TIGER BAY CLUB MEMBERS HEAR SPIRITED DEBATE ON WAR ON DRUGS

Bartow -- It was a pro and con struggle Monday as the Tiger Bay Club
took up the touchy topic of legalizing drugs.

Peter Christ, a retired police captain and spokesman for Law
Enforcement Against Prohibition, spoke in favor of removing the
restrictions on Schedule 1 narcotics, highly addictive drugs
including cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines .

Brad Copley an assistant state attorney for the 10th Judicial Circuit
said while the current war on drugs has its difficulties, to say one
should be able to buy those drugs at the corner pharmacy is "ludicrous."

Christ, 60, is a retired uniformed police captain from Tonawanda,
N.Y. And it was as a "street cop," Christ said, that he saw the
failure of drug laws.

In 2002, Christ and Jack Cole, a retired New Jersey state trooper,
formed LEAP to get the word out that they as law enforcement officers
think the war on drugs has failed.

"You don't have to agree with us, but you can't say we don't know
what we are talking about," Christ said.

He is on a speaking tour of Central Florida with 17 stops at civic
and professional organizations, but Tiger Bay was the first gathering
of its kind he had attended.

Local law enforcement officers backed out of participating on the
panel, a point that still miffed Tiger Bay coordinator Mike Stedem on Monday.

Christ said that happens frequently.

"The first thing that causes them to pause is when they find they
will be debating a peer," he said.

Christ compared the current drug laws to the era of prohibition of alcohol.

"There should be regulation like we do with 98 percent of our drugs
under the (Food and Drug Administration) - not prohibition," Christ said.

"When Al Capone ordered the St. Valentines Day massacre, he wasn't
drunk, (but) it was alcohol-related. It was over money and the
territory for illegal alcohol. That is what is happening here.
Eighty-five percent of all violent crimes involving drugs are from
drug dealers fighting each other. Only 15 percent are from people who
are on drugs at the time they commit a crime," he said.

Copley chose not to speak from the podium with his panel colleagues,
but instead paced back and forth in front of the tables at the Tiger
Bay lunch as if lecturing a jury.

"Prohibition, as it is now being called, is a necessary policy in
some things," he said.

"Half of the child abuse cases we have are due to illegal drugs.
Because once a mother is hooked on methamphetamines, kids don't
count," he said.

"Would you suggest the same for child pornography and prostitution?"
he asked. "The system we have now is not perfect, but we have to have
enforcement to protect citizens."

In the middle of the debate was Public Defender Marion Moorman, who
joked that he had been a profiteer in the war on drugs because of his
office's representation of people accused of violating drug laws.

Moorman criticized how drugs laws are enforced, but said he had
reservations about decriminalizing all Schedule 1 drugs.

He said drug laws aren't being applied fairly to all classes of
people. "We have decimated our population of young black men with
more of them in jail than in college."

"This war involves plenty of arrests of the black and the poor at the
street level while ignoring the white kids in the clubs doing
ecstasy," he said.

Stedem said while the panel discussion probably did not change minds,
it brought the issue of illegal drugs and the enforcement to the forefront.