THE WAR AGAINST THE WAR ON DRUGS

Hoover Institution Conference Focuses On Drug Enforcement Ethics

The Hoover Institution hosted a conference today and yesterday titled
"Ethical Issues in Drug Enforcement," where law enforcement officials,
judges, lawyers and Nobel laureates discussed the failure of current
policies in drug law enforcement.

The conference covered issues such as racial profiling, mandatory
sentencing, police drug crimes and corruption in Los Angeles and New
York, use of deadly force by the police in drug raids and the lack of
success in preventing drug importation.

Hoover Research Fellow Joseph D. McNamara organized the conference.
McNamara served as director of crime analysis for the New York Police
Department and police chief of San Jose.

"The difference in enforcing drug laws is that it's not like other
crimes," McNamara added. "In a murder or robbery there's a victim and
witnesses, but drug violations are consensual."

This conference is the fifth drug policy forum held at the Hoover
Institution since 1990. Topics of the previous four conferences have
included "Pragmatic Solutions to Urban Drug Problems" and "Youth,
Drugs and Crime."

At the three conferences held since 1995, the police attending
unanimously agreed that current policies towards drug enforcement and
drug-related crime prevention were not working, and that increased
education was a better solution than arrests.

"The current conference . . . is intended to give police officers and
other public officials a deeper understanding of the dynamics of drug
enforcement," McNamara wrote in his introduction to the conference.

"This insight will prove helpful in developing and implementing
policies that lead to more effective and humane approaches to drug
control."

The conference was a series of speeches from various experts on
ethics, law enforcement and the drug policies, including George P.
Shultz, former Secretary of State, Eric Sterling, the president of the
Criminal Justice Policy Foundation and keynote speaker the Hon. Judge
John Kane, a federal district judge in Denver, CO.

The Stanford Daily