supplied by an informant. Reports show that police use SWAT teams to conduct raids as often as 40,000 times per year, often for low-level drug enforcement. Do you agree or disagree that police doing routine drug investigations in non-emergency situations should make use of aggressive entry tactics such as battering down doors, setting off flash-bang grenades, or conducting searches in the middle of the night?"

Nearly two-thirds -- 65.8% -- said police should not routinely use such tactics. With minor variations, that sentiment held across geographic, demographic, religious, ideological, and partisan lines.

Opposition to the routine use of SWAT tactics for drug law enforcement ranged from 70.7% in the West to 60.5% in the East. Residents of large cities (60.7%), small cities (71.2%), the suburbs (66.7%), and rural areas (65.0%), all opposed the routine use of SWAT tactics.

Among Democrats, 75.1% opposed the raids; among independents the figure was 65.5%. Even in the Republican ranks, a majority -- 56% -- opposed the raids. Across ideological lines, 85.3% of self-identified progressives opposed the raids, as did 80.8% of liberals, 62.9% of moderates, and 68.9% of libertarians. Even people describing themselves as conservative or very conservative narrowly opposed the routine use of SWAT tactics, with 51.5% of the former and 52.5% of the latter saying no. Among African Americans, 83% oppose the practice.

"We're pleased but also not surprised to get such a good response on this," said DRCNet executive director David Borden, who authored the question. "It's just not a hard sell to say that people shouldn't get shot, burned or traumatized in their homes when there's any other viable way of handling a situation." The organization is planning to do more, he says, and has posted an information page on the issue at http://stopthedrugwar.org/policeraids.

"If you believe that the criminal justice system is 100% perfect, you tend to support the system, but with these drug raids, there have been just too many mistakes made, too many wrong doors kicked in, too many innocent people killed," said Peter Christ, a former New York police captain who spent 20 years in policing before retiring and becoming a founding member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP). "People understand that, and they realize that grandma down in Atlanta could have been them."

The real question, Walker said, was how to translate public opinion into policy changes. "I only wish this could be translated into the political realm," he said.

For Christ, changing police practices and drug policies is a slow, even generational process of education. The movement to reform the drug laws, he said, is akin to the movement for women's rights. "None of the people who started that movement in the 1830s lived to cast a vote," he said, "but in the end, they triumphed."

In Atlanta, the outrageous conduct of the narcotics officers involved in the Johnston case has led to changes, at least for now. They told a judge they had an informant who had bought crack cocaine at Johnston's home. That was a lie. They shot at the elderly woman protecting her home 39 times after she managed to squeeze off one shot from an old pistol. They handcuffed her as she lay dying. They planted marijuana in her basement after the fact. They tried, also after the fact, to get one of their informants to say he had supplied the information, but that informant instead went to the FBI.

2005 rave raid in Utah (courtesy Portland IndyMedia)
Two of the officers involved in the killing were ordered to prison this week pending sentencing on involuntary manslaughter and civil rights violations. A third has an April trial date.

The Johnston killing has also rocked the Atlanta Police Department. The police chief disbanded the entire drug squad for months, tightened up the rules for seeking search warrants, especially "no-knock" warrants, and instituted new policies forcing narcotics officers to rotate out on a regular basis. A year-long FBI investigation into the department continues.

But across the country, the Johnston case was little more than a blip on the radar, and the SWAT-style raids continue. "I haven't noticed any real change anywhere outside of Atlanta," said Radley Balko, an editor at ReasonOverkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Policing in America. "The pace of these raids has been about the same this year as last." magazine and a policy analyst specializing in civil liberties issues who authored the definitive report on the rise of the contemporary SWAT phenomenon,

And, as Balko noted in a FoxNews.com commentary this week, not only the raids, but the mistakes, some of them fatal, continue:

Balko also pointed to errant drug raids on innocent people in Temecula, CA.; Annapolis, MD.; several incidents in Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York City; Galliano, LA.; Hendersonville, NC.; Ponderay, ID; Stockton, CA.; Pullman, WA.; Baltimore; Wilmington, DE.; Jacksonville, FL; Alton, KS; Merced County, CA; and Atlanta, GA. And that's just this year.

Turning the juggernaut around is a daunting task. It would require changes to the policies and practices of hundreds of separate law enforcement agencies around the country, and that is going to require work at the state and local level.

But there are some limited prospects for change at the federal level. In June, the House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security held hearings on police militarization, and, thanks in part to Balko's testimony, this year's crime bill currently contains some language reflecting reforms recommended in Overkill that would limit the circumstances in which high levels of force can be used. Still, Balko said, it is unclear if that language will make it into the final bill.

At the least, Balko was able to inform committee Chair Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) that some of the money allocated for Bill Clinton's community policing COPS program had gone to establish SWAT teams. When a woman in the gallery asked for renewed funding for COPS, Balko pointed out that fact.

"Are you telling me that the COPs grants we handed out in the 90s were actually used to start SWAT teams?" Scott asked in surprise.

Balko confirmed that was indeed the case.

"Well that's certainly not what we had in mind," Scott replied.

According to Balko, at least 40 innocent people have been killed in forced entry drug raids in recent years. No one knows how many more innocents have been injured by testosterone-crazed police or had their property wantonly destroyed in such raids. And no one is even counting how many people -- innocent, guilty, family members -- have been needlessly traumatized by the jackboot kicking the door in at 4:00am and all that follows. And most of the "guilty" parties are mere low-level offenders, and by law presumed innocent until proven guilty.

If the politicians and law enforcement listen to the public, such tactics will become a thing of the past.

