DREAM OF A WORLDWIDE TRUCE

On the eve of a United Nations special session on drugs, an
international roster of luminaries signed a letter, penned by members
of the Lindesmith Center, that lobbied for radical change. "We
believe that the global war on drugs is now causing more harm than
drug abuse itself," read the June 1998 declaration. "Persisting in
our current policies will only result in more drug abuse, more
empowerment of drug markets and criminals, and more disease and
suffering."

Among the signatories were Willie Brown, Joycelyn Elders, several
former members of Congress, two former U.S. attorneys general, a
former assistant secretary of state, three federal judges, the San
Jose mayor, a former police commissioner of New York City, a former
secretary general of the UN, 28 Spanish judges, past presidents of
Bolivia, Guatemala, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua, and current
legislators from Australia, Britain, Canada, European Parliament,
Mexico, and Peru.

Non-politicos who signed include Kweisi Mfume, Walter Cronkite,
Stephen Jay Gould, Andrew Weil, Isabel Allende, Gunter Grass, a slew
of professors at top-notch universities, CEOs, various clergy, and
Nobel laureates.

Several representatives on Capitol Hill are also bucking for new
approaches. Reformers include California representative Tom Campbell,
who has suggested "experiments in supplying drugs to addicts the way
Zurich tried," according to the Chicago Tribune. Massachusetts
representative Barney Frank has repeatedly introduced a bill to change
pot from a Schedule I drug to a Schedule II drug, thus allowing states
to legalize it for medical purposes. In its current incarnation, the
States' Rights to Medical Marijuana Act is cosponsored by 14
representatives and is residing in a House subcommittee.

Many on the federal bench have also seen the light. During his tenure
as chief judge of the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
(1993--2000), Reagan appointee Richard Posner argued in favor of
legalizing marijuana and psychedelics. District Judge Warren Eginton
of Connecticut wants to see pot and cocaine legalized, while District
Judge James C. Paine of Florida has condemned the war on drugs.

Other leaders who question prohibition are listed below:

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Gustavo de Greiff

former attorney general of colombia

"We should legalize drugs because we here are providing the dead, and
the consumers are there in the U.S."

source: El Diario--La Prensa, May 8, 1994

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Peter Bourne

president carter's drug czar

"We did not view marijuana as a significant health problem--as it was
not....Nobody dies from marijuana. Marijuana smoking, in fact, if one
wants to be honest, is a source of pleasure and amusement to countless
millions of people in America, and it continues to be that way."

source: PBS's Frontline: "Drug Wars," October 2000

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Joseph D. McNamara

former police chief of san jose and kansas city

"We should immediately stop arresting people whose only crime is
possessing small amounts of drugs for their own use....Marijuana
should be treated the same as alcohol and cigarettes."

source: The Washington Post, May 19, 1996

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Jaime Ruiz

senior adviser to the colombian president

"From the Colombian point of view legalization is the easy solution.
I mean, just legalize it and we won't have any more problems. Probably
in five years we wouldn't even have guerrillas. No problems. We would
have a great country with no problems."

source: Ottawa Citizen, September 6, 2000

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George Papandreou

greek foreign minister

"I can officially state that my government and myself believe that
all over Europe we need to open a debate on the 'drug question' in
order to create more coherent and human policies with better
perspectives. . . . The policy of criminalizing consumers has failed,
creating many problems to our society."

source: Transnational Radical Party's Anti-Prohibitionist Days, Brussels,
December 11, 1997

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Edward Ellison

former head of scotland yard's antidrug squad

"I say legalize drugs because I want to see less drug abuse, not
more. And I say legalize drugs because I want to see the criminals put
out of business."

source: London's Daily Mail, March 10, 1998

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Ray Kendall

secretary general of interpol

"I am entirely supportive of the notion of removing the abuse of
drugs from the penal realm in favor of other forms of regulation such
as psycho, medical, social treatment."

source: Report of Premier's Advisory Council, 1996

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Juan Torruella

chief judge of the first circuit u.s. court of appeals

"There is a need for pilot tests of some types of limited
decriminalization, probably commencing with marijuana, and obviously
not including minors."

source: Spotlight Lecture at Colby College, Waterville, Maine, April
25, 1996

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John Curtin

U.S. district judge, new york

"Education, counseling, less use of criminal sanctions, partial
legalization, and legalization are all alternatives. It is a hard
road, but the present course has failed."

source: The Buffalo News, March 2, 1997

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Robert Sweet

U.S. district judge, new york

"Finally, the fundamental flaw, which will ultimately destroy this
prohibition as it did the last one, is that criminal sanctions cannot,
and should not attempt to, prohibit personal conduct which does no
harm to others."

source: National Review, February 12, 1996

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House of Lords, Great Britain

"We consider it undesirable to prosecute genuine therapeutic users of
cannabis who possess or grow cannabis for their own use. This
unsatisfactory situation underlines the need to legalise cannabis
preparations for therapeutic use."

source: "Therapeutic Uses of Cannabis," Select Committee on Science
and Technology, March 14, 2001

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Australian Parliament

"Over the past two decades in Australia we have devoted increased
resources to drug law enforcement, we have increased the penalties for
drug trafficking, and we have accepted increasing inroads on our civil
liberties as part of the battle to curb the drug trade. All the
evidence shows, however, not only that our law enforcement agencies
have not succeeded in preventing the supply of illicit drugs to
Australian markets, but that it is unrealistic to expect them to do
so. If the present policy of prohibition is not working, then it is
time to give serious consideration to the alternatives, however
radical they may seem."

source: Joint Committee on the National Crime Authority,
1988