EX-COP WHO WANTS TO LEGALIZE DRUGS AT SCCC TOMORROW

Peter Christ used to arrest people for doing drugs. Now he wants to
legalize them.

All of them: pot, cocaine, heroin, LSD, meth.

"My attitude toward the policy we're following is that it's a stupid
policy," Christ said. "It creates crime and violence in our society
. When's the last time you heard of a shoot-out at a brewery?"

That message - which he'll deliver at Schenectady County Community
College Thursday - commands attention because of the man delivering
it. Christ isn't some "drugs-are-cool" hippie, as he put it in a voice
dripping with sarcasm.

He's a retired police captain. From 1969 to 1989, he carried a badge
and a gun for the police department in the town of Tonawanda, outside
Buffalo.

Nearly 20 years ago, he traded the badge for the bully pulpit. He's
preached the gospel of drug legalization ever since to whoever will
listen: Kiwanis clubs, college students, reporters.

At SCCC today, the Cazenovia resident will debate Dr. Kevin Sabet, a
former speechwriter for John Walters, the director of the White House
Office of National Drug Control Policy. The forum "Should America
Legalize Drugs?" will take place from 10:30a.m. to 11:30a.m. in
Stockade 101.

Christ's attitude toward drugs has remained the same over the years.
Dangerous, he calls them. Harmful to society.

But even as a cop he was a drug policy critic. Christ feels the job of
police is to protect people from each other, not themselves.

The group he co-founded, "Law Enforcement Against Prohibition," counts
about 1,000 mostly retired law enforcement officers among its 10,000
members. LEAP takes no position on how the government would regulate
drugs if it made them legal, Christ said.

"Don't be asking cops to solve the drug problem," he said.