Pubdate: Mon, 28 Apr 2014
Source: SouthtownStar (Tinley Park, IL)
Copyright: 2014 Digital Chicago, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.southtownstar.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/4719
Author: Phil Kadner
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?233 (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition)
Bookmark: http://mapinc.org/people/Gierach

WAGING WAR AGAINST DRUG PROHIBITION

It was 25 years ago when James Gierach, a municipal attorney living 
in Palos Park, created political ripples by saying that marijuana 
should be decriminalized.

"It was a gathering of Cook County Democratic Party committeemen, and 
I was trying to get them to slate me for state's attorney," Gierach 
recalled Monday.

I asked what the reaction was at the time.

"Well, the TV cameras stopped rolling as I was speaking, and John 
Stroger, the Cook County Democratic Party chairman, started walking 
around the room chatting with the other committeemen," Gierach said 
with a laugh.

I decided it was time to reach out to Gierach on Monday because Cook 
County Commissioner John Fritchey, D-Chicago, called a news 
conference in the afternoon with state legislators to ask the 
Illinois General Assembly "to create a task force to research, 
develop and propose legislation to legalize and regulate the 
recreational use of marijuana."

That's exactly the sort of thing that Gierach has spent much of his 
life supporting and that likely cost him what many folks thought was 
a bright political future.

Gierach's advocacy for ending the prohibition against illegal drugs 
in this country alienated many of his longtime friends, and he was 
branded as a political gadfly.

But his passion for the topic of drug use is this country has not 
diminished over the years. Today, as executive board vice chairman of 
LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition), he travels the world, 
sometimes at his expense, to spread the message that the drug war has 
been lost.

"I'm not surprised," Gierach said, when I asked his reaction to 
Fritchey's news conference. "It's inevitable that the prohibition 
against illegal drugs will come to an end. Public opinion polls show 
the days of zero tolerance are over.

"I always asked people to answer several simple questions about the 
drug war," he continued, "and the answers to those clearly show that 
prohibition has failed.

"Does drug prohibition do more harm than good? In other words, does 
it cause what it is designed to prevent? Does it cause unparalleled violence?

"Does it result it massive spending, causing governments everywhere 
in the world to devote resources that would be better spent 
elsewhere? Does it lead to the corruption of police and other law 
enforcement agencies?

"When you answer all of those questions, you realize we have to try 
something else," Gierach said.

"Do you realize that when I got involved with this, the purity of 
heroin on Chicago streets was 2 percent and today it's 90 percent and 
costs less than it did 30 years ago?

"Why? Because of competition. There are so many drug dealers out 
there that they have to cut the price and improve the quality of 
their product to compete.

"In the meantime, our own law enforcement agencies and governments 
have become addicted to drug profits. Whenever they arrest a drug 
lord, they take his money, his real estate, his boats and the federal 
government splits the profits with the local government 50-50.

"Drug seizures have become an important component of government 
spending, and so we are now profiting from that which we as a society condemn.

"And what about the tons and tons of drugs that are confiscated? What 
do we do with them? Do we make them available for drug treatment 
programs, to reduce demand on the street and keep our children out of 
harm's way? No. We burn them up.

"If you were a drug lord and lost your drugs, that's exactly what you 
would want because that reduces supply and increases demand."

I asked Gierach what led him to his lifelong anti-drug crusade 25 years ago.

"Fourteen children were shot down on the streets of Chicago in one 
weekend," he said. "I felt something had to be done about that. Of 
course, nothing has changed since that time, and our children are 
still being murdered on the streets.

"We tell children to stay away from this stuff and then slide a pot 
of gold next to it. How can you tell children to stay in school when 
they see how much money is to be made from the sale and distribution of drugs?

"The temptation is too great. And our society is responsible for the problem.

"It's the same thing that happened during the Al Capone era with the 
prohibition on alcohol, but the country got smart and realized that 
Prohibition wasn't working. It's taken us a lot longer to realize the 
same thing about the prohibition on drugs."

Gierach has gone to Vienna to speak to the United Nations Commission 
on Narcotic Drugs and to Mexico and Ecuador, just to name a few. But 
when he asks to speak to local groups, he's often met with rejection.

"I asked to speak to students at Sandburg High School and was 
refused," he said. "They had a local police commander speak, someone 
from a drug treatment program, a DARE officer, but not me.

"Do you know how much money companies make off of drug testing 
programs alone? Millions of dollars. Drug treatment facilities are a 
multibillion-dollar business.

"Everyone is making money off of illegal drugs. They're addicted to the money."

Many years ago, Gierach's father, respected Cook County Circuit Court 
Judge Will Gierach, called me to his chambers to deliver much the same message.

The military-industrial complex in this nation, he said, had been 
replaced by a law enforcement-criminal justice complex that was 
self-perpetuating because there were billions of dollars at stake.

"The United States has 5 percent of the world's population and 25 
percent of the world's prisoners," Jim Gierach said. "Many of those 
people are there for a drug-related offense.

"The policy of prohibition is doomed to failure and will come to an end.

"It's counter-intuitive to say that the best anti-drug policy is 
legalization and regulation," Gierach said. "But it's clear that the 
policy of prohibition has failed."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom