END DRUG PROHIBITION, CANADA, U.S. COPS SAY

It's a familiar scene on TV newscasts: wads of cash, rows of guns and
bags full of drugs displayed neatly on a table by police officers
posing by their latest set of trophies.

But some former law-enforcement officials in Canada and the U.S. who
have spent years fighting the ongoing war on drugs say it's a losing battle.

Their views about how prohibition has failed to make a dent in the
drug supply, while millions of dollars continue to be wasted on
criminalizing recreational drug users, are told in the National Film
Board documentary Damage Done: The Drug War Odyssey.

It premiered in Victoria yesterday, and will be shown today at
Vancouver International Film Centre on Seymour Street at 12:30 p.m.
It will air on Global TV April 28.

Most officers featured in the film are part of a growing U.S.-based
organization called LEAP -- Law Enforcement Against Prohibition --
which also includes corrections officers, retired and sitting judges
and prosecutors.

Mike Smithson, a spokesman for LEAP, said from Medford, Mass., that
about 330 of the organization's 7,000 international members are Canadians.

They include Sen. Larry Campbell, a former RCMP drug squad officer
and Vancouver mayor who ran on a platform of reducing harm from drug use.

Campbell, whose views are featured in the film, said in an interview
that drug laws need to be reformed so addiction is treated as a
health issue exacerbated by problems like poverty, homelessness and
mental illness.

He said his law-and-order stance as a Mountie changed radically when
he became Vancouver's chief coroner in 1996 and saw the devastating
effects of drug overdoses.

"When I really took a hard look at it, I realized that what we were
doing was not saving lives. In fact, we were seeing the deaths
increase . . .[Now] my position is, we legalize marijuana and we tax
the living hell out of it -- and we put all of the money we get from
it back into health care," he said of B.C.'s $8-billion-a-year industry.