National Organizations

• All of Us or None
• American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry
• American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine
• American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers
• American Association of Community Colleges
• American Association of People with Disabilities
• American Association of State Colleges and Universities
• American Association of University Professors
• American Association of University Women
• American Bar Association
• American Civil Liberties Union
• American College Health Association
• American College of Nurse-Midwives
• American Council on Education
• American Federation of Teachers
• American Friends Service Committee
• American Humanist Association
• American Probation and Parole Association
• American Public Health Association
• American Student Association of Community Colleges
• Association of American Medical Colleges
• Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities
• Association of Recovery Schools
• BACCHUS Network
• Brennan Center for Justice
• Building Better Lives for Our Communities and Kids (Building BLOCK)
• Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice
• Center for Women Policy Studies
• Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice
• Church of the Brethren Witness
• Church Women United
• Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights
• Citizens United for the Rehabilitation of Errants
• Coalition of Essential Schools
• College Board
• College Parents of America
• ColorOfChange.org
• Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism
• Common Sense Legislative Group
• Correctional Education Association
• Council for Opportunity in Education
• Drug Policy Alliance
• Drug Reform Coordination Network
• Educators for Sensible Drug Policy
• Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
• Faces & Voices of Recovery
• Families Against Mandatory Minimums
• Family and Corrections Network
• Family Watch
• Fellowship of Reconciliation
• Friends Committee on National Legislation
• God Bless the World
• Human Rights and the Drug War
• Interfaith Drug Policy Initiative
• International Community Corrections Association
• Johnson Institute
• JoinTogether
• Justice Policy Institute
• Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
• Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
• Leadership Conference on Civil Rights
• League of United Latin American Citizens
• Legal Action Center
• Marijuana Policy Project
• Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund
• NAACP
• NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.
• NAACP Youth and College Division
• NAADAC, The Association for Addiction Professionals
• NASPA, Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education
• National Adult Education Professional Development Consortium
• National Alliance of Methadone Advocates
• National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education
• National Association for Public Health Policy
• National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
• National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth
• National Association of Blacks in Criminal Justice
• National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
• National Association of Graduate and Professional Students
• National Association of Graduate-Professional Students
• National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities
• National Association of Social Workers
• National Association of State Student Grant and Aid Programs
• National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators
• National Black Police Association
• National Coalition Against Domestic Violence
• National College Access Network
• National Consortium of TASC Programs
• National Council for Higher Education
• National Council of La Raza
• National Council of Negro Women
• National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA
• National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, Inc. (NCADD)
• National Education Association
• National HIRE Network
• National Inhalant Prevention Coalition
• National Lawyers Guild
• National Lawyers Guild Drug Policy Committee
• National Network for Youth
• National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws
• National Organization for Women
• National Organization of Concerned Black Men, Inc.
• National Partnership for Women & Families
• National TASC
• National Urban League
• National Women's Health Network
• National Youth Advocacy Coalition
• National Youth Rights Association
• November Coalition
• NOW Foundation
• Open Society Policy Center
• Parents Ending Prohibition
• People For the American Way
• Physicians and Lawyers for National Drug Policy
• Police Officers for Drug Law Reform
• Presbyterian Church (USA), Washington Office
• Prison Legal News
• Prison Policy Initiative
• Prisons Foundation
• Progressive Jewish Alliance
• Progressive National Baptist Convention
• Public Justice Center
• Rainbow-PUSH Coalition
• Safer Alternative For Enjoyable Recreation
• Students for Sensible Drug Policy
• Therapeutic Communities of America
• The Sentencing Project
• Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations
• United Church of Christ
• United Methodist Church General Board of Church and Society
• United Negro College Fund
• United States Student Association
• Voices for America's Children
• Wider Opportunities for Women
• Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual (WATER)
• Women's Law Project
• Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform
  

• Drug Policy Education Group
• Alliance for Reform of Drug Policy in Arkansas

• La Paloma
• Gatehouse Academy Youth Treatment Services
• Elfrida Youth Center
• Amity's Circle Tree Ranch Drug Treatment Center

• San Francisco Youth Commission
• San Francisco Board of Supervisors
• National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence Sacramento Region Affiliate
• National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence of the San Fernando Valley
• Legal Services for Prisoners with Children
• Justice Matters
• Free at Last
• Ella Baker Center
• County Alcohol & Drug Program Administrators Association of California
• Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse, Santa Barbara
• Californians for Justice
• California Opiate Maintenance Providers
• Books Not Bars

• Youth Transformation Center
• Sensible Colorado
• Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition

• Middlesex County Substance Abuse Action Council
• Efficacy

• YWCA of NCC County
• Stand for Children
• Pacem in Terris
• National Association of Social Workers -- Delaware
• National Alliance of Methadone Advocates -- Delaware Chapter
• NAACP of Delaware
• Metropolitan Wilmington Urban League
• Mental Health Association of Delaware
• League of Women Voters -- Delaware
• Latin American Community Center
• Jewish Federation -- Delaware
• Independent Resources -- Delaware
• Delaware Human Relations Commission
• Delaware Commission for Women
• Delaware Coalition for Human Rights
• Delaware Coalition Against Domestic Violence
• Delaware Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers
• Delaware Center for Justice
• Community Legal Aid Society
• Children and Families First -- Delaware
• Brandywine Counseling
• ARC of Delaware
• American Association of University Women -- Delaware
• AIDS Delaware
• Addictions Coalition of Delaware
• ACLU of Delaware
• A. Phillip Randolph Institute
• 142nd General Assembly of Delaware (House Conc. Res. 78)
• 1212 Corporation

• Drug Policy Forum of Hawaii

• Urban League of Chicago
• Target Area DevCorp
• Protestants for the Common Good
• Heartland Alliance for Human Needs & Human Rights
• Chicago Legal Advocacy for Incarcerated Mothers
• Chicago Jobs Council
• Chicago Coalition for the Homeless

• Safer Foundation
• LifeGuard

• Pioostin-Kiabuttamie Tribe
• League of Women Voters -- Kansas
• Kansas National Education Association
• Kansas FAMM
• Kansas Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
• El Centro
• Drug Policy Forum of Kansas

• University of Massachusetts Faculty Union
• Massachusetts State College Association
• Massachusetts Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators
• Drug Policy Forum of Massachusetts
• Alliance for Recovery through Medicine of Massachusetts
• ACLU of Massachusetts

• Sensible Drug Policy Maryland

• AdvoCare

• Maine Substance Abuse Foundation
• Maine Education Association
• Maine Council on Higher Education
• Maine Civil Liberties Union
• Maine Association of Substance Abuse Programs
• Maine Association of Prevention Programs

• National Council on Alcoholism/Lansing Regional Area

• St. Paul Youth Service Bureau
• Perspectives, Inc.
• National Council on Alcoholism & Drug Dependence, Inc. -- Minnesota Affiliate
• Minnesota State University Student Association
• Minnesota NAACP
• Minnesota Literacy Council
• Minnesota Association of Resources for Recovery and Chemical Health
• Minneapolis Urban League
• Hope Community, Inc.
• Council on Crime and Justice
• Central Center for Family Resources
• Brooklyn Peacemaker Center
• African American Family Services

• University of Missouri Graduate Professional Council
• Columbia Alliance for Patients and Education
• National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse - St. Louis Area

• North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition
• North Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence
• North Carolina Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators
• Burke Council on Alcoholism & Chemical Dependency, Inc.

• ACLU of Nebraska

• National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence -- New Jersey

• New Mexico Drug Policy Foundation
• Black Student Union -- Albuquerque Public Schools

• S.A.F.E. House (Stop Abuse in the Family Environment)
• Nevada Progressive Democrats of America
• Nevada Hispanic Services, Inc.
• Big Brother Big Sister Nevada
• ACLU of Nevada

• South Asian Youth Action
• ReconsiDer: Forum on Drug Policy
• New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
• New York PIRG
• New York Civil Liberties Union of Nassau County
• Interfaith Alliance of New York State
• Hour Children
• Alcoholism Council of New York
• Council on Addictions of NYS (CANYS)

• Women's Reentry Network
• Task Force (Cleveland)
• Racial Fairness Project
• Public Children Services Association of Ohio
• Professionals in Substance Abuse (Cincinnati)
• Prison Reform Advocacy Center
• Ohio Patient Network
• Ohio Federation of Teachers
• Ohio Council of Behavioral Healthcare Providers
• Ohio Community Corrections Association
• Ohio Citizens' Advocacy Board
• McKinley Hall Alcohol and Drug Services (Springfield)
• Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry
• Focus on Health Care
• Faces and Voices of Recovery of Ohio
• Dayton Urban League
• Community Action Partnership (Dayton)
• Cleveland African American Library Association
• Citizen Advocates for Chemical Dependency Prevention & Treatment
• Alcoholism Council of the Cincinnati Area, NCADD
• ACLU of Ohio

