TIME TO UPSET DRUG LORDS' BILLLION-DOLLAR APPLE CART

President Barack Obama's youthful drug use, including cocaine, seems
to have had little effect on the support he enjoys while leading the
free world through the most troubling times in recent history.

Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps has not been as fortunate. The
now-famous photo of Phelps smoking from a bong ended with a contract
termination and his picture being yanked off the Kellogg's Corn Flakes box.

With such confusing messages is it any wonder that there is little
consensus among stakeholders in the war on drugs?

Today, nobody seriously considers high-flyers such as Obama or Phelps
criminals or drug fiends, but 40 years ago actions like theirs led to
the all-out drug war that continues today.

The war is a loser. Despite intense law-enforcement efforts that have
come with a trillion-dollar tab, lives are still being destroyed
while drugs become cheaper and easier than ever to procure.

The Free Press published a piece from The Economist earlier in the
week that concluded the war has been a disaster, waged against a
backdrop of murder. The proliferation of the cocaine industry has
generated headlines from Mexico that last year reported 6,000
drug-killings. More than 800 police officers and soldiers have been
murdered there in the last two years and beheading officials has
become a popular gang tactic.

In Winnipeg, cops acknowledge quietly that because of high profits
and few risks they are on the war's losing side. Vancouver police
Chief Jim Chu is less quiet and seems to be seeking a dramatic
solution for the drug-fuelled, brutal gang conflict linked to Mexico
and playing out in the Olympic city.

The traditional display of drugs, cash and guns that accompanies most
sizable narcotic arrests in Vancouver, or anywhere in North America,
only signals that players have to move around in the drug
organization -- not that a problem has been solved.

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), is a worldwide
organization made up of cops, judges and other concerned people who
have long recognized the inadequacy of current drug policy.

LEAP celebrates its anniversary on Monday. Founded on March 16, 2002,
with five members, it is now 10,000 strong with representation in 86
countries. LEAP is part of a growing acceptance that the war on drugs
has compounded problems and that a system of legalization and
regulation would be less harmful and, as public policy, more
effective -- something The Economist terms as "least bad."

Officers from Seattle to South America, through to Sierra Leone and
Scotland Yard, argue that prohibition provides the means for
organized crime to reap billions in annual profits. With that kind of
dollars at stake, violence is inevitable. It also sets the stage for
gangsters to determine how the drugs will be produced as well as
where and to whom they will be sold.

LEAP's Jack Cole, a retired undercover officer who has worked both
street dealers and terrorists, says current laws put dealers in the
driver's seat and that if they choose to sell drugs in playgrounds
"then that's where they'll be sold." It shouldn't be a snap for a 15
year old to buy crack while next to impossible to purchase a beer. It
just makes sense that a junkie would be better served by a health
agency than by the Hells Angels.

Trading prohibition for regulation and more education is a worthy
discussion but nobody should see it as an easy fix. Drug cartels
would view such radical change as a hostile takeover in every sense
of the word and governments would have to be wary. Drug lords would
like nothing more than -- and are liable to do anything -- to
maintain the status quo.

Sure there are doubts about the government's ability to become an
effective drug regulator but any attempt to drive a stake into the
heart of organized crime sounds good. Crime's billion-dollar apple
cart needs to be upset. The violence is unacceptable.

Change won't happen in the near term. But with luck, the UN summit on
international drug policy, which wrapped up Friday in Vienna, paid
heed to those who have been on the front lines (LEAP was represented
at the meetings) and others who have studied and offered their
careful observations of the war.

In the meantime, those who choose to continue their consumption of
illicit drugs need to know that their individual demand amounts to
complicity in the murders, terror and misery subjected to thousands
here at home and abroad.