ReconsiDer

A FORUM ON DRUG POLICY

Almost 30 years have gone by now since the United States began its "War on
Drugs" under the Nixon administration, but this policy has met with little
success. Under current U.S. drug policy,we have incarcerated more than two
million people, at a cost of tens of billions of dollars, without
alleviating our nation's drug problem. Maybe it's time for a change. Peter
Christ, drug reform activist and spokesman for ReconsiDer:A Forum on Drug
Policy, says that it is.

ReconsiDer is a not-for-profit grassroots organization formed in Syracuse in
1992. Members of ReconsiDer believe that the war on drugs is a failure and
that it's time for a change in U.S. drug policy. Although not all members'
philosophies converge upon the same solution - they aren't all legalization
advocates -they're united by their commitment to open up the discussion on
our drug policies and our drug problem. While in town to speak at the Center
for Inquiry, Christ, a retired captain of the Town of Tonawanda Police
Department, talked to Alt about current drug policies and his philosophy of
drug legalization.

Alt: Tell me about your organization.

Peter: ReconsiDer: A Forum on Drug Policy started about seven years ago. We
are ReconsiDer: A Forum on Drug -here's the important word - Policy. We
think that we have to go back and talk about the policy. We at ReconsiDer
feel that the policy that this country has chosen is not a new one. If we
had called it this when Nixon launched the drug war back in the '70s, if you
called it what it really is, most of the people would have given up on it a
long time ago.

Alt: What is it?

Peter: It's prohibition. We prohibit the manufacture, sale - we prohibit
every level for using drugs all along the line. The reason they call it the
drug war and not the new prohibition is that the American public knows that
prohibition doesn't work and knows that we win wars.

Alt: Why doesn't prohibition work with drugs?

Peter: Because it's a consensual crime. This is a crime that two consenting
adults committed. The government tries to embark upon controlling our
personal behavior, behavior that does not directly affect other people. They
error. Consensual crimes are unlike the nonconsensual crimes - murder,
robbery, rape. The law against murder does not create more murders, the law
against robbery does not create more robberies. In reality, when you have
consensual crimes, when you pass that prohibition, you create more crime.
For example, with a drug-related shooting - it should be called a
drug-prohibition-related shooting-the drug didn't cause the shooting. What
caused it was the syndicate, the underground.

Alt: Do you think legalization will eliminate the black market?

Peter: I know that legalization will eliminate the black market, which will
eliminate 85 percent of the crime, according to the federal government. They
did a study in 1988 or 1989 in New York City where they looked at all the
drug-related crimes, and their study determined that 85 percent of it was
associated with the marketplace and 15 percent was associated with use. So
what I'm saying is do you want to live in a safer society. America? I'm
going to show you a way to decrease 85 percent of the violence and crimes
that is associated with drugs in our society - overnight. And then we as a
society will have to deal with, very seriously, our drug problem. We will no
longer have to deal with this huge syndicate and crime problem that we have
been funneling money into by the billions of dollars per year. And then we
can focus on the drug problem and deal with the drug problem through
education and health care and spiritual teaching and families and jobs and
things that we know wo! rk.

Alt: Could you tell me more about legalization?

Peter: I want to see drugs across the board legal and I want to see them
regulated -purity. age distribution, hours of distribution. I want us to
start controlling it. Once they are legal, we can limit all kinds of stuff.
Drug legalization allows us as a society to regulate tightly the drug
marketplace. Prohibition is in fact deregulation.

With alcohol, we have a legalized marketplace. And in that legalized drug
marketplace, we regulate the points of distribution, the purity. the age of
distribution, the hours of sale. There is not a crack dealer in America
checking proof of age. And there are very few alcohol distributors who
aren't, because they're afraid they're going to lose their business.

Alt: Tell me about New York's Rockefeller Drug Laws

Peter: The Rockefeller Drug Laws went into effect in the mid -'70s, and
they're referred to in our movement as the draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws.
What they call for is harsh prison sentences for very minor possession of
drugs. Five years to life, ten years to life, fifteen years to life - those
kind of sentences for people on first-time offenses and drug-possession
offenses.

The Rockefeller Drug Laws have increased our prison system by unbelievable
numbers. We were locking up about 20,000 people in the mid-'70s; we're now
up to about 70,000 people in New York State. Depending on whose numbers you
want to look at, I think mine are close to reality; 25 percent of those
people are in there for non-violent drug offenses. It costs us $25,000 a
year per person to keep these people in prison, but it costs us $7,000 to
treat someone for a year. For every one person that we have locked up, we
could provide treatment for three.

New York State has almost eliminated all drug rehabilitation treatment in
the prison system, and the educational stuff has been cut way back. How did
we help you? All we did was to take you off the street for five years. Now
we put you back worse off than you were before because you've been out of
the system for five years. And we call this help- "We're just trying to help
these people" -you know its like somebody coming at me with an axe to cure a
headache; that kind of help I don't need.

For more information go to ReconsiDer's web site at
http://www.reconsider.org/.