• Women's Resource Center of Central Oregon
• Urban League of Portland
• SOU Women's Resource Center
• Sisters in Action
• Recovery Association Project
• Portland Peace and Justice Center
• Oregon Students of Color Coalition
• Oregon Student Association
• Oregon Literacy, Inc.
• Morrison Child and Family Services
• Convict Amend Coalition
• Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare, Inc.
• ACLU of Oregon

• Youth Interlock Society
• Today Inc.
• Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia
• Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends
• Drug and Alcohol Service Providers Organization of Pennsylvania
• Congreso de Latinos Unidos (Philadelphia)
• ACLU of Pennsylvania

• Urban League of Rhode Island
• Rhode Island Patient Advocacy Coalition
• Rhode Island Office of Higher Education
• Rhode Island Family Life Center
• Providence Metro Treatment Center
• Knowledge Exchange Center of Rhode Island
• Joslin Community Center
• International Institute
• Family Life Center

• YWCA Abused Women Services
• Nashville Peace and Justice Centers
• Knoxville Leadership Foundation
• Highlander Research and Education Center
• Citizens for Justice, Equality and Fairness
• Chattanooga Endeavors

• Drug Policy Forum of Texas

• Substance Abuse and Addiction Recovery Alliance of Virginia

• Washington State Public Health Association
• Washington State Psychological Association
• Washington State Psychiatric Association
• Washington State Pharmacy Association
• Washington State Medical Association
• Washington State Bar Association
• Washington State Association of Alcoholism and Addiction Programs
• Washington Society of Addiction Medicine
• Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility
• Washington Osteopathic Medical Association
• Washington Academy of Family Physicians
• Seattle League of Women Voters
• Recovery Association Project of Washington
• Municipal League of King County
• Lutheran Public Policy Office of Washington
• Loren Miller Bar Association
• King County Medical Society
• King County Bar Association
• Church Council of Greater Seattle

Student Government Endorsers:

http://www.raiseyourvoice.com/studentendorse.html 

The following student governments have endorsed a resolution calling for the repeal of the provision of the Higher Education Act that penalizes persons with drug convictions by delaying or denying them eligibility for college financial aid:

View pdf

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Updated: May 2006

U.S. Student Association • Association of Big Ten Schools • Oregon Student Association
Student Association of the State University of New York • United Council of University of Wisconsin Students
American University (DC) • Amherst College (MA) • Appalachian State University (NC) • Baltimore City Community College
Bates College (ME) • Bergen Community College (NJ) • Brandeis College (MA) • Brown University
College of William and Mary • Columbia College (Columbia University)
Dalton College (GA) • Dartmouth College (NH) • De Anza College (CA) • Douglas College (Rutgers University)
Earlham College (IN) • Florida A&M University • Florida International University at University Park
Florida International University at Biscayne Bay Campus • Florida State University
Georgetown University (DC) • George Washington University (DC) • Goshen College (IN)
Gettysburg College (PA) • Grand Valley State University (MI) • Hampshire College (MA)
Howard University (DC) • Illinois State University at Normal • Indiana University at Bloomington
James Madison University (VA) • Lewis and Clark College (OR) • Linfield College (OR)
Louisiana State University • Loyola University (IL) • Mercyhurst College (PA) • Monroe Community College (NY)
Mount Holyoke College (MA) • New College of Florida • North Carolina State University
Northwestern University (IL) • Ohio State University • Ohio University • Oregon Students of Color Coalition
Pennsylvania State University • Pitzer College (CA) • Pomona College (CA) • Portland Community College at Cascade (OR)
Portland Community College at Rock Creek (OR) • Portland State University (OR) • Rice University (TX)
Rochester Institute of Technology (NY) • Saint Cloud State University (MN) • Smith College (MA)
South Carolina State University • Southern Illinois University at Carbondale • Southern Oregon University
SUNY Albany • SUNY Binghamton • SUNY ESF • Syracuse University • Texas State University - San Marcos
Union College (NY) • University of Arkansas • University of California at Berkeley • University of California at San Diego
University of California at Santa Barbara • University of Colorado at Boulder • University of Connecticut
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign • University of Iowa • University of Kansas • University of Maine at Orono
University of Maryland at College Park • University of Michigan • University of Minnesota at Twin Cities
University of Missouri at Columbia • University of Montana - Missoula • University of Nevada at Las Vegas
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • University of North Carolina at Wilmington • University of North Texas
University of Pennsylvania • University of Rhode Island • University of Southern California • University of Southern Maine
University of Texas at Austin • University of Texas at Dallas • University of Toledo
University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire • University of Wisconsin at Madison • University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee
University of Wisconsin at Richland • University of Wyoming • University of Vermont • Utica College (NY)
Washington University (MO) • Wesleyan University (CT) • Western Connecticut State University
Western Maryland College • Western State College (CO) • Western Washington University • Yale University

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WHEREAS A provision in the Higher Education Act of 1998 mandates that students convicted of any drug- related offense
(without regard to the nature of the offense or the offender) be denied eligibility for financial aid for periods ranging from one
year to “indefinite,” and;

WHEREAS No other class of offender (including those convicted of rape or other violent offenses) faces similar restriction
on student loan eligibility, and;

WHEREAS This provision will, by its very nature, impact primarily students of low to moderate economic means, and;

WHEREAS This provision will also have a discriminatory impact on people of color, as their communities are
disproportionately targeted for enforcement of the drug laws (e.g. African Americans, who comprise 12% of the nation’s
population and 13% of drug users, make up 55% of those convicted of drug offenses), and;

WHEREAS To the extent that the federal government involves itself in education, it should be focused on making it easier,
not more difficult, for citizens to educate themselves, and;

WHEREAS Education is an important factor in allowing people to become more productive, well-rounded citizens;

WE, THE UNDERSIGNED, call upon the 108th United States Congress to overturn that section of the Higher Education Act
of 1998 that denies or delays access to financial aid based upon convictions for drug-related offenses.

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Publications › Publications › Publications by LEAP Members

Publications by LEAP Members

Publications by LEAP
Members

Publications arranged alphabetically by Author:

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Publications by Jack Cole, LEAP's Executive Director and retired New Jersey State Policeman.
End Prohibition Now! (Word Doc)	(updated 2007-04-18)
End Prohibition Now! (PDF)	(updated 2007-04-18)
End Prohibition Now! (Webpage)	(updated 2006-02-16)
End Prohibition Now!  -- The Slide Presentation in PowerPoint format	(updated) -- [ Download PPT Viewer]
The war on the War on Drugs:	Full Transcript of the Radio-One Interview, Otago University, Dunedin, New Zealand)

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Publications by Edward Ellison, LEAP's Director for the UK and former Head of Scotland Yard's Anti-Drugs Squad
A Greenhouse in the Yard	Growing cannabis at Scotland Yard
Head to Head Debate	Letters to Editor, The Guardian, London
Why I Want All Drugs Legalised	Article: Daily Mail, UK
I'm Determined My Children Won't Get Hooked - Legalise	Article: Daily Mail, UK

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Publications by John Gayder, LEAP's Secretary of the Board and Constable, Niagara Parks Police, Ontario
Some Good News to LEAP About	Article: Free NY NY Libertarian Party
Thinking and Caring Too Much	Presentation transcript.
The Law as an Ass, or the Bridges of Welland County	Some thoughts on the role of Law

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Publications by Joseph D. McNamara, LEAP Advisory Board Member and Police Chief, San Jose, CA, 1976-91
Evaluating the National Strategies of Drug Control	Testimony before the Little Hoover Commission, CA
Battlefield Conversions	Reason Magazine Interview -January 2002

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Publications by Gil Puder, His example inspired the founding of LEAP and he was Constable, Vancouver, British Columbia for 18 years.
Recovering our Honour	Presentation to the Fraser Institute
The Empires Strike Back	Fraser Institute Monograph

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Publications by Howard Wooldridge, LEAP co-founder, Board member and retired Bath, MI, Policeman.
Lansing State Journal: Viewpoint	"On Asset Forfeiture", Nov. 2002

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Download A Bibliography of Drug-Policy
in MS-Word format or in PDF format.

