US POLICE CHIEF'S WARNING OVER DOOMED DRUGS POLICY

The prohibition against illicit street drugs should be ended as
hard-line legislation against drugs is doomed to failure, a US police
chief warned today.

Jerry Cameron, a police veteran with 17 years experience, urged the
Irish Government not to make the same mistakes the United States has
made in its war on drugs.

Mr Cameron said there was ample evidence the hard-line crackdown with
severe prison sentences for possession of street drugs such as
cannabis and heroin in America had failed to deal with the problem.

"If someone wants to try a drug they are going to try it the law makes
no difference," he said.

"In a free society you just can't keep people from doing things which
are sometimes foolish."

At a conference in Dublin, Mr Cameron said the mission of the Law
Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) was to save lives and lower
crime rates by ending prohibition.

"I would urge the Irish as a sovereign national country to get their
own experts together, and dismiss this idea there is only one approach
and come up with an Irish solution to Irish problems and do not let
the US lead you down this path that we have gone down," he said.

Mr Cameron said prohibition simply never worked and results in
criminal activity.

"I certainly think the first step is physicians ought to be able to
prescribe anything that they believe will help their patient, the
police have got no business practising medicine," he said.

Mr Cameron said if the profit motive was removed from the criminals by
making drugs legal then law enforcement could regain some control in
the area.

"The biggest thing is the violence that is associated with black
markets when you buy a product from a person and it is defective, with
a drug you can't take him to court and you have to solve it in another
way. And in the US we do that with guns," he said.

"I don't think Ireland has started to experience the full consequences
of the black market but it will."

Mr Cameron said if he could sit down with a parent and rationally
discuss the evidence he could convince them of the futility of
prohibiting drugs.

"I certainly don't want people out using drugs, but the problem is
just like in alcohol prohibition you're gonna' have the same usage but
with all of these unintended consequences caused by criminalising
something that you can't control," he said.

"If you wanted marijuana tonight and didn't know where to go who would
you ask? The young people, the teenagers. It is out there they have
got it. The only thing that is different now is they have to deal with
criminals in order to get it," he said.

"The guy from the market is not down at the school giving out
cigarettes and beer as free samples, and trying to recruit the
students to sell these products in their school. He has a licence to
worry about."

Rick Lines of the Irish Penal Reform Trust said by any measure the
30-year international war on drugs has failed.

"The use of illegal drugs has never been more prevalent, our prisons
have never been fuller and injecting drug-related health concerns such
as HIV and Hepatitis C infection have continued to grow across the
world," he said.

Mr Cameron said marijuana was an innocuous drug which had been
demonised. "My drug of choice is alcohol but if I had to make a
decision," he said. "It would take a nanosecond to tell you marijuana
is the safer drug."

He added: "Poor eating habits are definitely more dangerous than
marijuana."

Eoin Ryan, a Fianna Fail MEP and former minister of state, who
attended the conference, said: "What politician is going to get up and
say you should legalise drugs?

"The problem is if you are a minister who wants to legalise cannabis
you are going to get an endless amount of medical evidence that
cannabis is a carcinogenic."

He added: "The state would end up being sued as tobacco firms are
being sued."

"I don't know how we solve it, I honestly don't," he
said.