DRUG WAR'S STRATEGY FATALLY FLAWED, EX-COP SAYS

Jack Cole isn't surprised. He predicted, last spring, that a police
crackdown on Syracuse street violence had absolutely no chance to succeed.
Just over five months later, the city has set a record with 24 homicides
recorded in this calendar year, with five weeks yet to go.

Not all that mayhem, of course, involved street gangs or drug disputes. And
city officials say the crackdown is still a work in process. But Cole, an
ex-cop, said all the killing underlines his point. "That's what happens,
I'm afraid, every time we try to get tougher," Cole said Wednesday,
speaking from his home in Massachusetts. "You can see it didn't have a very
good effect on Syracuse. I don't know what I'd do if I was mayor, but if I
was mayor of anything, I would try and lessen the harm done by the war on
drugs. I personally don't think anything will get better until we end
prohibition."

By that, he means legalizing heroin, cocaine and other narcotics. Cole
spent 26 years with the New Jersey State Police, including many years as a
narcotics investigator. What he saw on the job, he said, caused a complete
reversal in his outlook. He is a member of ReconsiDer, a Syracuse-based
forum on changing national drug policy. And he is founder of LEAP, or Law
Enforcement Against Prohibition.

Cole's essential theory is that violence on city streets, under existing
laws, cannot be controlled. The problem, he contends, is easy drug money.
Impoverished and poorly educated children will be drawn to "slinging" drugs
on the corner until the chance for a quick profit is gone, Cole said.

It is American drug money, Cole said, that lies beneath most bloodshed in
struggling neighborhoods. It is American drug money, he said, that inflames
gang rivalries over turf. It is American drug money, he said, that funds
international drug cartels and many terrorist groups. And it is American
drug money, he said, that creates destructive role models for rebellious
children, lacking hope.

"Think of what happens if you strip the profit motive from drug
distribution," Cole said. "All this tension would vanish between richer and
poorer neighborhoods. People wouldn't be shooting each other on the
corners. There'd be no more little kids looking up to drug dealers because
they have the cars and the women and the money. Gone. All of that would
vanish."

Cole maintains narcotics should be legalized, and he offers a detailed
proposal on how the government should control distribution. He points to
tobacco use as the best model for his plan. Cigarette smoking plummeted,
Cole said, once the government and the schools began to actively campaign
against smoking.

As for the dangers of legalization, Cole argues that it is more difficult,
right now, for a wandering teenager to buy a six-pack of beer than it is
for that same teenager to buy marijuana or crack cocaine.

His philosophy generates debate even within ReconsiDer itself, where
suggestions vary from the mild, such as revising the Rockefeller drug laws,
to the relatively moderate, such as legalizing marijuana, to the full
legalization of narcotics that is advocated by Cole.

Others outside the group, such as Syracuse Police Sgt. Frank Fowler, warn
of the results of widespread legalization. Fowler is president and founder
of CAMP 415, an organization of minority police officers in Syracuse. He
spends many hours working with teenagers on the street.

Fowler said existing laws need revision. He believes in treatment, not
incarceration, for drug users arrested for the first time. He believes that
state and federal laws should be "equalized" so that, "People from certain
aspects of society who can't afford fancy attorneys get the same sentences
as people from other aspects of society."

But Fowler, who grew up in a rough part of St. Louis, offers no sympathy
for convicted drug dealers.

"They need to be punished," Fowler said. "If you legalized drugs, you'd
have a community in a stupor. The same people affected the most by illegal
use would be affected by legal use. They wouldn't be able to use motor
vehicles, or attend to their jobs, or attend to their children in a safe
fashion.

"I don't think, by legalizing drugs, that you get rid of the problem."

Still, with prisons bulging and with far too much bloodshed on the streets,
Cole and Fowler certainly agree on one thing: The only solution is to
somehow renew a sense of belief in countless children, cast adrift on city
streets. "I just think we spend millions of dollars on finding people who
use drugs because they have problems in their lives," Cole said, "and then
we make those problems 1,000 times worse."

His prediction remains the same: Street crackdowns will not work.