 

 

By Retired Narcotics Undercover Officer, Jack A. Cole, September 21, 2005

http://leap.cc/cms/index.php?name=Content&pid=26 

I represent LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition) an international nonprofit educational organization that was created to give voice to all the current and former members of law enforcement who believe the war on drugs is a failed policy and who wish to support alternative policies that will lower the incidence of death, disease, crime and addiction - four categories of harm that were supposed to be alleviated by the war on drugs but which in truth were made infinitely worse by that war. We went public with our speakers' bureau in January 2003 and have grown from our five founding members to over 3,500. LEAP has 95 speakers living in 39 of the United States and in seven other countries; a powerful and respected Advisory Board, made up of a U.S. Governor, four sitting Federal District Court judges, a sheriff, five former police chiefs, the Mayor of Vancouver, British Colombia who is retired from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the former Attorney General of Colombia, South America and from the United Kingdom, a former Chief Constable and a Detective Chief Investigator of Scotland Yard who was operational head of narcotic task forces for all of England.

The first thing I need to tell you good people is that the US policy of a "war on drugs" has been, is, and forever will be, a total and abject failure. This is not a war on drugs, this is a war on people - our own people - our children, our parents, ourselves.

I joined the New Jersey State Police in 1964 and six years later joined their narcotic bureau. I started working in narcotics at the beginning of the war on drugs. The term "war on drugs" was coined and created by Richard Milhous Nixon in 1968 when he was running for president. Mr. Nixon believed a "tough on crime" platform would garner a lot of votes but if he could be in charge of a war - wow! Of course as we all know, it worked. Mr. Nixon was elected President and by 1970 he had convinced Congress to pass legislation giving massive funding to any police department willing hire officers to fight his war on drugs. To give you an idea of how large those grants were, in the New Jersey state police during 1964 we had 1,700 officers and a seven man narcotics unit. That number had always seemed adequate for the job we needed to do. Six years later, when I was trying to join the narcotics unit we still had the same numbers. Then overnight in October 1970 we went from a seven man narcotics unit to a seventy-six person narcotics bureau. All paid for by federal tax dollars. And that program was replicated in police departments across the country. When an organization is increased by eleven times it sets up certain expectations. Since police are mainly judged by the number of arrests they make that meant we were expected to arrest at least eleven times as many people in the coming year for drug offenses as we did in 1969.

One-third of the seventy-six new detectives were designated "undercover agents." I happened to fall in that one-third and that is how I spent most of the next fourteen years of my life. After two-weeks training we hit the streets, where we were supposed to start arresting drug dealers. That was not an easy job in 1970 for a couple of reasons.

First, we really didn't have much of a problem with drugs in 1970 and what problem we did have was basically with soft drugs, marijuana, hashish, LSD, psilocybin (mushrooms), etc. Hard drugs such as methamphetamine, cocaine, and heroin were almost unheard of back then - certainly unheard of compared to what they are today. Drugs were more a nuisance than a threat to our society. For instance, in 1970 people were less likely to die as a result of the drug culture than from falling down the stairs in their on homes or choking to death on food at their own dinner tables. Second, back then neither we nor our bosses had any idea of how to fight a war on drugs. Our bosses did know one thing though; they knew how to keep that federal cash-cow being milked in their personal barnyard. To accomplish that they had to make the drug war appear to be an absolute necessity. So early on we were encouraged to lie about most of our statistics and lie we did. Because dealers were not on most street corners or in all our schools - as they are now - we targeted our undercover officers on small friendship groups of kids in college, in high school or in-between who were "dipping and dabbing" in drugs - their term for experimentation.

So we arrested people who were basically drug-users and charged them as drug-dealers. We exaggerated the amount of drugs we seized by adding the weight of any cutting agents we found (lactose, mannitol, starch, or sucrose) to the weight of the illegal drug. So we might seize one ounce of cocaine and four pounds of lactose - but somewhere between the location where we seized it and the police laboratory it all magically became cocaine. We also the inflated the worth of the drugs we seized by releasing the "estimated street value" of those drugs to the media, which vastly elevated their importance. For instance in 1971 I was buying individual ounces of cocaine for fifteen hundred dollars each but when we released the estimated street value of one ounce of cocaine to the media it was closer to $20,000. Just ratchet it up a little and the drug war would appear absolutely essential. The federal dollars would keep flowing to our departments and our bosses would be happy. Who was to question our estimates and if they did who would they come to with their questions? Us. We could always justify them in some way.

However, as the war on drugs ground on we no longer had to lie about its getting worse. With each passing year of this continuing war, the "drug problem" has become exponentially more dreadful - an unintended effect caused by the war itself. The war publicized and aggrandized the use and sale of drugs and peaked the interest of a large portion of the youth of our country. In many cases, the drug culture portrayed in movies and on television seemed exciting and romantic to American teenagers. Many poor young people in the centers of our larger cities looked to the drug dealer as a role model - and the only way out of the poverty and misery of the ghetto. The dealer was the one person in their communities with the hot cars, hotter women, "money to burn," and leisure time in which to burn it.

In the first years the vast majority of arrests we made were for using or transporting marijuana, the drug that was easiest to interdict due to its sheer bulk and the fact that police officers could actually detect the odor of the drug if large amounts were being carried in the trunk of a vehicle they had stopped on the highway. At that time the media equated marijuana with heroin and cocaine; and the majority of the public hardly knew the difference between one drug and another. Marijuana seizures were the first drug interdictions that the police could count in the thousands of pounds but to the public drugs were drugs and a thousand pounds was an awful lot of drugs - this also made the drug problem appear much more important than it actually was at the time.

There have been many unintended consequences in the war on drugs. One of the unintended consequences of the successful interdiction of large amounts of marijuana was that it caused many marijuana dealers to switch to harder drugs that were less detectable and far more profitable, pound for pound. Among those drugs were heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine. An even worse consequence was that in a few short years the price of marijuana increased by 2,500 percent, from $160 a pound to $4,000 a pound, causing many users to switch to harder drugs, which were less detectable, more plentiful and were becoming ever cheaper. The war on drugs actually increased drug usage and made it more likely that those using soft drugs would choose harder drugs such as heroin and cocaine.

