LEGALIZING DRUGS WILL LEAD TO CUTS IN CRIME

Undercover Baltimore police officer Dante Arthur was doing what he
does well, arresting drug dealers, when he approached a group in January.

He didn't know that one of suspects knew from a previous arrest that
Arthur was with the police. He was shot twice in the face.

In the gunfight that ensued, Arthur's partner returned fire and shot
one of the suspects, three of whom were later arrested.

In many ways, Dante Arthur was lucky. He lived. Across the U.S., a
police officer dies on duty nearly every other day. Even more
officers are wounded, too many fighting the war on drugs.

The prohibition on drugs leads to unregulated and often violent
public drug dealing. Perhaps counterintuitively, better police
training and bigger guns are not the answer.

When it makes sense to deal drugs in public, a neighbourhood becomes
home to drug violence. For a low-level drug dealer, working the
street means more money and fewer economic risks. If police come, and
they will, some young kid will be left holding the bag while the
dealer walks around the block.

Drug users generally aren't violent. Most simply want to be left
alone to enjoy their high. It's the corner dealer who terrifies
neighbours and invites rivals to attack. Public drug dealing creates
an environment where disputes about money or respect are settled with
guns. In high-crime areas, police spend much of their time answering
drug-related calls for service, clearing dealers off corners,
responding to shootings and homicides and making lots of drug-related arrests.

In training, police officers are taught about the evils of the drug
trade and given the knowledge and tools to inflict as much damage as
possible upon the people who constitute the drug community.

Policy-makers tell us to fight this unwinnable war. But only after
years of witnessing the ineffectiveness of drug policies -- and the
disproportionate impact the drug war has on young black men -- have
we and other police officers begun to question the system.

Cities and states license beer and tobacco sellers to control where,
when and to whom drugs are sold. Ending Prohibition saved lives
because it took gangsters out of the game. Regulated alcohol doesn't
work perfectly, but it works well enough.

Prescription drugs are regulated, and while there is a huge problem
with abuse, at least a system of distribution involving doctors and
pharmacists works without violence and high-volume incarceration.

Regulating drugs would work similarly: Not a cure-all, but a vast
improvement on the status quo.

Legalization would not create a drug free-for-all. In fact,
regulation reins in the mess we already have. If prohibition
decreased drug use and drug arrests acted as a deterrent, America
would not lead the world in illegal drug use and incarceration for drug crimes.

Drug manufacturing and distribution is too dangerous to remain in the
hands of unregulated criminals. Drug distribution needs to be the
combined responsibility of doctors, the government and a legal and
regulated free market.

This simple step would quickly eliminate the greatest threat of
violence: Street-corner drug dealing. We simply urge the federal
government to retreat.

Let cities and states (and, while we're at it, other countries)
decide their own drug policies.

Many would continue prohibition, but some would try something new.
California and its medical marijuana dispensaries provide a good
working example, warts and all, that legalized drug distribution does
not cause the sky to fall.

Having fought the war on drugs, we know that ending the drug war is
the right thing to do -- for all of us, especially taxpayers.

While the financial benefits of drug legalization are not our main
concern, they are substantial. In a July referendum, Oakland, Calif.,
voted to tax drug sales by a four-to-one margin. Harvard economist
Jeffrey Miron estimates that ending the drug war would save $44
billion annually, with taxes bringing in an additional $33 billion.

Without the drug war, America's most decimated neighbourhoods would
have a chance to recover. Working people could sit on stoops,
misguided youths wouldn't look up to criminals as role models, our
overflowing prisons could hold real criminals, and -- most important
to us -- more police officers wouldn't have to die.

Peter Moskos is a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice
in New York City and the author of Cop in the Hood. Stanford Franklin
is a 32-year law enforcement veteran. Both served as Baltimore city
police officers and are members of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.