DRUG POLICY ALLIANCE SEEKING OPTIONS

ALBUQUERQUE - Retired New Jersey state police detective Jack Cole was
on front lines of the war on drugs for 14 years as an undercover
officer before he decided to change sides. Cole is now executive
director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which is dedicated to
ending the prohibition on drugs. He was among about 1,000 people
registered for a three-day International Drug Policy Reform Conference
that opened Thursday in Albuquerque.

The conference was staged by the Drug Policy Alliance, which wants to
decriminalize drugs and promote new policies based on science and
health. Cole is a speaker and attended a news conference marking the
opening of the event.

Conference topics vary from medical marijuana to clean-needle programs
and from interventions for gangs to substance- abuse treatments.

Organizers will present an award Friday to talk show host and medical
marijuana patient Montell Williams, recognizing his advocacy for
compassionate drug laws and access to medical marijuana.

The federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
did not return a call Thursday seeking comment on the idea of
decriminalizing drugs.

Drug Policy Alliance Executive Director Ethan Nadelmann said about a
dozen states, including New Mexico, have a law allowing patients with
certain diseases to use marijuana for pain and nausea from treatments.
About the same number have decriminalized small amounts of marijuana
for personal use.

Cole said decriminalization would put drug lords out of business, cut
violence, stop people from going to prison for nonviolent drug crimes,
cut drug overdoses by allowing people to know what they're buying and
put billons of dollars now going to the drug war into health,
education and other needs.

It also would allow drugs to be regulated to control their use, Cole
said.

"You can't control anything when it's illegal," he
said.

Cole said the nation has spent a trillion dollars on the drug war more
than 40 years and "all we have to show for it is 39 million arrests in
this country alone for nonviolent drug offenses."

"That's a lot of money to waste, a lot of lives to waste," he
said.

Regulation would change drug policy from an emphasis on crime to an
emphasis on health, said Danny Kushlick, head of policy for the
Transform Drug Policy Foundation, which released a blueprint Thursday
recommending steps toward a decriminalized drug industry.

Government would regulate drugs "the same way it regulates any other
potentially risky policy or activity," said Kushlick, of Bristol, England.

That would include controls on the product - dosage, price,
preparation, childproofing - controls on suppliers and outlets and a
ban on advertising. Drugs would be dispensed in various ways, from
those requiring a doctor's prescription to licensed sales of certain
drugs and unlicensed sales of the least harmful.

"What we want is a precautionary approach. ... What we don't want is a
free for all," he said.

Kushlick said decriminalizing drugs won't get rid of the illicit drug
trade entirely.

"This is not about utopia. It's about reducing the harm from
prohibition," where the only winners are gangsters, he said.