Political motivation has always been evident in many of the drug arrests made by police. Holdovers from the "turn-on and drop-out" flower children of the late 1960s, most of whom also protested the United States' involvement in the war in Vietnam, were among the first groups we concentrated on but we quickly included activist groups from racial and ethnic minorities, such as the Black Panthers. After all, H.R. Haldemann, Richard M. Nixon's Chief of Staff, recorded in his 1969 diary entry that Nixon emphasized, "You have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this all while not appearing to." The system they devised was the war on drugs and for Nixon's purposes he could have hardly hoped for more. ⁽¹⁾ The war on drugs has spawned the most racist laws seen in the United States since slavery. Indeed, there are more black and brown men in prison in the United States today (1,300,020) ⁽²⁾ than the total number of male slaves populating this country in 1840 (1,244,384). ⁽³⁾

By three years into the war, we were actually arresting some real mid-level dealers of other drugs, such as, the members of "The Breed" Motorcycle Gang who were selling methamphetamine out of the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area.

In 1977, seven years into the drug war, I kicked down a door in the Corona section of Queens, New York and seized around 350 thousand dollars and what was touted by the newspapers as "the largest shipment of Mexican brown heroin ever confiscated in the United States." We were in the newspapers over a week on that case - the heroin seizure, which is a little embarrassing to mention today, amounted to nineteen pounds. But the "drug problem" kept right on expanding, to the point that by 1978 I was working on Billion-Dollar, international, cocaine and heroin trafficking rings.

Then in 1982 I was assigned to a deep cover investigation, living nearly two years in Boston and New York City, posing as a fugitive drug dealer wanted for murder, while tracking members of a terrorist organization that robbed banks, planted bombs in corporate headquarters, court-houses, police stations, and airplanes and ultimately murdered a New Jersey State Trooper. It took me two years to finish that job and when I returned to New Jersey in 1984, I never worked another narcotic case. I was very happy about that. This is the reason why.

This "Heroin Price and Purity" chart was created by the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and placed on their Internet web site in what they called "The DEA Briefing Book 2001." The chart depicts the cost and purity of heroin - by year - from 1980 to 1999. The cost they are talking about was the average cost that one heroin user had to pay to "get high" one time and the purity they talk of was the average purity of one dose of street level drugs, which the heroin user purchased. DEA started their chart in 1980 but as I mentioned above I started buying heroin in 1970 so I can back this chart up ten years.

In 1970, we purchased "tre-bags" of heroin so called because they cost three dollars per bag. We bought them in multiples of two, because a heroin user needed to shoot two of those bags to get high. Two bags at $3 each, so in 1970 it cost $6 to get high. At that time the purity of the product was only about 1.5 percent (purity means how much of the white or brown powder contained in the small glassine envelopes was actually heroin). After ten years of fighting the "drug war," the purity had more than doubled and the cost to get high had dipped to $3.90. And after thirty years of "drug war" the price to "get off" on heroin had plummeted to 80 cents in 1980 equivalent dollars because the purity of heroin had increased by 25 times its original level - then registering over 38 percent pure in street buys. ⁽⁴⁾ By the year 2000 the purity of heroin had become greater than 70 percent in Newark, New Jersey and New York City. ⁽⁵⁾

And we wonder why so many people are overdosing on drugs today? Addicts do not consume more and more drugs each day until their bodies can no longer take the poison so they die. They overdose because they get what is known in the trade as a "Hot-Shot." If for any reason the drug dealer is distracted while mixing the nearly pure heroin he gets from another country with the cutting agent he is using to dilute the drug before reselling it he is left with a lumpy product. On that day, some of his clients are going to be very angry because they get the part that contains mostly cutting agent and they think the dealer tried to beat them out of their money. But another unlucky group of his clients will get the part of the mix that contains mostly pure heroin. When they cook up and inject the powder they think is 10 percent heroin and it is really 80 or 90 percent heroin, they don't get angry they get dead - there is no second chance for them. That is why we are hearing of more and more cases where 5, 10, even 20 people overdose in the same suburban town on the same day. That is due to a bad mix. And folks, these kids who are overdosing are somebody's children - they could be mine or yours.

Traditionally the worse the problem gets the more police and money we throw into the mix. Local and State police where not the only ones benefiting from the influx of "big bucks" being offered them to fight the war on drugs. The Drug Enforcement Administration of the federal government had about 3,000 employees when it was created in 1973, to replace the old Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. By 2001 DEA had tripled its staff but its budget, the money we give it to fight a failed war, had increased to 20 times the original amount - from $75 million in 1973 to over $1.5 Billion in 2001.

In 1980 we got a new man in the White House. President Ronald Reagan told us we were doing a good job arresting people but we were going in the White House. President Ronald Reagan told us we were doing a good job arresting people but we were going about it the wrong way. "Think of it of an economics equation," he said. "You are working on the supply side arresting drug dealers when you should be working on the demand side arresting drug users. If you arrest enough users you will frighten them away and without users there will be no dealers.

Arrests for Nonviolent Drug Offenses Source: US Drug Enforcement Administration Table for 2001

More than a thousand people were arrested as a result of my undercover work. I can't tell you how many of those young folks would have gone on to have a perfectly productive life had I not intervened but I am sure the number is huge. We have a saying at LEAP, "You can get over an addiction, but you will never get over a conviction." A conviction will track you every day of your life because it is on a computer. Every time you go to get a job it is hanging over your head like a big ugly cloud.

You know, I could even live with that if it made a bit of difference to lowering the incidence of death, disease, crime, and addiction but it doesn't. And the policies are so destructive. Think of all the people you know personally who have ever used an illicit drug when they were young - then put the drugs behind them and went on to lead a perfectly happy and productive life. If you can't think of any and I doubt that, I can name a few for you. You remember the fellow who was in the news so much a few years ago - the one who used to smoke but didn't inhale? That's right, President William J. Clinton. But I don't want to just pick on Democrats. We have a man in the White House today who used illicit drugs, George W. Bush. And Vice Presidents, Al Gore and Dan Quail, along with former speaker of the house, Newt Gingrich used illicit drugs. The line is too long to enumerate but all those folks have two things in common. They all used illicit drugs when young then put them down and went on to become powerful politicians and once they got there they all got selective amnesia. They forgot where they came from. Suddenly they came to believe police have to arrest young people for doing exactly what they did - in order to save them - and guarantee those arrested will never achieve the levels of success of our current politicians.

And what have we accomplished with all our hard work and monetary investment. On February 5, 1994, I clipped a photograph out of the New York Times Newspaper. It caught my eye for several reasons. There was no accompanying article, just the picture and that picture was buried on page 23 of the newspaper. The event occurred in the Corona section of Queens, New York, just down the street from where 17 years earlier I had made the largest seizure of brown heroin - nineteen pounds. As you can see, they did a little better than I did. The caption relates, "police and federal authorities recovered 4,800 pounds of cocaine, with an estimated street value of $350 million..."

Nancy Siesel/The New York Times Cocaine Seized in Industrial Machine Imported from Venezuela The police and Federal authorities recovered 4,800 pounds of cocaine, with an estimated street value of up to $350 million, and arrested four men unpacking the drugs at a warehouse in the Corona section of Queens. Police officers and agents from the United States Customs Service and the Drug Enforcement Administration strained to load the drugs into a truck.

