IT'S TIME TO CALL OFF WAR ON DRUGS, FORMER NARCOTICS AGENT SAYS

RUSS JONES has spent nearly half of his 64 years dealing with
drugs.

Of his 10 years with the San Jose Police Department, six were in the
narcotics division. He was part of a Drug Enforcement Agency task
force. He did intelligence work in Central America for the U.S. State
Department and research in China and the Soviet Union for the Office
of International Criminal Justice.

Name a controlled substance, and he can tell you how it is made, where
it is marketed and what it costs on the street. He can tell you
something else: America's war on drugs is an unmitigated failure that
should be terminated.

"The U.S. over the last four decades has spent $1 trillion of our tax
dollars, made 38 million nonviolent drug arrests and quadrupled our
prison population," he said. "And the rate of addiction today, 1.3
percent, is the same as it was in 1970, when we started."

Jones spoke to the Martinez Rotary Club last week on behalf of Law
Enforcement Against Prohibition, a volunteer organization of 15,000
former judges, prosecutors, federal agents and police officers who
support the end of drug prohibition.

He wasn't specifically promoting Proposition 19, which would legalize
marijuana in the state, but he welcomes any advancement toward the
larger goal of legalizing and regulating all controlled substances.

Jones said he began to question the war on drugs while working
undercover in setting up major drug busts. He still has copies of the
front-page headlines that appeared in the newspapers.

"The district attorney would announce that a major blow had been dealt
to the drug network," Jones said. "Then what would follow is some new
drug dealer would take the old dealer's place."

This same pattern was repeated so often -- a heralded drug bust
followed by the arrival of a new dealer -- that narcotics officers
winced whenever the district attorney claimed a "victory" over drugs.

"When I arrested a rapist or a robber, the community was safer," Jones
said. "When I arrested a drug dealer, all I did was create a job opening."

He said one of the unintended consequences of shutting down local
dealers was to create a void into which moved much larger,
better-organized operations.

Unintended consequences are a product of the war on drugs. When
amphetamines were outlawed, Jones said, criminals learned to cook up
methamphetamines, which are far more potent. Because cocaine is water
soluble, requiring special packaging that is difficult to get past
authorities, dealers invented the derivative crack in smaller,
easier-to-hide "rocks." Those smaller, cheaper portions made it
affordable in poor communities.

Jones reminds anyone who will listen that you can be against drugs and
still favor reform. He wants addicts to receive professional treatment
and education, recognizing abuse as a health concern, not a legal one.

"Doctors should be allowed to prescribe drugs to addicts, who can take
their prescription to a clinic where they can get a
pharmaceutical-grade dose administered by a health clinician. When
habitual users start going to clinics, you put violent drug dealers
out of business, and addicts don't commit crimes to support their habit."

He cited as an example clinics in Switzerland, where heroin is
dispensed freely. Deaths by overdose have been reduced by 50 percent,
drug crimes by 60 percent.

To those who doubt the effectiveness of education, he points to
cigarette smoking. "With education," he said, "we reduced the use of
tobacco in this country from 42 percent to 17 percent, and we did that
without firing one shot or kicking in any doors."

With such powerful logic, why does drug regulation keep meeting
resistance? For some people, Jones says, it's a moral and ideological
issue. For others, the reason is simpler: money.

He said the DEA, with a $2.6 billion annual budget and nearly 11,000
employees, would be out of work without illegal drugs.

Local law enforcement agencies would be denied federal
funds.

Privately operated prisons, whose revenues are based on occupancy,
would wind up with empty beds.

"A lot of people have their fingers in the bowl of money tied up in
the drug war complex," he said.

The arguments might be dismissed if the speaker had wandered in from a
college campus with a new book to promote and a string of letters
behind his name.

But this is a guy who during six years in the major violator unit
averaged one narcotics arrest per week. He understands the damage
drugs can do.

He thinks the damage done by the war on drugs has been far worse.