THE NEED FOR A POLITICAL SOLUTION

Many are calling for a political solution for the war in Iraq. It has
become painfully obvious that a military solution is not aviable option.

Perhaps now people can recognize too that a military/paramilitary-like
approach is not a viable solution to the U.S. policy known as the War
on Drugs.

After 37 years of the enforcement ap-proach as national drug policy,
we still have chiefs of police announcing new efforts to "target drug
trafficking. The police force in Gainesville, Fla., where I served for
more than 20 years including three tours as a narcotics officer and
later, deputy chief of police, recently announced such a crack down. I
use this example because it dem-onstrates the efforts of a chief to
address the concerns of the citizens he serves.

Certainly no offense is meant to the Gainesville police chief, but
targeting drug trafficking is neither new, nor effective. The results
are, at best, a temporary disruption of illegal drug activities, and
job opportuni-ties for those eager to replace the recently arrested
dealers.

My intent is not to fault the Gainesville Police Department, but ask:
What can they do? The simple, accurate answer is nothing effective.
Law enforcement has been tasked with a mission that it simply can't
accomplish. To eliminate drug traf-fic, the demand for drugs must be
elimi-nated. Humans are pleasure seekers and find their pleasure in a
variety of ways.

Tobacco and alcohol are two popular drugs that people use; they differ
from illegal drugs because they are legal, albeit addictive and
dangerous when overused.

Politics have driven the war on drugs to its current level.
Politicians found that being "tough on crime," especially drugs, was a
sure-fire vote-getter. Fueled by the corrections industry lobby,
minimum mandatory sentencing also became a position that politicians
felt they had to adopt or be viewed by constituents as weak on crime.
The fact is that after nearly a trillion dollars, untold millions of
personnel hours in the criminal jus-tice system, paramilitary
operations in foreign countries, and hundreds of thou-sands of
citizens incarcerated, drugs are cheaper, more potent, and easier to
get than ever.

Drugs should be legalized, regulated, controlled and distributed in a
manner similar to the alcohol and tobacco models, using some of the
successful European systems. The results will be: reductions in deaths
and disease from drug use; reduced crimes associated with drugs; and
the black market that controls the import, distribu-tion and sale of
drugs will be eliminated, among other benefits.

Wasting tax dollars doing the same thing over again with no success is
no solution.

We want a rational approach that treatsdrug use as the health care
issue it is. We want a system that generates tax dollars rather than
wastes them. Above all, we want our children's access to drugs to be
as regulated as their access to alcohol and tobacco. Now, criminals
determine access.

By fighting a war on drugs the govern-ment has increased the problems
and made them worse. A system of regulation rather than prohibition is
far less harmful, more ethical, and a more effective public policy.

I am a proud member of Law Enforce-ment Against Prohibition (LEAP), a
non-profit educational group whose members include current and former
law enforce-ment officers, state and federal judges, prosecutors,
corrections officials and oth-ers. We educate the public, the media,
and policy makers, to the failure of current policy by presenting a
true picture of the history, causes and effects of drug abuse and the
crimes related to prohibition.

A charity golf tournament will be held tomorrow (Sept. 28) at the Taos
Country Club to benefit the educational work of LEAP. The two-person
scramble golf event begins at 11 a.m. Registration is $100 and
includes golf, lunch, prizes and a hole-in-one contest for a Polaris
ATV.

Visit www. leap.cc/. Join. Be active.