PROHIBITION: A PARALLEL TO MODERN WAR ON DRUGS

Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper Reflects on the Violent U.S.
Experiment With Prohibition, As Depicted in Ken Burns' New PBS
Documentary. He Argues There Is a Compelling Parallel Between The
Damage Done by the 18th Amendment and the Current U.S. War on Drugs.

KEN Burns' new documentary on alcohol prohibition, premiering on PBS
Sunday, reportedly begins with a Mark Twain quote: "It is the
prohibition that makes anything precious."

As a retired police officer who worked to enforce today's prohibition
- - the "war on drugs" - I think it's a lesson we would do well to remember.

It was the prohibition of alcohol that made it so valuable to
criminals, providing the tax-free dollars that turned neighborhood
street gangs into national crime syndicates headed by the likes of Al
Capone and Charles ("Lucky") Luciano.

Prohibition did little to curb liquor consumption, particularly among
young people. Moreover, as otherwise law-abiding citizens were
suddenly deemed criminals, the resulting hypocrisy significantly
undermined respect for authority.

Today, drug use, especially by adolescents, is shockingly widespread,
and law enforcement's job has been made that much harder. In cities
across the country, young people, poor people and people of color have
come to view us as the enemy.

Our drug laws have given rise to a new generation of gangsters with
names like Sinaloa, Los Zetas and La Familia. These evil and greedy
cartels are raking in profits that Capone and his ilk could only have
dreamed of.

Like the bootleggers of old, today's international cartels reap untold
billions of dollars from the drug war, and they aren't afraid to kill
to protect profits or expand markets. After alcohol prohibition took
effect, the homicide rate skyrocketed by 78 percent. Nearly a century
later, 4,323 U.S. homicides between 2005 and 2009 have been directly
traced to the illegal drug trade - more than the number of Americans
killed on 9/11 or in combat in Iraq. Even this figure pales in
comparison to the 40,000 murders in Mexico since 2006 that are
directly related to the illegal drug market.

It would be difficult for anyone who lived under alcohol prohibition
to imagine today's drug war-related violence. Whereas the St.
Valentine's Day massacre of seven alcohol-trafficking gangsters in
Chicago made international headlines in 1929, today's drug cartels
regularly kidnap and murder police and other government officials,
roll severed heads into nightclubs and hang mutilated bodies from
bridges - complete with threatening messages carved into the flesh.
The violence is so frequent that each grisly incident is but a blip on
the radar.

Just as in the 1920s, this violence stems from disputes over
territory. Instead of bringing whiskey from Canada, organized
criminals deliver illegal drugs from Mexico via a sophisticated
network whose tentacles extend from our southwestern border to more
than 1,000 American cities.

Previews show that Burns' documentary vividly depicts the lavish
lifestyles of Prohibition-era gangsters, the more successful of whom
banked staggering profits for their time.

Yet today's drug cartels are even more profitable. It costs about $75
to produce a pound of marijuana, which then sells for about $6,000,
depending on quality. Mexico alone produces more than 5,000 metric
tons yearly, according to the U.S. Justice Department.

As with every historical documentary, we all know the ending to this
one: At long last, Americans of all political stripes realized that
the Prohibition experiment was a complete failure. Support for it
collapsed, and repeal finally came with the 21st Amendment in 1933.

The repeal allowed the creation of thousands of new jobs in a
reinvigorated alcohol industry, with millions of dollars earned in tax
revenues.

Legalizing alcohol shut off a major source of funding for organized
crime and took the violence out of the market. It's not surprising
that you haven't seen any newspaper headlines recently about Budweiser
and Coors distributors shooting one another over who gets to stock
liquor stores.

It took just 13 years for the country to come to its senses. But our
drug laws have been on the books for decades. Nevertheless, I believe
we are closer than ever to undoing some of the damage through current
initiatives to legalize marijuana.

With so many parallels to the past in evidence, Burns' latest work
should touch off a long-overdue discussion about ending our current
experiment with the war on drugs.