EX-COP PUSHES FOR DRUG LEGALIZATION

PLATTSBURGH - On first glance, people may mistake Peter Christ for a
hippie.

He wears an earring, ponytail and casual clothes and spouts on about
drug legalization.

But just when they're about to dismiss his argument, Christ pulls out
his ace:

He's a retired police captain with 20 years in the Town of Tonawanda
Police Department.

"That's when you see there faces change. Suddenly, I'm not some
burnout. Suddenly, I'm someone from a respected profession with an
informed perspective."

The image-versus-experience irony is intentional. He wants to change
the public's way of thinking.

Christ's group, ReconsiDer, is pushing for drug legalization, saying
the oft-touted war on drugs is useless.

"It's like a hydra: Cut off the head and - after a lot of violence -
another is going to take its place" because "drug prohibition" is
promoting drug trade, not stemming it, he said.

Alluding to the North Country's days as a haven for cross-border booze
runners, Christ pointed out that legalizing alcohol - and thereby
controlling its placement and flow - sharply curbed the crime and
violence around it during the Prohibition Era.

"People are treating drugs the way they treated alcohol then: by
blaming the substance instead of why people use the substance."

Asked how actions such as this week's major North Country drug sweep,
Christ said he isn't knocking police - "their task is to enforce
policy" - but the policy itself.

Christ is not, he said, condoning the release of criminals for
drug-related crimes.

"If you steal, hurt, or kill for a drug, you should be imprisoned.
That's an absolute."

But, by legalizing narcotics, Christ - who has admitted using drugs
some time during his 53-year existence - said that the government can
both better control their use while abating the crime and violence
surrounding them.

You could also better promote their safe use and, if under age,
abstinence from them.

His perspective is not popular with prosecutors, judges and other
elected officials who must rely on their constituents for
re-election.

"That's why we're looking at changing the public's perception. The
public sets the policy."

The issue of re-evaluating drug laws and decriminalizing narcotics -
once thought of as the soap box of radicals - is getting more and more
support from mainstream opinion.

National Drug Control Policy chair Barry McCaffrey said the drug
policies have failed. And that treatment programs, not prisons, should
be looked at as an alternative.

In New York, the Rockefeller Drug laws, are under attack by activists
who say the statutes - adopted in 1973 - are too harsh.

New York residents in Albany Tuesday were trying to pressure lawmakers
to re-evaluate the laws before the end of the 1998-1999 legislative
session next week.

State Democrats and Republicans have also criticized the laws, saying
they have lead to prison overcrowding - with more than 70,000 inmates,
10,000 in on Rockefeller Drug laws convictions - while yielding few
results.

Some politicians have pointed to the fact that the overall state crime
rate has dropped, down 29.3 percent between 1994 and 1998 according to
preliminary state figures, while more drug offenders are being put in
state prison.

Lawmakers are now wrangling about what to do about the
laws.

Christ is confident about the outcome.

"I may not be alive when legalization happens, but it will happen. It
has to. You can't put every citizen in prison."