RETIRED COP LOBBIES FOR LEGALIZING DRUGS

MANCHESTER -- Of the many drug arrests he's made in more than 20 years
as a police captain, none appeared to have made a difference, says
Peter Christ.

"Nothing," said Christ. "It was like I wasn't even there."

That is Christ's front-line analysis of how America's war on drugs is
not working. Now retired from the Tonawanda Police Department, near
Buffalo, N.Y., he spends his time touring and speaking about
legalization. An end to "prohibition" is how he describes it.

He spoke twice in the county on Tuesday. An early morning meeting with
the Bennington Catamount Rotary Club was attended by more than 40
people, he said. An afternoon meeting with the Manchester and the
Mountains Kiwanis Club was smaller - eight people attended - but
Christ's message was the same. The nation's drug policy, he said, is
making matters worse, not better.

"We come together on the concept that prohibition doesn't work," he
said about Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a nonprofit group that
he helped found.

People within the organization have differing views on how to best
enact legalization, Christ acknowledged. But the need for regulation
is clear, he said.

"I know who sets the purity for heroin in America and it isn't the
Food and Drug Administration," he said. "I know who decides where the
profits are sent, some of which, I am sure, goes to terrorist
organizations."

Other government regulation of vice has made the best of a bad
situation, he told the Manchester group, citing control of alcohol and
the lottery.

"I am not pro-drug," he said. "I am extremely anti-drug and that's why
I want to take control of it. I am trying to change fundamental policy
in America and that's a difficult thing to do. You have to educate,
educate, educate."

And Christ has set out to educate the public en masse. He said he has
done roughly 1,000 speeches on the topic, mostly at Rotary, Lions and
Kiwanis clubs, but also at high schools - where he only talks to
seniors - colleges and conferences.

He founded LEAP two and a half years ago with the help of a $50,000
grant from the Marijuana Policy Project. That group later kicked in
another $60,000. LEAP is now looking for a major financial backer.
Executive Director Jack Cole is talking to some celebrities and known
philanthropists who may be interested, Christ said. Cole is a former
undercover narcotics agent.

"You gotta have a gimmick," Christ said after speaking in Manchester.
"Our gimmick is cops talking about legalizing drugs."

It is a gimmick that Christ brings from his youth. He was inspired by
the action of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, a group of frontliners
taking an unlikely stance.

"I felt that voice, that type of voice, was needed in the drug policy
debate in this country," he said.

Audience response has been generally good, he said, noting that at the
very least he stimulates conversation.

"My attitude is that I appear at each club twice," he said. Once, that
is, when he actually shows up. The second time, he said, is at the
next meeting, when members recap his appearance.

Christ hopes to eventually expand LEAP into a lobbying organization.
Until then, he will continue to tour, running a routine off the top of
his head and trying to change drug policy, one voter at a time. It is
part of his "five-minute rule."

"If I talk to another person for five minutes," he said, "I talk to
them about the drug prohibition problem."