Pubdate: Sat, 25 May 2013
Source: Tampa Tribune (FL)
Webpage: n/a
Copyright: 2013 The Tribune Co.
Contact: http://tbo.com/list/news-opinion-letters/
Website: http://www.tampatrib.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/446
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v13/n213/a06.html
Author: Richard Craig

WAR ON PEOPLE

I am the retired executive officer of a Northeastern police 
department, and I applaud the letter you recently published from John 
G. Chase of Palm Harbor, "Drug war a waste."

As a former undercover officer, I booked literally thousands of 
youths for small amounts of marijuana. Never did I consider that they 
might lose their right to vote, their right to live in public 
housing, their right to certain scholarships.

Thanks to my zealousness, those youths, now grown men and woman, may 
well have a career track that involves saying something like, "Do you 
want to supersize that?"

The "War on Drugs" is not that at all. It's a war on people. And it 
is militarizing police forces and creating a generation of Americans 
who are cynical, seeing the corporate coke users get away with it in 
their offices and boardrooms with little fear of being discovered, 
while cops in poor neighborhoods make "stop and frisk" stops all the 
time, inevitably busting many for insignificant amounts of drugs.

I am a spokesman for LEAP, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. We 
believe that drugs are bad, but the "War on Drugs" is worse. We 
believe that controlled substances should be legalized, and regulated 
like tobacco and wine.

If this were done, the insanity of having almost 2.2 million 
Americans behind bars, many for victimless crimes, would stop, and we 
might arrive at a more enlightened, compassionate means of dealing 
with those whose biggest crime is simply "not being like us."

Lt. Richard Craig (RET.) Tallahassee
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom