EX-COP: TO WIN THE WAR ON DRUGS, LEGALIZE THEM

TAUNTON - Jack A. Cole began fighting what he now considers a failed
war in the mid-1960s. Unlike Vietnam, the war on drugs is still going
on.

"It has been an abject failure," Cole said of the war he helped wage
for 12 years as a narcotics detective.

He says those 12 years were worse than futile.

"I did worse than waste my time, I destroyed lives," Cole
said.

Cole, a retired New Jersey State Police Detective, is now leading an
effort to end the prohibition of drugs and find alternate solutions
the nation's drug problem.

Cole is executive director of LEAP, an acronym for Law Enforcement
Against Prohibition, an organization of 300-plus members that includes
U.S. District Court judges, current and former police officers and
former Drug Enforcement Agents.

He addressed his talk on the war on drugs to Rotarians at the Stone
Forge Tavern yesterday.

"It's not that I'm for drugs -- quite the opposite," Cole
said.

The financial and social cost of fighting the drug trade increases
every year while the amount it costs to get high decreases. The drug
trade is a $400 billion industry, comparable to the textile industry
in its halcyon days, he said.

Those statistics alone show a failed battle, he said.

The solution to the drug problem is to stop making drug dealing
profitable, Cole said.

Another trick is to strip them of their romance. Cole said in Holland
marijuana use is lower than in the United States in part because it is
nearly legal.

"They have made pot boring," Cole said.

Paradoxically, in the United States teenagers in surveys say it is
easier to get illegal drugs than cigarettes or alcohol.

He said drug potency has increased dramatically in the last 30 years,
making it cheaper for users to get high, despite $1.6 million arrests
per year and $69 billion in associated law enforcement and prison costs.

Cole said he personally believes drugs should be legal, government
produced and regulated. He said he believe drugs should be free to
addicts and any government profits should be channeled into education
programs.

If the government regulated drugs, overdoses would be virtually
eliminated, he said, because overdoses occur when dealers purposely or
inadvertently vary the purity of their product.

To prove drug education programs work, Cole cited efforts against
tobacco, which nearly cut in half the percentage of Americans who
smoke in 30 years.

Finally, there is the moral component of the drug argument.

"Why is it my place to tell somebody they can't use a drug because I
don't use a drug," Cole said.

What is unethical, he said, is to allow murderers and terrorists to
run the drug trade as they do now.