And how has the war on drugs aided our children? Has it reduced drug availability or use in our schools? (When I give my public presentations, I always ask how many people know who John Walters is. Almost no one ever knows. I tell them John Walters is the Drug Czar of the United States - the "Top Cop" - the one in charge of coordinating the U.S. war on drugs. But I also tell them there is no reason they should know his name since every year or so we throw out the old Czar and appoint a new one because the old one has never been capable of diminishing this country's "drug problem." However, I suggest to them, we shouldn't be too hard on the drug czars because we have given them an impossible task - we cannot arrest our way out of our drug problem. So the only thing that really changes from the old drug czar to the new drug czar is the new drug czar tends to lie a whole lot better than the old one. And John Walters is really a pip. He would have you believe we are winning this war. He pointed to "Monitoring the Future 2002," ⁽⁷⁾ the largest government funded study ever done on the behaviors, attitudes, and values of American secondary school students, college students, and young adults, and said, "This survey confirms that our drug-prevention efforts are working...." ⁽⁸⁾ What did the report really say? The study asserted that over a ten-year period, between 1991 and 2002, marijuana use among students in all school grades across the United States increased. How much did it increase? - 30 percent for twelfth graders; 128 percent for tenth graders; and for eighth graders, a 188 percent increase! ⁽⁹⁾ How can John Walters say this study shows our drug prevention efforts are working? Could the drug-warriors possibly be lying to us?

A 2002 drug survey by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University revealed that schoolchildren across the country say it is easier for them to buy marijuana than it is to buy beer and cigarettes.⁽¹⁰⁾ How can that be?

The answer is really not very complicated. When I first worked undercover, I was hanging out with about 20 kids in front of a bowling alley at a suburban strip-mall. They were not criminals. They didn't mistreat anyone, rob, or steal. And they were not drug dealers, at least not as I identify the term. In the words of one of the more courageous Juvenile Court Judges who later threw out many of these types of cases, "They were not selling drugs they were simply accommodating friends." What would happen was one night "person A" got a chance to use his parents' car so he could make the trip to New York City to buy drugs for the whole group (at the beginning of the war one had to go to a large city to buy drugs). The next night it might be "person B" or "person C" who made the trip to the city. Whoever made the run, first went to all the friends, took orders for what each wanted and collected enough money from them to pay for the drugs they ordered. On returning from the city, the individual doses of drugs were handed out to those who had ordered them. No profit was made on the transactions. Most probably didn't even earn enough to pay for their gas.

Because I had befriended them, I could also buy drugs from them in that manner. That after all is the job of an undercover agent. It is not the romanticized work you see in the movies or on television. Every war must have a spy and in the war on drugs the spy is the undercover agent. You see, the drug culture may not involve victimless crimes but it does involve consensual crimes. Both the seller and the buyer get something they want from the transaction and neither is going to report the other party to the police. That is why it is necessary to infiltrate that world with an undercover agent who is willing to arrest any-and-all players, whether they are dealers or users. The job of all undercover agents is to become the best friend and closest confidant of the persons they are targeted against - so they can betray them and send them to jail. And when they are through with each person they are targeted against the next and the pattern repeats - friendship-betrayal-jail - over and over, hundreds of times.

But I digress. Let's get back to those kids in the parking lot. None of them were 21 years old but they could and did sell me any kind of illegal drugs you can name. However, they often came up to me and said, "Hey Jack, we're thirsty - will you go into the liquor store and buy us some beer? We can't buy beer." They could get all the illegal drugs they wanted but couldn't buy beer. How can that be?

The answer is so simple that it has apparently never occurred to our drug czars. Beer and cigarettes are legal commodities and the people who sell them are licensed to do so. Selling those drugs is the way they make their livelihood and they will do whatever they can to protect those licenses. I am not saying if drugs were legal that no children would be able to get drugs. Nothing works perfectly. But no illicit drug dealer is going to worry about checking your child's birth certificate to see if he or she is old enough to buy drugs - the street dealer only want to see one thing - "Show me the money!" And once they've seen the money it doesn't matter if the child is four years old, he or she will be given the drugs. We know this because we have recorded cases of exactly that happening

So, how much money am I talking about here? Enough money to bribe a cop? Enough to buy a judge or a politician? Enough to convince legitimate bankers to wash that dirty money through their banks? In just the banks of the Southern half of Florida in one year over seven billion dollars washed through. I'm not saying the money spent around the world on illicit drugs each year is enough to bribe a cop. I'm saying it's enough money to buy a whole country. Over 500 billion dollars is spent each year on illegal drugs.⁽¹¹⁾ That amounts to eight percent of the world's total international trade, about the same amount as spent in the international textile trade.⁽¹²⁾ One of the main differences between the two trades is that folks in the textile industry only make a few percent profit on their investment - in the illegal drug industry nearly everything is profit. After all, what are we are talking about here - simply weeds. It doesn't matter whether we are talking about marijuana from the Cannabis plant, cocaine from the coca bush, or heroin from the opium poppy - it is all just weeds. Those of us charged with destroying it cut it down or pull it up by the roots or fly over it and spray it with poison. We also poison the poor folks growing it but we don't seem worry about that. However, the point is, we have to go back and destroy the plants all over again each year. They are so hardy and they will grow nearly anywhere that they literally have zero value - No value at all. That is, until we make them illegal. Once we prohibit them, their value becomes astronomically high; nearly beyond belief. So much so that marijuana is worth more ounce-for-ounce than gold, heroin worth more than uranium, and cocaine worth something in between. So much so that from the locations where it is grown, mostly in third-world countries such as Afghanistan and Colombia, to where it is sold in New York or Los Angeles, the increase in value can be up to seventeen thousand percent! How would you business folks reading this like to work on a mere 17,000 percent increase in value of your product?

I realized long ago that when uniformed officers arrested a robber or rapist the rate for that particular crime went down. They took someone off the streets that made our communities safer for everyone. But when I arrested a drug dealer the crime rate didn't go down. I was simply creating a job opening for a long line of people more than willing to risk arrest for those obscene profits. It was actually worse than that. I wasn't just creating a job opening, I was creating a safe job opening because it they tried to get the job while the dealer was still on the corner he would probably shoot them. I would suggest to you that whole armies of police cannot stop drug trafficking when the profits are this immense.

Let me summarize what I have said. After nearly four decades of fueling this war with over a trillion dollars of our taxes⁽¹³⁾ and creating increasingly punitive policies toward drug users, what are the results? Our court system is choked with the escalating number of drug prosecutions and our quadrupled prison population has made building prisons this nation's fastest growing industry; with 2.2 million incarcerated today and another 1.6 million arrested every year for nonviolent drug violations - more per capita than any country in the world. Where will it end? The United States has 4.6 percent of the world's population and 22.5 percent of its prisoners ⁽¹⁴⁾ - right here in this "land of freedom"! There is something wrong with this picture.

