PROHIBITION HAS FAILED

EVEN among the bulging annals of American improbability, this meeting
was right up there.

The two most famous faces on the planet joined in a war on drugs --
the War on Terror of its day.

Since mid-1969, US president Richard Nixon had toyed with the notion
of declaring drugs public enemy No.1.

Then, late in 1970, he received a surprise call from the King. Not a
phone call. Elvis Presley turned up, uninvited, at the White House
asking to see the president.

"I have done an in-depth study of drug abuse and communist
brainwashing techniques," he told the fascinated Nixon.

"And I am right in the middle of the whole thing where I can and will
do the most good . . . the drug culture, the hippie elements, Black
Panthers, etc, do not consider me as their enemy, or as they call it
The Establishment. I call it America and I love it, sir."

He asked to be made a Federal Agent at Large. Nixon presented him
with the badge. Elvis presented Nixon with a World War II-era Colt
45, the pair nicely ticking off America's twin evils.

Nixon kept the meeting secret for a time and months later launched
his offensive against the drugs scourge.

What a dream ticket: Presley, the biggest rock star of all time,
would be dead in just over six years, having consumed 19,000 doses of
sedatives, stimulants and narcotics in his last 30 months; the
gin-soaked Nixon, sometimes too drunk to take calls from other world
leaders, liked to pop a mood-altering prescription drug called
Dilantin, illegally supplied to him in 1000-capsule bottles.

The US war on drugs is estimated to have cost more than $1 trillion
- -- more than enough money to put Osama bin Laden on the moon. It puts
a million Americans in jail each year.

Plenty of Australians are jailed each year, too, for possessing and
using illegal drugs.

In a little-publicised contribution to Kevin Rudd's 2020 summit last
year, Brisbane doctor Wendell Rosevear, who has worked in the prison
system for decades, called for all drugs to be legalised. He believes
the billions of dollars spent in Australia on policing, convicting
and jailing addicts and their suppliers should be spent on drug
intervention and education programs.

"Drugs are illegal, so we put people in jail to solve the problem and
we label people who use drugs as bad -- it doesn't make them feel
valuable," he said. "If we think we can just put it out of sight, out
of mind, we are actually devaluing people and not solving the problem."

Given that the West's various wars on drugs have failed so miserably,
perhaps we should look more closely at Rosevear's proposals.

Certainly, he is not alone. Arriving in Australia today is Norm
Stamper, the legendary former chief of the Seattle police, and also a
campaigner for legalisation of all drugs.

Stamper is being hosted by the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation,
which believes we can minimise the damage from the drugs trade -- the
violence, property crimes and deadly infectious diseases, not to
mention the dizzying and untaxed profits being made by Australia's
drug gangs -- if we relax our laws.

"That America proclaimed drugs public enemy No.1 and declared all-out
war on them I now see as a colossal mistake," Stamper said from
Washington state at the weekend as he prepared for his trip.

"The war was not against drugs so much as it was against people," he
said. "Particularly people of colour, and young people and poor people.

"We've incarcerated tens of millions of non-violent drug offenders
and yet drugs are more readily available, at lower prices and higher
levels of potency than when we declared war against them."

I'd call that failure. He does. You'd probably agree.

Stamper is a prominent member of a 13,000-strong international
organisation called LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition) that
includes current and former police officers, district attorneys, drug
enforcement administration officers, homeland security agents,
prosecutors, judges and prison wardens who want an end to the
prohibition of now-illegal drugs.

They see the lessons of the US Prohibition 90 years ago being
forgotten. Back then, alcohol manufacture, sale and transportation
were outlawed. It barely affected consumption, but it led to deeply
rooted criminal systems being established and crime rates soaring as
demand was met, albeit illegally. Like it is with serious drugs today.

STAMPER sees "softer" drugs, such as marijuana, being decriminalised
first, and when lessons are learned, harder drugs following suit.

Having worked in San Diego, he has first-hand experience of the
Mexico towns that are now are the front line of the drug cartel wars
for control of the lucrative drugs trade.

Ideally, Stamper sees the state growing, manufacturing and
controlling the supply of drugs, although LEAP does not have a view on this.

Of course, that's a much stricter regime than we have for the
manufacture and sale of alcohol, notwithstanding the alcohol-fuelled
violence that so regularly sees injury and death on Melbourne streets.