REGULATION OF ILLICIT DRUGS GAINS SUPPORT

How would you go about getting four U.S. district court judges, a former
governor, the mayor of a major city in Canada, a sheriff of a Colorado
county, a former New York City police commissioner, a former attorney
general of Columbia, S.C., and two former police chiefs in U.S. cities to
agree on anything?

How about legalizing drugs and subjecting them to regulation, much as we do
with alcoholic beverages?

All the officials mentioned above are members of the Board of Advisors of
the international nonprofit educational organization known as Law
Enforcement Against Prohibition, or LEAP. This organization of more than
1,500 former "drug warriors" has members in six countries who speak from
their unique law enforcement background about the futility of continuing
the costly, corrupting and counterproductive "war" on drugs.

Let's look for a moment at another prohibition, one that promised a sober
work force to fuel the powerful industrial engines that were to become the
fulfillment of the American dream. Known as the Volstead Act for its
congressional sponsor, it became the law that we now refer to as Prohibition.

With all its hoopla, the act fell well short of curing what many
characterized as a national alcoholic binge. Law enforcement became a major
target for corruption, and the tax burden increased, as did government
spending. It led some drinkers to switch to opium, marijuana, cocaine and
other substances. And, lest we forget, it created a generation of "bootleg"
millionaires.

Today it is common to hear, from all sides, that it is easier for high
school youths to buy a baggie of marijuana than a six-pack of beer. One
question seldom heard from modern-day Prohibitionists is why, after more
than a half-century of fighting the "drug war" at a cost in the billions of
dollars, are we still searching for solutions?

We know with a fair degree of accuracy where the drug crops are grown,
where they are processed and how they arrive on our streets. More than 100
metric tons of cocaine was intercepted in 2003 to our borders. Yet
according to a U.S. government report, more than 250 metric tons reached
users here.

When we look at what is being done about this social disaster, we learn
from the FBI Uniform Crime Reports of 2003 that drug arrests lead the top
seven categories of arrests in this country. As many of my former "drug
warrior" colleagues can attest, we made our contributions to the prison
system by locking up drug offenders of all types, including other law
enforcement officers.

Just as the Prohibition era of 1920 to 1933 corrupted local officials and
law enforcement officers, so too does the current prohibition. Add to this
the enormous profits going into the coffers of the ruthless narcotic
traffickers beyond our borders, and we have a nation seemingly giving aid
to the enemy while clogging prisons with its own countrymen and women.

Then we have the international cartels, gangs, paramilitary groups and,
lately, the communist guerrilla forces in South and Central America that
are taking advantage of the huge profits in the drug trade. It seems even
the ideology that unites "workers of the world" can spare the time to enjoy
the profits of the drug trade.

In the course of discussing legalizing narcotics, the perfectly reasonable
question arises: If drugs are legalized, how can we keep them out of the
hands of children? The answer can only be: just as we do now in keeping
them from Oxycontin, morphine and other drugs that have legitimate uses.

And, yes, it is an imperfect system that is often abused. But at least it
is a mechanism that can be tuned and changed in the face of abuse.

It beats by a country mile the narrow controls on cocaine, marijuana,
heroin and illicit drugs we have today.

These controls are almost entirely a response by the legal system, which
has as its major tool the ability to punish.

The parallel with the story of the man with only a hammer as a tool, who
sees everything as a nail, is hard to avoid.