And despite all this money so ill spent, all these lives wasted, drug barons continue growing richer every year, terrorists make fortunes on the trade, and our citizens continue dying on our streets. The final outcome to this terrible story is that today illicit drugs are cheaper, more potent, and far easier for our children to get than they were 35 years ago when I first started buying heroin on those streets. This represents the very definition of a failed public policy. Will Rogers said, "If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging." So what we're suggesting at LEAP is that we stop digging in the hole of a failed war on drugs and start searching for alternative strategies

Now I am now going to make a couple of suggestions that I hope will answer what I think is your obvious question - "Is there anything that can be done to stop this scourge on our nation and the world?"

I believe there is.

I am going to offer you a policy model I have been working on for some thirty years. However, I am not presenting it to convince you of its worth as much as to open your mind to the fact that workable alternatives to these failed drug policies do exist. If you ever get to hear another LEAP speaker you may get an alternative policy that differs slightly as to how we might distribute drugs once they are legal. All LEAP requires of its speakers is that they believe the war on drugs is a failure and that the speakers support alternative policies that will lessen the incidence of death, disease, crime and addiction by ultimately ending drug prohibition.

We speak to thousands of very intelligent people like yourself during our presentations and what we are hoping is that once the public's mind is open to alternative solutions, they will think of workable policies that are much better than any we have yet considered.

This then is my suggested solution.

Alternative Drug Policy

The first thing we must do is admit that most of the incidence of death, disease, crime, and addiction, attributed to drug use are actually caused by drug prohibition. Once we have done that we can stop the horrors associated with that prohibition by removing the profit motive generated within the drug culture.

Step 1: How do we do that? - simple - we end drug prohibition! We legalize drugs! We legalize all drugs - legalize them so we can regulate and control them and keep them out of the hands of our children.

"Ah..." I hear you saying, "But won't legalization cause everyone to use drugs? Won't we become a drugged-out zombie nation within a year?" The answer is NO! Drugs were not illegal in this country until 1914 and we seemed to get through the first 200 years without that occurring.

If we look around the world, we have many fine examples of policies we could try. Policies that show us drug use will not increase with legalization. In Holland were drugs have been virtually legal since 1976 the police look the other way unless the user and the seller are causing some other kind of trouble. If you are an adult, you can go into a coffee shop there and order from a menu that offers a multiple choice of several brands of marijuana and hashish. You make your choice, put your money on the counter and they sell you five grams of that product - each time you walk through the door. You can smoke it there or put in a doggy bag and take with you - nobody cares. In Holland, researchers conducted a survey to determine how many tenth graders had tried marijuana: 28 percent had tried it.⁽¹⁵⁾

Then they conducted the same survey in the United States. Here, where people like me will not only arrest your sons and daughters for possessing so much as one joint but we will take away their driver's licenses (even if the arrest occurred in their bedroom). That means if they live in rural America or the suburbs where there is no public transportation, they can no longer get to schools or hold gainful employment. If they reside in urban centers that have public transportation but happen to live in government-subsidized housing, we will not only throw them out of the house but their whole family will be evicted - and if they live with their grandparents, those old folks will also have to hit the street, because the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in 2003 that this kind of massive punishment is OK. It is OK, according to them, because, "We are fighting a war on drugs" and when you fight a war nearly anything is acceptable.⁽¹⁶⁾

Also, thanks to the "zero tolerance" attitude fostered from years of prohibition, when this punished child finally gets free from the lockup and wants to better their condition by going back to school, the State tells him or her they can't get a government educational grant or loan for that schooling. However, in another crazy paradox of fighting a war on drugs, if they were simply convicted of murder or rape there would be no problem for them. Just apply for it and the loan would be available.

In this country, 41 percent of tenth graders have used marijuana.⁽¹⁷⁾ How can that be? Twenty-eight percent where marijuana is virtually legal and 41 percent where it's the devil's own weed - yet another unintended consequence of the war on drugs. The researchers couldn't square this fact in their minds so they went to Amsterdam and spoke with The Netherlands' drug czar, who happens to be the Minister of Health, because in Amsterdam they treat drug use as a health problem rather than as a crime problem. When the Minister was asked, "How can this be?" he answered very sensibly, "Well, I think what we have done in Holland, is we have managed to make pot boring." Young people are not likely to act out by doing things they believe are boring. What this means is children in the Netherlands don't start using drugs at the age of fourteen, which is the entry level for drug use in the United States. In the fact, as the Minister pointed out, the per capita use of soft drugs, marijuana and hashish in The Netherlands is half the per capita use in the United States. Since they separate soft drug purchases allowing them to be bought in coffee shops, users don't have to buy their marijuana from criminal dealers who would rather sell them hard drugs. The result is the per capita use of hard drugs, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, etc. is one-fourth what is in the U.S. Another plus is that their homicide rate is also only one-fourth the per capita rate of the United States. And they really manage to accomplish all this on the cheap spending less that 1/6 the per capita spending of the United States for drug-related law enforcement

So what would the outcomes of drug legalization entail?

The first outcome would be that we wouldn't have to arrest 1.6 million every year for nonviolent drug offenses.

Not arresting those 1.6 million people would be very monetarily important to every person in this country because each year our local, state, and federal government spends 69 Billion dollars to interdict drugs at our boarders and beyond; to arrested the dealers and users of the 90% of those drugs that penetrate that sieve at the border; to prosecute those arrested; and to warehouse those convicted of nonviolent drug violations - many for the rest of their lives⁽²⁰⁾ - to the tune of $26,000 per person, per year, nationally. And around $35,000 each in my home state of Massachusetts.

According to the 1998 Federal Household Survey:

According to U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics

Step 2: The US government should import or produce the drugs and control them for quality, potency, and standardized measurement.

This policy would virtually end drug overdoses. Those deaths don't have to happen any more than the deaths attributed to "bathtub gin" during alcohol prohibition had to happen. These deaths are a result of drug prohibition not drug pharmacology. Legalization and regulation of drugs can stop the carnage. And if we can keep those people from overdosing, who feel they must continue to use drugs, perhaps we can wean them off their addictions. And folks, these are our children. They are our parents; our sisters and brothers. We should be trying to help them by bringing them back into our society as productive citizens, not by burying them years before they should have died.

Another important point about governmental production of opium was address by the Senlis Council, a European drug-policy research institution, which according to New York Times writer, Maia Szalavitz, has proposed this "truly winning solution":

The Senlis Council, has come up with a sensible policy that will assist drug producing nations with their loss of income after drug prohibition has ended, while creating better conditions for millions of suffers of chronic pain.

Step 3: Distribute free maintenance doses of drugs to any adult requesting them. This is the most important point, the one that actually removes the profit motive. This sounds radical but it really isn't. We have been giving drugs to addicted people for over 25 years, in what is called the methadone maintenance programs.

The trouble with the methadone maintenance programs is that methadone is about ten times more potent than heroin and about ten times more addictive than heroin. There is a reason we call it "methadone maintenance." For the most part those who start it will be maintained on it forever.

Can giving free drugs to addicted people help end those addictions? The answer is YES! In both Switzerland and Holland, heroin addicted people are treated by giving them government heroin for free or at very small expense. Clinics were set up around the country where people were allowed to come in and inject government heroin up to three times a day, using clean needles, under medical supervision. But there were also social workers there, educators and job specialists, trying to wean their clients off heroin. They saw the addicts three times every day of the year and they quickly became trusted friends. We know how much power a friend has in modifying someone's behavior - certainly a lot more than a judge has when ordering that person to rehabilitation.

