ADVOCATES FOR LEGALIZING MARIJUANA TOUT THE BENEFITS AT HEMPFEST

Former Seattle police Chief Norm Stamper doesn't have dreadlocks, a
Zig-Zag T-shirt or a single Phish album. He just sounds like it.

"It's laughable when people say we are winning the drug war," said
Stamper, who had just finished a main-stage speech to the crowd
gathered Sunday at the Seattle Hempfest in Myrtle Edwards Park. "The
people who are prosecuting the drug war are invested psychically and
financially. It's a holy war for them.

"We should legalize all drugs."

While the comments might be unusual for most law enforcement
careerists, they are nothing new for Stamper, who was Seattle's top
cop from 1994 to 2000. That is why organizers brought him in for the
popular two-day, pro-pot festival.

Organizers estimated 150,000 people flowed into the waterfront park,
which for the weekend turned into a dense village of food booths,
stages, arts-and-crafts sellers, hemp product manufacturers,
leafleteers, hackysack circles and picnickers.

Now in its 15th year, Hempfest is at its core all about
decriminalizing marijuana. So is Stamper, especially after years of
witnessing firsthand what he sees as the futility of the federal drug war.

The drugs are winning, he said. It's time to change tactics.

"Police should be focused on violent crime," he told the crowd.

Stamper, a member of pro-legalization Law Enforcement Against
Prohibition, said many of his peers agree with him but will only say
so privately. He told a story about a recent chat with a police chief
in a "major American city" who had read Stamper's 2005 book, "Breaking Rank."

In it, Stamper advocates legalizing and regulating drugs as a way to
reduce collateral problems such as addiction, violence and property crime.

"He came up to me after a talk and said he agreed with the chapter on
drugs," Stamper said. "I asked, 'Can I quote you publicly?'

"He said, 'What have you been smoking?' "

Stamper saw similar reticence Sunday, as he preached to the choir in
the sunny, 90-degree heat.

Waiting for hand-dipped ice-cream bars in the festival's munchie
midway, Seattleites Tony Witherspoon, 31, and Neil Toland, 28, said
they don't see pot as a rip in society's fabric.

"I wouldn't think a little weed is going to hurt anybody," Witherspoon said.

Added Toland, "There needs to be a little space for (pot)."

Creating that political space is what the festival is all about,
chief organizer Dominic Holden said.

Hempfest has matured over the decade and a half it's existed, he
said. Initially, it went unnoticed by local police. Then, Holden
recalled, it became tense and even adversarial between organizers and
police in the late 1990s -- at a time when Stamper was chief.

"For a while there, it seemed like it would go downhill," Holden
said. "They were doing backstage raids looking for pot. They didn't find any."

Since then, the political landscape has changed, Holden said.

First, state voters approved medical marijuana. Subsequently, Seattle
residents said they are not worried about pot as a law enforcement issue.

Now, he said, the relationship is much more mellow.

"We all want it to be a safe festival," Holden said. "The police have
been great. Very collaborative.

"This might be our biggest festival ever