HOOVER FOLLOWS CAPONE LEGACY

Al Capone and Larry Hoover have a great deal in common. Chicago's most
notorious kingpins of organized crime both knew how to take advantage of
prohibition. Capone made his fortune from bootlegging, while Hoover reaped
millions from his drug empire. Both were cold-blooded in eliminating their
gangland rivals. Just as Capone
achieved political influence, Hoover also has sought to help elect allies
to the City Council.

Hoover is doing time for murder, but has maintained influence from prison.
Capone did time for tax evasion, and his influence gradually dimished.
Like Capone, Hoover is a national embarrassment for the city.

In a compelling new book, Drug Crazy (Random House, $23.95), Mike Gray
draws many parallels between the bloody streets left by Capone and Hoover.
Gray, who was the producer of an award-winning documentary about the police
slaying of former Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, is appalled that
Hoover could build an empire that might even be more powerful than
Capone's.

"Its just like the old mob days," Chicago police Detective Frank Goff told
Gray. "We're talking about a street gang that can intimidate people, put
up your fliers, tear down all the other people's fliers, tear down all the
other people's fliers, get people to vote and register and come to the
polls. This group can control a lot of votes. They finally realized
that."

Studs Terkel, who has spent much of his life recording the city's history,
told Gray that the last time the streets were this bloody from gangtland
hits was in the Capone era.

"If you look at a gangland map of Chicago from the 1920's, you find a
chilling similarity with the map of today," Gray writes. "On the Near
North Side where the O'Banion gang once slugged it out with the Terrible
Gennas, you now find the Vice Lords facing off with the Latin Kings'. And
there can be no doubt who is the successor to Big Al. The vast territory
that sweeps from the South Side and arcs around the Loop to the west is
owned and operated by Larry Hoover and the Gangster Disciples."

Capone lost his grip on Chicago when Prohibition ended. The Volstead Ace,
which prohibited the manufacture of sale of liquor in the United States,
went into effect in January, 1920. But asw Capone reaped an estimted $50
million annually from bootlegging, some high-minded people began
reconsidering what they had done. Pauline Morton Sabin, a socially
prominent Republican, formed the Women's Organization for National
Prohibition Reform at the Drake Hotel in the spring of 1929. "Many of our
members are youn mothers-too young to remember the old saloon," Sabin said
then. "But they are working for repeal because they don't want their
babies to grow up in the hip-flask speakeasy atmosphere that has polluted
their youth."

The public eventually soured on the Volstead Act. Polling indicated that
73 percent favored repeal in 1932 when Franklin D. Roosevelt won the
presidency on a platform that promised this reform. Gray notes that
Sabin's conference at the Drake marked a turning point in the effort to
help break Capone's influence.

Gray shows how the federal government often has fumbled in its effort to
fight drugs. Hamilton Wright, who helped shape the Harrison Narcotic Act
of 1914, unfairly targeted doctors who prescribed pain relievers. Harry
Anslinger, who led the Treasury Department's Federal Bureau of Narcotics in
the middle third of the century, was more interesed in protecting his turf
than in listening to medical and health professionals. Like J. Edgar
Hoover of the FBI, Anslinger became part of the problem rather than the
solution.

Gray believes that existing drug policies have produced the opposite of
what was intended. His argument is that drug prohibition has helped the
bad guys get richer, while failing to deal with a serious medial problem.
He cites California's recent vote to allow the medical use of marijuana as
a potential breakthrough. Gray is hopeful that other states will follow
California's lead in challenging failed policies.

His criticism is thoughtful and constructive.

"Prior to the Harrison Narcotics Act, if people wanted drugs they at least
had to go to a drugstore," Gray notes. "Now they can get anything they
want from the neighbor's kid. It would seem that if Americans are to have
any say at all in what their teenagers are
exposed to, they will have to take the drug market out of the hands of the
Tijuana Cartel and the Gangster Disciples, and put it back in the hands of
the doctors and pharmacists where it was before 1914."

Checked-by: Joel W. Johnson