Pubdate: Fri, 17 Jan 2003 Source: Taunton Daily Gazette (MA) Copyright: 2003 Taunton Daily Gazette Contact: http://www.zwire.com/site/news.asp?brd=1711 Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2750 Author: Peter Gillen, Gazette Staff Writer Cited: Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) http://leap.cc/ Bookmarks: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Law+Enforcement+Against+Prohibition http://www.mapinc.org/states/ma/ (Massachusetts) EX-COP: TO WIN THE WAR ON DRUGS, LEGALIZE THEM TAUNTON - Jack A. Cole began fighting what he now considers a failed war in the mid-1960s. Unlike Vietnam, the war on drugs is still going on. "It has been an abject failure," Cole said of the war he helped wage for 12 years as a narcotics detective. He says those 12 years were worse than futile. "I did worse than waste my time, I destroyed lives," Cole said. Cole, a retired New Jersey State Police Detective, is now leading an effort to end the prohibition of drugs and find alternate solutions the nation's drug problem. Cole is executive director of LEAP, an acronym for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, an organization of 300-plus members that includes U.S. District Court judges, current and former police officers and former Drug Enforcement Agents. He addressed his talk on the war on drugs to Rotarians at the Stone Forge Tavern yesterday. "It's not that I'm for drugs -- quite the opposite," Cole said. The financial and social cost of fighting the drug trade increases every year while the amount it costs to get high decreases. The drug trade is a $400 billion industry, comparable to the textile industry in its halcyon days, he said. Those statistics alone show a failed battle, he said. The solution to the drug problem is to stop making drug dealing profitable, Cole said. Another trick is to strip them of their romance. Cole said in Holland marijuana use is lower than in the United States in part because it is nearly legal. "They have made pot boring," Cole said. Paradoxically, in the United States teenagers in surveys say it is easier to get illegal drugs than cigarettes or alcohol. He said drug potency has increased dramatically in the last 30 years, making it cheaper for users to get high, despite $1.6 million arrests per year and $69 billion in associated law enforcement and prison costs. Cole said he personally believes drugs should be legal, government produced and regulated. He said he believe drugs should be free to addicts and any government profits should be channeled into education programs. If the government regulated drugs, overdoses would be virtually eliminated, he said, because overdoses occur when dealers purposely or inadvertently vary the purity of their product. To prove drug education programs work, Cole cited efforts against tobacco, which nearly cut in half the percentage of Americans who smoke in 30 years. Finally, there is the moral component of the drug argument. "Why is it my place to tell somebody they can't use a drug because I don't use a drug," Cole said. What is unethical, he said, is to allow murderers and terrorists to run the drug trade as they do now. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake