"CHANGE" YOU SAY?

Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to
control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of
things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the
very principles upon which our government was founded.

- -Abraham Lincoln

If you live in Somerville, you probably know of someone who has
suffered from drug abuse. Coke, meth, crack, and particularly heroin
and oxycontin use is ruining lives, stressing families, promoting
crime, destroying young peoples' futures, and occasionally, killing
them. A significant portion of assaults and murders are drug related.

Somerville Cares About Prevention educates citizens regarding drug use
and its consequences. Our Police Department works hard to reduce drug
related crime. They do at least as well, and probably a little better,
than their colleagues in other urban areas. Yet there are always more
addicts to treat, more dealers to arrest, more funerals to attend,
more heartache to heal.

Thirty-five years ago, Richard Nixon declared war on drugs. Since
then, we've spent more on that war than in Iraq and Afghanistan. We've
made 37 million arrests for nonviolent drug crimes. Prisons are our
fastest growing industry, with 2.2 million Americans currently locked
up. We're annually making 1.9 million arrests and spending $70
billion. Yet drugs are cheaper, more potent, and far more available.
What is to be done?

If you drive northwest on Mystic Avenue, not far past the Medford line
you'll pass a modest office building. One of its tenants is LEAP, an
organization that is influencing opinion on drug policy across North
America. Law Enforcement Against Prohibition's members-current and
retired law officers-propose a different way. They advocate "a system
of regulation and control of production and distribution [that] will
be far more effective and ethical than one of prohibition."

LEAP member, Terry Nelson was a federal drug enforcement officer for
30 years. He "saw on a daily basis that we were making no
difference....When you put a drug dealer in jail, you create a job
opening."

Former federal Drug Czar Lee Brown says, "When you're in that
position, you see very quickly that you can't arrest your way out of
this. You see the cycle of people using drugs, going to prison,
getting out, and getting into drugs again."

The alternative? Brown points to a study conducted fifteen years ago
by the RAND Corporation. A team of mathematicians calculated the most
cost effective tactics in the drug war-law enforcement, interdiction,
foreign aid, treatment, and prevention. They were surprised to find
that only treatment was effective.

But the hard evidence has no impact on drug policies that have not
just failed in their stated goals of reducing drug addiction, crime,
and juvenile drug use. Instead, the drug war continues to worsen each
of these.

LEAP member Jim Gray describes himself as a conservative judge in a
conservative jurisdiction. Prior to joining the Orange County Superior
Court, he prosecuted what was then Los Angeles' largest ever drug
case. He says unequivocally, "We have a more radical approach [to drug
law] than any other western democracy, and we have a bigger drug
problem. I'm convinced there is a connection."

The plain truth is that drug laws create crime. In his book Bad Trip,
conservative author Joel Miller writes, "Drug prohibition does not end
drug use. It simply forces the consumer to break the law to get what
he wants."

Add to that addicts who steal to support their habit and drug bosses
who kill to dominate their territory. Peter Christ, a LEAP member and
retired Buffalo PD captain observes, "We legalized alcohol because it
only took us 13 years to learn the lesson that alcohol did not create
Al Capone. Prohibition created Al Capone. And everyone didn't become a
drunk in 1934."

He's right. With alcohol prohibition, murder went up 13% and robbery,
83%. Prohibition ended in 1933, and violent crimes returned to their
pre-prohibition levels by 1937. Judge Gray estimates that 80 percent
of felonies are drug related.

One of the drug war's hypocrisies is that its purpose is to prevent
harm to users. While drug addicts do serious damage to their lives,
the drug war destroys those lives.

Jay Fleming, a thoughtful LEAP member, served 15 years with multiple
drug enforcement agencies: "As with all wars, you have to have an
enemy. That enemy turns out to be our fellow citizens. Once you make
the enemy evil, its ok to use any means to destroy them." He relates
how, working undercover, he got to know drug culture people and their
families. "And then you have to come back and destroy that family."

The number of Americans behind bars for drug offenses, mostly
nonviolent, has increased by 1,200 percent since 1980. Legendary NYPD
crusader Frank Serpico describes the prison system as an industry.
"They run it like real estate. They have so many rooms, they have to
rent them out, and the police fill them." Former drug cop, then
coroner, then mayor of Vancouver Larry Campbel says that the drug war
isn't really a war, it's a business.

Imprisonment and a criminal record is not the only damage prohibition
does to addicts' lives. Joel Miller writes, "People who fall into a
drug habit and do not want to harm others by stealing, instead harm
themselves by whoring."

Fleming's remorse suggests another drug war impact. Former Seattle
Police Chief and LEAP member Norm Stamper says, "Narcotic enforcement
puts cops in an untenable situation. They are enforcing laws that in
many cases they don't believe in." Then there are lucrative
temptations to corruption. The few cops who yield, damage the morale
of and public respect for the many who don't.

Nor is corruption limited to law enforcement officers. LEAP member
Cellie Castillo was a DEA agent interdicting Latin American drug
traffic. He discovered that U.S. officials were sending flights of
cocaine to the U.S., buying weapons with the proceeds, and sending the
weapons on return flights to Nicaraguan Contras who used them to
commit atrocities. His reports were ignored.

And of course the Taliban, al-Qaida, and terrorists in Colombia, Peru,
and Pakistan can finance their operations through drug trafficking
because drug use is criminalized in the U.S.

LEAP's solution is to legalize, regulate, and heavily tax drugs. Then
as Judge Gray suggests, "Hold people accountable for what they do
instead of what they put in their bodies."

A portion of the enormous revenues and reduced costs thus generated
could be put into drug treatment. The RAND study found that 13 percent
of addicts who went through treatment stopped using permanently. That
seems minimal until you realize that no other tactic has produced any
reduction at all. And treatment programs have become more effective
since the study.

This is not a matter of morality. Enforcement causes more misery than
it prevents. It's not a matter of ideology. George Will, Howard Zinn,
William F. Buckley, Noam Chomsky, Milton Friedman, and George Shultz
have all agreed with the policies that LEAP advocates. It's a matter
of hard evidence, honesty, and courage.

Nixon was right to call drug abuse an epidemic, but he was wrong to
make "war" on its victims. Over my lifetime, a half dozen people whom
I have known died from overdoses or bad drugs. At least that many got
caught in prison/addiction cycle. One was shot to death in a
transaction. Judge Gray says that, "Eventually we will come to our
senses." I hope so.