DRUGS OF CHOICE

Why Some Former Cops Argue That All Drugs A Cents - Not Just Pot - Should
Be Legal

San Francisco is home to a wide variety of drug users, from the
hardcore smack addicts on Sixth Street to the club kids high on
ecstasy or crystal meth to the yuppies snorting lines off their
downtown desks or getting drunk after work to the cornucopia of people
across all classes smoking joints in Golden Gate Park or in their
living rooms on weekends.

Drug law reformers come in similarly wide varieties, but most have a
strong preference for first legalizing the most popular and least
harmful of illegal drugs: marijuana. That's how medical marijuana got
its quasi-legal status in the city, and why San Francisco hosted the
huge state conference of California National Organization for the
Reform of Marijuana Laws conference that began on 4/20.

But while hundreds of CA-NORML attendees were eating lunch and waiting
to be entertained by iconic marijuana advocate Tommy Chong (a session
that was cut short by a hotel manager because too many attendees were
smoking pot;), across town another
unlikely legalization proponent was speaking to a circle of about two
dozen people gathered in the Mission Neighborhood Health Center.

Norm Stamper, the former Seattle police chief and a cop for 34 years,
is a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a group of current
and former police officers advocating for the legalization and
regulation of all drugs. Although Stamper also spoke at some NORML
conference events, he differs from
that organization in at least one key respect.

"Tomorrow I'm going to say something that will piss off NORML,"
Stamper told the group in the Mission District April 21. Namely,
Stamper argues that it is more important to legalize hard drugs like
cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines than the more benign marijuana.

While NORML focuses on personal freedom and the fact that marijuana is
less harmful than legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco, Stamper blames
drug prohibition for the more serious public health and economic costs
associated with harder drugs. In particular, prohibition hinders
addiction treatment and quality control of drugs -- both of which can
have deadly results.

"I do think drugs should be rigorously regulated and controlled,"
Stamper argued, noting that there are many different visions for the
postprohibition world even within his own organization. Stamper
prefers a model in which all drugs are legalized, production and
distribution systems are tightly controlled by the government (as they
are now with alcohol and tobacco), addiction issues are treated as
medical problems, and crimes associated with such addictions -- such
as theft or spousal abuse -- are treated harshly.

But he also said that he's open to other ideas and definitely shares
the widely held view among drug-law reformers of all stripes that the
$1 trillion "war on drugs," instigated in 1970 by then-president
Richard Nixon, has been a colossal failure and an unnecessary waste of
human and economic capital.

"We should have created a public health model rather than a war model
in dealing with drugs," he said. "Whatever I choose to put in this
body is my business, not the government's business."

And that's one area in which Stamper would agree with Chong, who sang
the praises of his favorite drug to a packed auditorium: "There's no
such thing as pot-fueled rage, is there?"