Pubdate: Sun, 15 Mar 2009
Source: Winnipeg Free Press (CN MB)
Copyright: 2009 Winnipeg Free Press
Contact: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/info/letters/index.html
Website: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/502
Author: Robert Marshall
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?166 (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?227 (Cole, Jack)

TIME TO UPSET DRUG LORDS' BILLLION-DOLLAR APPLE CART

President Barack Obama's youthful drug use, including cocaine, seems 
to have had little effect on the support he enjoys while leading the 
free world through the most troubling times in recent history.

Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps has not been as fortunate. The 
now-famous photo of Phelps smoking from a bong ended with a contract 
termination and his picture being yanked off the Kellogg's Corn Flakes box.

With such confusing messages is it any wonder that there is little 
consensus among stakeholders in the war on drugs?

Today, nobody seriously considers high-flyers such as Obama or Phelps 
criminals or drug fiends, but 40 years ago actions like theirs led to 
the all-out drug war that continues today.

The war is a loser. Despite intense law-enforcement efforts that have 
come with a trillion-dollar tab, lives are still being destroyed 
while drugs become cheaper and easier than ever to procure.

The Free Press published a piece from The Economist earlier in the 
week that concluded the war has been a disaster, waged against a 
backdrop of murder. The proliferation of the cocaine industry has 
generated headlines from Mexico that last year reported 6,000 
drug-killings. More than 800 police officers and soldiers have been 
murdered there in the last two years and beheading officials has 
become a popular gang tactic.

In Winnipeg, cops acknowledge quietly that because of high profits 
and few risks they are on the war's losing side. Vancouver police 
Chief Jim Chu is less quiet and seems to be seeking a dramatic 
solution for the drug-fuelled, brutal gang conflict linked to Mexico 
and playing out in the Olympic city.

The traditional display of drugs, cash and guns that accompanies most 
sizable narcotic arrests in Vancouver, or anywhere in North America, 
only signals that players have to move around in the drug 
organization -- not that a problem has been solved.

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), is a worldwide 
organization made up of cops, judges and other concerned people who 
have long recognized the inadequacy of current drug policy.

LEAP celebrates its anniversary on Monday. Founded on March 16, 2002, 
with five members, it is now 10,000 strong with representation in 86 
countries. LEAP is part of a growing acceptance that the war on drugs 
has compounded problems and that a system of legalization and 
regulation would be less harmful and, as public policy, more 
effective -- something The Economist terms as "least bad."

Officers from Seattle to South America, through to Sierra Leone and 
Scotland Yard, argue that prohibition provides the means for 
organized crime to reap billions in annual profits. With that kind of 
dollars at stake, violence is inevitable. It also sets the stage for 
gangsters to determine how the drugs will be produced as well as 
where and to whom they will be sold.

LEAP's Jack Cole, a retired undercover officer who has worked both 
street dealers and terrorists, says current laws put dealers in the 
driver's seat and that if they choose to sell drugs in playgrounds 
"then that's where they'll be sold." It shouldn't be a snap for a 15 
year old to buy crack while next to impossible to purchase a beer. It 
just makes sense that a junkie would be better served by a health 
agency than by the Hells Angels.

Trading prohibition for regulation and more education is a worthy 
discussion but nobody should see it as an easy fix. Drug cartels 
would view such radical change as a hostile takeover in every sense 
of the word and governments would have to be wary. Drug lords would 
like nothing more than -- and are liable to do anything -- to 
maintain the status quo.

Sure there are doubts about the government's ability to become an 
effective drug regulator but any attempt to drive a stake into the 
heart of organized crime sounds good. Crime's billion-dollar apple 
cart needs to be upset. The violence is unacceptable.

Change won't happen in the near term. But with luck, the UN summit on 
international drug policy, which wrapped up Friday in Vienna, paid 
heed to those who have been on the front lines (LEAP was represented 
at the meetings) and others who have studied and offered their 
careful observations of the war.

In the meantime, those who choose to continue their consumption of 
illicit drugs need to know that their individual demand amounts to 
complicity in the murders, terror and misery subjected to thousands 
here at home and abroad.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom