PANEL DEBATES DRUG POLICY

Two weeks before Clifford W. Thornton Jr.'s high school graduation, his
mother died of a heroin overdose.Thornton spoke about his mother's
death Wednesday before about 75 people at a forum on drug policy in the
United States.

Despite his mother's death, Thornton advocates legalizing marijuana and
allowing doctors to prescribe heroin and cocaine. When drugs are
illegal, they are not regulated, he said. Thornton, one of three
panelists who spoke at the Community Renewal Team forum in Hartford, is
the president of Efficacy. It is a nonprofit organization that
advocates peaceful solutions to present-day problems.

The forum was the first in a series co-sponsored by the Greater
Hartford African American Alliance, Efficacy and A Better Way. The date
has yet to be set for the second forum.

Dennis Speed also spoke. He is a founding member of the African Civil
Rights Movement and Northeast coordinator of the Schiller Institute, a
human rights organization founded by Helga LaRouche, wife of American
self-described economist Lyndon LaRouche.

The third speaker was Sylvester L. Salcedo, a retired naval
intelligence officer who worked with federal, state and local law-
enforcement agencies, including the FBI and U.S. Customs Service, in
the "war on drugs." Salcedo returned a Navy and Marine Corps
achievement medal to protest current drug policy to President Clinton
earlier this year.The Rev. Nora Wyatt Jr., president of the Greater
Hartford African American Alliance, said, "I believe it is time for us
to have a conversation about drugs.''

He said the sellers, who are in prison, belong there while the drug
users belong in treatment.

"What we have now is not working,'' he said.

Thornton said statistics show that 74 percent of the people locked up
for drug-related offenses are African American.

A Vietnam-era Army veteran, he said many veterans he knew were drug
abusers who brought their problems home with them from Vietnam.

Dave Ionno of Hartford, another Vietnam veteran, said several of his
friends took extra tours of duty so they could get cheaper heroin in
Vietnam.

The Rev. Albert Bell of Hartford said if drugs were made legal, the
economy would crumble. "It would be just like if you gave everyone a
million dollars,'' he said. "No one would work.''

Speed said drug money is so entrenched in the economy that it would
collapse if drugs were made legal.

Salcedo said he was upset about U.S. intervention in Colombia to stop
the drug trafficking that the United States can't handle on its own
borders.

He said the United States should repair Colombia's roads so the farmers
could plant other crops, rather than rely on growing the coca plant
from which cocaine is made. "The policy is counterproductive,'' he
said.When he returned his medal, Salcedo said, he wrote to the
president asking for an end to the current war on drugs, better
treatment for those who abuse drugs, amnesty for those jailed by harsh
drug laws and a reconsideration of current federal narcotics
prohibition policies.