Pubdate: Mon, 09 Jul 2012
Source: U.S. News & World Report (US)
Copyright: 2012 U.S. News & World Report
Contact: (202) 955-2685
Website: http://www.usnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/464
Author: Neill Franklin
Cited: http://leap.cc/

FORMER COPS AGREE: LEGALIZATION IS THE PATH TO CONTROLLING DRUGS

Is it time to scale back the failed and harmful war on drugs? No, it's
time to end it once and for all.

As a 34-year veteran law enforcement officer who has done undercover
narcotics work, I fully understand the harm that drug abuse can cause.
I've seen it on the streets of Baltimore far too many times to count.
But making drugs illegal and harshly punishing those who use or sell
them hasn't solved the problem. We make more than 1.6 million drug
arrests a year in the United States, but it hasn't made drugs
appreciably harder to get, especially for our kids. We've spent over
$1 trillion waging the drug war since President Richard Nixon first
declared it in 1971, yet 47 percent of Americans admit to using
illegal drugs.

But the drug war isn't just ineffective; it's much worse than that.
Banning drugs has created an enormous black market in which those who
control the illegal trade never hesitate to use violence to protect
their tax-free profits. Drug cartels in Mexico have killed nearly
60,000 people over the past six years. If drugs were legal and
regulated, instead of completely prohibited, none of these criminal
organizations would have any interest in the drug trade. Think about
it: When is the last time you heard about gangsters shooting each
other to control the alcohol market? Probably sometime prior to 1933,
which is when we ended the failed experiment of alcohol
prohibition.

[Read the U.S. News Debate: Should Welfare Recipients Be Tested for Drugs?]

I seriously doubt that drug use will rise significantly under
legalization; everyone who wants to use these substances already has
easy access to them under our ineffective war on drugs. But once we
stop wasting so much money arresting, prosecuting, and incarcerating
people for drugs, we can better fund treatment and prevention programs
that actually work. And, once the drug trade is regulated, we'll be
able to make sure users know the exact potency and purity of the
substances they are ingesting, giving them a form of quality control
that is simply impossible under prohibition and which will reduce
overdose deaths significantly.

Ending the war on drugs doesn't mean that our drug problem will
disappear overnight; it just means that it will make our drug problem
much easier to manage once we start using a true medical approach
instead of sending cops like me to arrest people who are struggling
with the health problem of substance abuse.

Neill Franklin, executive director of Law Enforcement Against
Prohibition, is a retired narcotics cop from Baltimore.
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