REEFER GLADNESS

Before this week, I'd never heard of James Babb, let alone thought
about whether he has what it takes to oust Carole Rubley in the 157th
District state representative's race. Come to think of it, I'm still
not all that sure who Rubley is or where one would find the 157th.

But none of that much matters. What's important is that I received an
e-mail in which Babb, a Libertarian, announced the local premiere of
a 12-minute "mini-documentary" about a new advocacy group. It read,
"Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) has released a scathing
critique of modern drug prohibition ... as a way to educate the
community about the drug war and the crime it creates."

Well, he had me at "Law."

If you've read my stuff for a while, you know I'm all Tosh when it
comes to legalizing it. I wrote about it last November when my late
mother's battle with brain cancer made me question why it's illegal
for terminally ill patients to numb their pain by burning a joint.
(If they want to pull 5-foot bong hits, let 'em.) I also touched on
it in 2002 when I set out to find cops on the street who'd bust
somebody solely for smoking weed in public. (Not one cop said he
would and even book-throwing Judge Seamus McCaffery said, "We've
gotten to the point where it's pretty much looked upon as" an
open-container violation.) But as with Ed "N.J. Weedman" Forchion's
pot-puffing crusade, not much happens when people publicly cry out
for legalization, other than inevitable eye-rolls from uptight prudes
who think herb sends bug-eyed smokers hurtling out the nearest
high-rise window in a fit of reefer madness.

Good people, that may soon change.

When I read more of Babb's e-mail, I realized this LEAP thing can't
be as easily dismissed as a bunch of hacky-sack-circling,
NORML-pamphlet-pushing hippies from Swarthmore. By day's end, one
former judge and two former cops (all local) shared the same
convincing message: It's time to cut our mounting losses and run from
the failed War on Drugs.

Let's start with Jack Cole, who retired from the N.J. State Police
after 26 years, 14 of which he spent on undercover narcotics
investigations. Today, he is executive director of LEAP ( www.leap.cc
), which has grown from five officers in 2002 to more than 5,000
police officers, judges, corrections officers, prosecutors and others
spread across the country. He makes a convincing case.

"If we ended drug prohibition today, tomorrow all the drug lords,
terrorists and street dealers would be out of business," he says. "If
they're not in business, they're not out in the streets, and if
they're not out in the streets, they're not shooting each other to
protect their market share, catching innocent people and children in
the crossfire."

Testify!

"The war on drugs has been, and forever will be, a total and abject
failure," he continues. "This is a war on our own people. What if,
today, we had legalized regulation of drugs and spent $69 billion a
year on mandatory minimum education? Mandatory minimum health care?
Jobs for anybody who wanted to work? Decent housing? We could do that
kind of stuff with the money we're wasting on the war on drugs."

Preach on!

"We would almost do away with violent crime in this country," said
Cole, noting the group follows a Vietnam Veterans Against the War
philosophy. "These are the most racist laws since slavery."

When former cops admit such things, and draw attention to a British
medical journal study that found a major drop-off in heroin use and
overdoses when the Swiss government took a regulating role, people
have to listen. Even if you got elected on the back of your
law-and-order campaign platform, you shouldn't be legally permitted
to ignore the reality that anti-drug initiatives divert much-needed
resources from, oh, solving homicides in a city were more people are
being killed and fewer cases are being cleared.

Fred Martens, the former head of the Pennsylvania Crime Commission,
listened to his former partner Cole's argument. Then he signed up.

"Given what we know today, why not give it a try on a temporary basis
and see what happens?" says Martens. "Given the fact that the drug
war's a failure, it's worth looking at."

It sure is, but I'm not the person that Cole, Martens and all need to
convince. To effect change, they'll need to continue lobbying their
former peers, speaking at Rotary-type clubs across the country and
setting up informational booths and civic-leader conferences. Cole
promises they will.

"By the summer of 2008, I want 10,000 law enforcement members and a
million private citizens who support what we're doing," he says. "If
we get those numbers, and I'm almost sure we will, we will elevate
the discussion of legalized regulation of drugs to the level of a
presidential campaign issue. Then, we can show the candidates that
they won't lose one more vote than they'll gain. We will end the
prohibition on drugs."

A pipe dream? Maybe, but we'd all be better off if it came true.