CASE MADE FOR RESCINDING DRUG LAWS

BRISTOL -- A former New Jersey undercover narcotics officer visited
the city Thursday to share his proposal for a new strategy in the war
on drugs: Give up.

Speaking to an audience of about three-dozen senior citizens at
Prospect United Methodist Church, Jack Cole declared that combating
narcotics with ever-increasing police efforts is costly, ineffective
and immoral.

"We wanted to lower the incidence of death, disease crime and
addiction, but they've all been made infinitely worse by the war on
drugs itself," Cole said. "We've spent over a trillion dollars on this
war over the last 36 years, we've made more than 35 million arrests
for nonviolent drug offenses, and it's been a total failure. It's time
to say this isn't working."

Cole, 68, travels around the country to tell audiences why he's
certain the United States will never reduce drug addiction by passing
tougher laws or imposing longer sentences. On Thursday, he said his
26-year career with the New Jersey State Police showed him that law
enforcement isn't the solution to what he believes is a public health
problem.

"I spent 14 years undercover in the narcotics bureau, I worked
everything from busting poor little kids on the street for smoking pot
to billion-dollar cocaine and heroin rings," he said. "I put a lot of
very bad people away, and I couldn't care less about them. But I also
sent about 1,000 young people to jail, and I can't sleep very well
anymore because of that."

Cole is the co-founder of LEAP, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a
national organization of mostly retired police and prosecutors who
endorse rescinding the country's drug laws. Cole emphasizes that he
and his group are firmly against drug use, but don't believe that
imprisoning drug users does any good.

Two weeks ago, Cole testified before New Hampshire legislators in
favor of a bill that would decriminalize marijuana in that state. He
said Thursday that he'd go even further by legalizing the most
destructive drugs, such as heroin and methamphetamine.

"If you take the profit motive out of the drug trade, you reduce 90
percent of the problem right there," Cole said, arguing that this
would eliminate drug-related shootings by putting gun-carrying drug
dealers out of work.

Regulating the manufacture of narcotics also would do away with deaths
by overdose because the power of the drugs would become consistent and
predictable, he said. And there's no evidence to suggest that
legalizing narcotics would increase addiction or occasional drug use,
he said. But it would stop the widespread arrest of young drug users
whose lives are changed forever by their records, he said.

"We say you can get over an addiction, but not a conviction," he said.
"It will follow you from state to state. Every time you go to get a
job it will hang over your head, and you'll hear, 'Druggie, we don't
want you.' The only place the person is wanted is back in the same
drug culture we claim we're trying to save them from."

Donald Rackcliffe, a retired pastor who arranged Cole's talk Thursday,
said he joined LEAP after hearing Cole speak at another event.

"But his being here doesn't mean his message is endorsed in any way by
the Methodist church or by this church," Rackcliffe told the audience.