END TO WAR ON DRUGS URGED BY FORMER POLICE CHIEF OF SEATTLE

He Believes Government Should Not Control What
People Put In Their Bodies

Norm Stamper, retired Seattle police chief, is on the phone talking
about coming to B.C. and spreading his gospel of drug policy reform.

He is coming north for a western Canadian tour over the next few
months to talk about community policing and why he thinks it's time to
end the U.S.-led War on Drugs.

Author of the provocative Breaking Ranks . . . a top cop's expose of
the dark side of American policing, Stamper is one of the stars in an
upstart organization known as LEAP -- Law Enforcement Against
Prohibition ( www.leap.cc ).

It was formed by cops, judges and others in the legal system who
believe the War on Drugs is a colossal failure. Senator Larry
Campbell, a former RCMP drug cop, sits on the advisory board.

Stamper and others in the group travel the continent trying to change
people's minds about how we deal with marijuana and other drugs.

Police, parole, probation and corrections officers, judges,
prosecutors, prison wardens, former FBI and DEA agents are all part of
the organization's speakers bureau.

Stamper opposes the current policy first, he says, because it is
immoral -- governments should not be able to tell us what we can or
cannot put into our bodies, although they have the right to hold us to
account for behaviours we may exhibit.

Second, he believes the drug war has targeted people of colour and the
poor, even though there as many whites using drugs.

Stamper also thinks the War on Drugs costs far too much, and is
ineffective.

Thirty-six years after U.S. President Richard Nixon initiated the
campaign, drugs are more available than they were before. If that
doesn't spell failure, what does? Stamper asked.

"I've never in my police career confronted someone who is violent who
is high on marijuana -- there is no violence that stems from marijuana
use," he said.

Yet more than 2.2 million Americans are currently incarcerated and in
the last five years nine million people have been arrested for
nonviolent drug offences, Stamper added.

The membership of LEAP believes that to save lives and lower the rates
of disease, crime and addiction, as well as to conserve tax dollars,
drug prohibition should be ended.

LEAP, Stamper explained, thinks a system of regulation and control is
far more effective than one of prohibition.

The mission of LEAP is to reduce the multitude of harms resulting from
fighting the War on Drugs and to lessen the incidence of death,
disease, crime, and addiction by ultimately ending drug
prohibition.

In three years it went from five founders to a membership of more than
3,500.

As a cop, Stamper's 34-year career in San Diego and Seattle touched
every facet of drug enforcement from the street-buy to the intricacies
of drug-cartel investigations.

At the same time, however, his view changed from one of a drug-warrior
to one of an anti-prohibition crusader.

"Think of this war's real casualties," he writes in his book, "tens of
thousands of otherwise innocent Americans incarcerated, many for 20
years, some for life; families ripped apart; drug traffickers and
blameless bystanders shot dead on city streets; narcotics officers
assassinated here and abroad, with prosecutors, judges, and elected
officials in Latin America gunned down for their courageous stands
against the cartels; and all those dollars spent on federal, state,
and local cops, courts, prosecutors, prisons, probation, parole, and
pee-in-the-bottle programs. Even federal aid to bribe distant nations
to stop feeding our habit."

The U.S. has spent an estimated trillion dollars and drug use remains
rampant, he said.

"Every major police corruption scandal of the last several decades has
had its roots in drug enforcement," Stamper emphasized.

He'll be appearing later this month in Abbotsford, Vancouver,
Edmonton, and Calgary.

"To not put too fine a point on it, we like our drugs," Stamper said.
"The hunger for mood- and mind-altering drugs has gone unabated. And I
think prohibition simply does not work. 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."

No matter what your views are on drug policy, his is a provocative
presentation worth catching.