LEGALIZE STREET DRUGS, EX-COP URGES

Retired Seattle Police Chief Says Regulation Would Restrict Use,
Protect Kids, Help Abusers

Retired Seattle police chief Norm Stamper pulled no punches Tuesday
when he told a Fraser Institute lunch crowd the War Against Drugs is
an abject failure.

After spending $1 trillion since president Richard Nixon declared the
war in 1969, the U.S. has a worse drug problem than before, Stamper said.

He blamed every subsequent U.S. federal administration for
maintaining an immoral, inefficient and uneconomical policy that is
corrupting institutions, destroying neighbourhoods and endangering children.

Canada has been doing the same. The current criminal prohibition,
Stamper said, is being kept in place by a coalition he called the
Drug Enforcement Industry -- President George W. Bush, the Drug
Enforcement Administration, the FBI, some police, the wine and
alcohol producers and organized crime.

"When Nixon declared a war on drugs, he was really declaring a war on
people -- minorities and young people," the retired cop said,
pointing to the disproportionate ratio of Hispanic and
African-Americans now imprisoned.

The century-long prohibition has made drugs more available, not less.

"Kids can score easily today," he said. "Worse, every major police
corruption scandal of the last several decades -- okay there might be
one or two minor ones that don't -- but every major scandal has had
its roots in drug enforcement."

If the government were to regulate drugs, they would be less
available, their purity would be assured, crime would be reduced, our
communities made safer, our children would be better protected and
our chances improved of weaning people from abuse and even deleterious use.

Tobacco use, for example, Stamper said, has fallen 50 per cent but no
one needed to be thrown in jail or threatened with charges.

"Education works," he added.

If drugs were regulated instead of criminalized, kids would be better
educated and be better able to make choices because they would not be
subjected to the Reefer Madness propaganda of some law-enforcement
agencies and Washington, D.C.

Stamper thinks the anti-drug DARE program used in some B.C. schools is a lie.

He stopped it in Seattle and we should stop it here, he said.

"Marijuana is not a gateway drug: DARE says it is and that's a lie,"
Stamper told the packed audience that included former Vancouver mayor
Philip Owen, a huge fan, and B.C. Attorney-General Wally Oppal.

"Sure there are many abusers of marijuana, but there are many more
marijuana users -- and I don't think that's an oxymoron. ... Alcohol
is the worst drug."

Regardless, it's not what people choose to put into their bodies that
should be criminalized, but their behaviour if they chose to ingest
substances and then hurt another person or society.

A member of a fairly recent and growing group across North America
called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, Stamper has been trying
to educate people through speaking engagements such as Tuesday's
luncheon. He drew 750 recently in Abbotsford.

In Stamper's view, public policy must be changed: More than 2.2
million Americans are currently incarcerated and in the last five
years nine million people have been arrested for non-violent drug offences.

"The more dangerous the drug, the more reason to legalize it and
regulate it," he said.

Stamper wants the roughly $70 billion a year spent in North America
on interdiction and enforcing the prohibition to be spent on
prevention, education and treatment.

After a 34-year career in law enforcement, he is the quintessential
anti-drug war warrior -- erudite, nattily dressed, humourous,
informed and steeped in experience from the law-enforcement side of
the fence. He exudes credibility.

And he likes to tell people he's got good wingers supporting his
point of view -- former U.S. secretary of state George Shultz, news
icon Walter Cronkite, uberconservative thinker William F. Buckley Jr.
and Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman.

"Prohibition simply does not work," Stamper said. "It creates untold
problems for the credibility of government and it invites police
corruption. Let's face it, drug dealers would be out of business the
minute the ink dried on legalization legislation."

I chatted briefly with Attorney-General Oppal afterwards and he was
full of praise for Stamper.

"I've known him since the early 1990s," the former B.C. Court of
Appeal judge said. "This is something we need to think about."

I ribbed him about some of his cabinet colleagues who remain
stridently opposed to such ideas, such as Solicitor-General John Les.

He grinned. Changing the anti-drug law, as Oppal noted coyly: "It's
really up to the federal government."

I chuckled: Ex-judges can learn to play politics.