MIRED IN THE WAR ON DRUGS

Some Police Say It's Time for End

What became clear to me while speaking about marijuana legalization
with volunteers of the organization Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
(LEAP) is that the argument is really about responsibility.

Are we as a society responsible for controlling what adults put into
their own bodies? Or are individuals responsible for themselves? And
is the Nixonian "war on drugs" -- now in its 40th year -- responsible
for creating more problems than it solved?

No matter what your view on America's relationship with controlled
substances, you probably have a ready, emotionally charged answer.
Debates get heated fast and rational discussions are in short supply.
Proponents of legalization are often assumed to be potheads looking
for a legal high. Retired Cincinnati Police Capt. Howard Rahtz defies
this preconception. He's a conservative and has no interest in using
drugs but he supports legal, controlled and public sales of marijuana.

"I defy you to find anybody who will applaud what the war on drugs has
accomplished," Rahtz says. "Use rates have not changed in four
decades. We've accomplished nothing. We spend more money, we
incarcerate more people than any other place in the world and we end
up with less for it. The fact is, what we're doing isn't working. My
question is, particularly in this age of shrinking resources, are we
going to continue pouring money down this rat hole?"

Rahtz is a local member of LEAP and one of the organization's 125
speakers who make the case for legalization around the nation.
According to spokesperson Tom Angell, LEAP has more than 40,000
subscribers to it's email alerts and draws supporters from across the
political spectrum -- libertarians, socialists and everyone in between.
Congressman Ron Paul is one of LEAP's best-known supporters.

"We really try and change the face of this debate and reframe the way
that people perceive drug reform," Angell says.

Rahtz, who retired from CPD in 2007, says he became interested in drug
policy reform after learning about LEAP.

"I think I believed almost until the time I retired that the current
structure wasn't all that bad," Rahtz says. "I began to think about
not only the violence on the Mexican border but the drug proceeds that
support the Taliban. Afghanistan is the world's leading producer of
poppies and much of the income from the drug trafficking there goes to
support insurgents killing our service people in Afghanistan.

"Of course, I've had a fair amount of experience in Cincinnati, which
is not really unique among major cities in this country where drug
violence is the primary driver of the homicide rate," he adds. "So, I
began to think about what can we do drug policy-wise to stem this
violence not only in our American communities but internationally and
began to think about how the drug market is structured and the
relationship between the violence and drug trafficking."

The conclusions he came to were inescapable, Rahtz says, and it's
really simple math: Marijuana is the primary product of the illegal
drug market and accounts for 60 percent of the revenue garnered by
drug cartels.

"If we're serious about choking off the revenue to these drug
traffickers, and that's my major goal here -- if we're really serious
about choking off the revenue to them -- the first thing we need to do
is something about marijuana," he says.

"If they legalize marijuana tomorrow, you won't see Howard Rahtz in
line to buy any of it," he says. "I don't care about it. All I care
about is trying to stop the violence that's going on, associated with
drug trafficking. And the first thing we can do is take marijuana out
of the market by legalizing it. What business could sustain the loss
of 60 percent of their revenue? We take away their single biggest
product, their single biggest source of income and we're going to
severely affect their bottom line."

While listening to retired Maryland State Police Maj. Neill Franklin,
LEAP's director, it becomes clear the image he paints of the war on
drugs is that of a Chinese finger trap. The harder we fight, the more
entrenched we become. Franklin says that's an apt description.

"We in law enforcement thought we could be effective at keeping drugs
out of our communities and locking those people up and it being a
deterrent for those selling and using drugs," Franklin says. "I
thought this could be accomplished, as most people did. As we started
moving through the years, I eventually ended up going into management
for narcotics commanding task forces and following the party line of
the federal government. We just continued to push harder."

The strategy shifted from arresting primarily dealers to focusing on
users, and this corresponded with the massive rise in American prison
populations.

"We got tougher, we made the penalties more severe, but all the time
we weren't really thinking about these (being) addictions that we are
dealing with," Franklin says. "People don't care about prison. What
they care about is not being sick from missing a dose. Prison is no
deterrent."

Likewise, Franklin says law enforcement missed the mark with
dealers.

"For a lot of these people selling in the communities we were
targeting, that's the only option they see for financial survival," he
says. "Prison's no deterrent for that and after a while, prison became
the norm."

Franklin says he found that the act of taking dealers off the street
created a void that other gangs and dealers were more than willing to
fill. He says drugs are the foundation for most of the crime that
police contend with on a daily basis.

Realizing these facts and the futility of prohibition made him do a
180-degree change in his thinking on drug prohibition, he says.

"This is the fascinating thing about this," he says. "If overdose
rates go up, if addiction rates go up, if they give their surveys and
see that more kids are using illicit drugs then you know what? 'We
gotta push harder. So lets dump more money into prohibition, let's
dump more money into the criminal justice system. Let's really push
harder on this and we'll make a difference.' (But) when numbers head
in the other direction, they say the same thing. 'Oh, it's working, so
let's dump more money into it.' It's a catch 22. Either way you go,
you never succeed."