The outcomes of those policies are nothing short of amazing. Because drug dealers can't beat the low price of government drugs there are few selling heroin in the streets and users don't have to prostitute themselves or steal goods to pay for their drugs so crime was slashed by 60 percent. This also affected the use of other drugs. Cocaine use among those heroin addicts plummeted from 35 to 5 percent. Because the addicts inject only the quality-controlled drugs of the government, they know how much they are taking and no overdose deaths have occurred in the clinics.⁽²⁴⁾ Because the addicts are using clean needles to inject their drugs those countries now register the lowest per capita rate of AIDS and Hepatitis of any countries in Europe.

Then came the most important discovery. When an addicted person wakes up in the morning they have only one thought, "Where will I get my fix?" If they know where they might score, the next thought is, "How do I pay for it?" And if they also have money for the drugs then their next thoughts are, "When I go down there is the dealer going to sell me talcum powder and beat me out of my money? Is he going to beat me up, steal my money and my drugs?" Or worse, "Is he going to sell me a hot-shot and end my life?" Because of these thoughts the addicted person's life is in chaos for every waking hour. But in Switzerland and the Netherlands, because of these programs the addicts were able to stabilize their lives. They were no longer criminals forced to associate with other criminals, they were people with a health problem and health problems can be dealt with. Homelessness among the addicts fell from 12 percent to zero and fulltime employment more than doubled to 42 percent of participants. And of those going back to full time employment, 22 percent decided to give up their addictions to heroin. Why would they do that? At LEAP we maintain it was because they got their lives back - they once again had hope for the future.

That is the answer to America's drug problem. Give folks hope for the future and they will leave drugs behind

So what are the outcomes of free governmental distribution?

Step 4: Take a portion of those 69 billions of dollars we save each year thanks to ending drug prohibition and redirect it in two ways. First, to create programs that offer hope for the future. In the more than 35 years I have worked in this field I have found that addicted people tend to have one thing in common - they have very little or absolutely no hope for the future. Give them hope and the vast majority will leave their addictions behind them.

The drug use of U.S. soldiers during and after the Vietnam War reinforces this theory. Many (perhaps the majority) of U.S. soldiers used marijuana during the early part of the Vietnam War⁽²⁹⁾ because they had been placed in an untenable position - one where hope for the future was close to nonexistent. When President Nixon heard about the marijuana use, he was worried about the message that would send so he started a very strong enforcement program to track down users and force them to quit. The program was quite successful because the odor of marijuana was so easy to detect but the policy had terrible unintended side effects - most of the U.S. troops simply switched to the lower priced and easier concealed #4 grade heroin, which was available all over the country.⁽³⁰⁾ That heroin was so potent that they could smoke it with tobacco or dip toothpicks in a liquid solution and chew them as they went about their business. Countless soldiers were thus exposed to regular use of heroin over a long period. At the end of their tours when the soldiers expected to return to the United States, their bosses said they could not leave until they came up with clean urine. Talk about an incentive program! So they all cleaned up and returned home.⁽³¹⁾ Some years later the U.S. media lamented about the many soldiers who became addicted to heroin in Vietnam and continued their addictions after discharge from the service. Actually, only around 5 percent of the soldiers who were regular users of heroin in Vietnam ever returned to the drug once back in the U.S. - and most of those who did return to heroin probably experienced as little hope for their future here as they did in Vietnam.

Hope is essential if we want to lower the incidence of drug addiction. Hope comes in the guise of available rehabilitation centers that offer a way out of the addictions. Two-thirds of the hard drug addicted people who come begging us for help find there is no room in the inn. Due to the "zero tolerance" attitude fostered by prohibition, judges are giving young folks caught smoking a joint on Friday night the choice of going to rehab or going to jail. Which would you choose? Rehabilitation for someone smoking a joint is much less necessary or reasonable than suggesting I need rehabilitation because I will drink a Jack Daniels after I finish writing this tonight. But because courts are needlessly flooding rehabilitation centers with pot smokers those hard drug addicts must continue to go begging. We are spending so much money locking them up we don't have any left to help them end their addictions.

Hope can also rise on the wings of guaranteed minimums. Instead of creating more mandatory minimum sentences, what would happen if we spent some of that saved money to create mandatory minimum education for everyone, mandatory minimum health care; decent housing; jobs for everybody who wanted to work; instead of thinking about minimum wages how about creating mandatory livable wages for everyone. Can you imagine how many fewer addicts we would have in our society? We are the richest country in the world and we make a very specific decision every year to spend $69 billion to destroy lives rather than to help people put their lives back together - to alienate rather then ameliorate. Give drug users hope for the future and they have less need to use drugs; less need to use drugs means less drug addicts. And isn't reducing the rate of drug addiction the reason we concocted the war on drugs?

The last half of step four is to redirect another part of those saved billions to programs that offer true education about drugs. I'm not talking about the failed policy of teaching D.A.R.E.⁽³²⁾ but real programs that tell the truth about drugs. Does drug education work? You bet it does! Again, we have a perfect example of a policy that did work. In 1965, 42 percent of the adult U.S. population smoked tobacco, the most deadly and addictive drug known to humans. Smoking tobacco kills 430,000 people in the United States every year, while the use of all illicit drugs and the misuse of all prescription drugs combined kills less than 13,000 per year. We tend to procrastinate a bit in the U.S. so we didn't really get angry about all the tobacco deaths until the late 1980s. Then we decided we were going to do something to bring down that death rate. But we didn't start a war on tobacco. We didn't start arresting users. We started a very strong drug-education-program aimed at lowering tobacco use. It worked. By 1998 only 24 percent of the adult U.S. population smoked that most dangerous of drugs and the percentage is dropping every year.⁽³³⁾ We took the worst drug problem known to the United States and nearly cut it in half through education. Now, what we at LEAP want to make clear to you folks is that we didn't have to send one person to prison to make it work; we didn't have to destroy a single life to achieve our goal. There are better ways of lowering the incidence of death, disease, crime, and addiction than this failed policy of a war on drugs.

Perhaps we should listen to some of our great thinkers in the United States as they expound on U.S. drug policy. Albert Einstein had this to say about prohibition:

Albert Einstein 1921: Talking about our prohibition - No. Einstein was talking about the prohibition our grandmothers and grandfathers had the good sense to do away with in 1933. alcohol prohibition. There is little difference between alcohol prohibition and drug prohibition but what difference exists made things better under alcohol prohibition. For instance with alcohol prohibition we didn't arrest users, only sellers and distributors. The drive to arrest drug-users came with the Reagan Administration. So now, we enforce a policy that says we have to arrest our children in order to save them

When will we ever learn? This is a picture taken in Boston, in front of Copley Plaza during 1932 - one year before that nasty law fell. It's a picture of those folks who were probably the most responsible for ending that sad stain on American history; members of the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform. Do you see what it says on the side of their car? "SAVE OUR CHILDREN - STAMP OUT PROHIBITION!"⁽³⁵⁾ That is all we are saying at LEAP, "Save our children - stamp out prohibition!"

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