DRUG BUST

Praisin' Kane

Regarding federal judge John Kane (Stuart Steers's "Disorder in the Court,"
November 22), I have three words for this man:

God bless him.

It amazes me that so few in his position see what is painfully obvious: The
"War on Drugs" is a colossal waste of money and manpower; hypocritical (as
long as booze is legal), unconstitutional (see "pursuit of happiness"), and
used by law enforcement as a license to steal (oh -- sorry -- the word the
cops use is "seize") and freely vent their hostilities on what are
essentially the modern-day witches, with a zeal not seen since the dawn of
the civil-rights movement.

Kudos to Judge Kane for having the balls to speak out against the
perpetuation of this mass injustice. More power to him.

Melinda Brindley

Denver

The Needle And The Damage Done

As one of the growing minority of law- enforcement professionals who see
the present system as clearly not working, I can adamantly state that Judge
Kane is basically right on target. In fact, the USA is straddling the
middle between the two poles of effective drug control and interdiction. If
you examine the policies of Western European nations (such as England,
Holland, Switzerland and Sweden) that deal with drug abuse as a medical-
sciences criteria, the problem is more controllable. The massive pyramid
scheme of users and addicts bringing in more users and addicts by their
self-sustaining sales is economically halted. Treatment is the primary
criteria, and criminal prosecution is the last possible resort.

In Asia, treatment is also available and intensive. Heroin addicts using
five to six times the potency of American addicts are weaned with
acupuncture and intensive "re-orientation." The most prominent key to their
version of the War on Drugs, however, is severe and brutal retribution to
the traffickers. Executions or long sentences to horrible prisons (by
American standards) are common and mandatory. When you get off the plane in
these countries, they will start off with pictographs of your execution if
they catch you bringing drugs into their countries.

Both of these formats work more effectively than the USA's vacillating
nonsense, but as the USA is not prepared to emulate Malaysia or Singapore
with massive executions, the European methods may be more applicable.

Judge Kane is also clearly correct in his assessment of the prejudicial
nature of the "war." African-Americans account for 13 percent of the
population, 12 percent of all cocaine usage and in excess of 80 percent of
all arrests, prosecutions and incarcerations. The upper-middle-class white
kid from southeast Denver caught with a couple of grams of cocaine will get
deferred prosecution or judgment and "treatment programming"; the black kid
from northeast Denver caught with a couple of rocks will likely get Canon
City. The key is the undercover narcs who deal with it all: It's just so
much easier to catch the black kids involved than the white kids.

But what Judge Kane may be missing, or at least not describing in this
interview, is the massive economic stake in the perpetuation of the "war."
This is not just the fabulous fortunes available in any kind of prohibition
and illegalization to any "entrepreneur"; it is also the massive
perpetuation of new businesses and power bases that are created in the
process. These include everything from the contracts of urine-testing labs
to mandatory drug treatment programs for unwilling and unready users; from
SWAT and police paraphernalia manufacturers to prison and jail architects
and construction companies. The job security of lawyers, law-enforcement
agents (myself included), criminal-justice professionals, government
bureaucrats and politicians all attests to the real addiction to drugs in
terms of the response we call the War on Drugs.

Max Winkler

Englewood

The Evil That Men Do

Thank you, thank you for your article on Judge John Kane. He is a gentleman
who knows what he is talking about. Drug prohibition makes no
constitutional sense at all. Almost all of the ills that our countrymen
blame on drugs are caused not by the drugs themselves, but by our stupid
drug laws. Drugs are chemicals; many are prevalent in nature and are
neutral. They are not evil, nor are they the source of evil. Only man can
be evil.

Evil is a judgment call made by the superstitious and the abysmally
ignorant. Marijuana is not a drug to fear, nor is heroin. Heroin is the
treatment of choice to maintain those addicted to it, and marijuana is 100
percent harmless.

The idea that the government should or will ever control the flow of drugs
in our society by prohibition is nonsense. Prohibition is a fascist concept
and has no place in our democracy. We, the people, will always have our
drugs, and nothing will change that.

I am as old as Judge Kane's father, and I can still remember what the sweet
air of freedom was like before 1937. Judge Kane, the "people" are with you!

Joseph E. Hopwood

Quantico, MD

The Fix Is In

I applaud Judge John Kane for his honesty concerning this dark chapter in
American history and our ill-fated experiment with drug prohibition.
Unfortunately, all Americans suffer the consequences for the mistakes of a
very few, and the War on Drugs is probably the clearest example of this
type of policy. There's little question that American drug laws are not so
much an attempt to control illegal drugs as they are a way to support two
thriving industries, forever: The anti-drug bureaucracy and the illegal
drug manufacturers and importers reap hundreds of billions of dollars of
profit from their symbiotic relationship.

On one side, the moral entrepreneurs preach abstinence and promote laws
that wreck the lives of countless Americans while using the courts and
these same dictates to destroy every vestige of our legacy as a free and
free-thinking people. They want to know what goes on in your home, where
and how you spend your money, and what you do with your body and your time.
In the form of drug testing, they now attempt to see inside your body, for
God's sake. What could be more un- American?

I have little doubt that were America's founders alive today, they would
cringe at what we've let their wonderful idea become. King George would
blush at the tactics we allow our government employees to use in pursuit of
those who consume illegal drugs.

On the other side of the drug war are those who provide illegal drugs, an
industry of massive proportions that attempts to satisfy the world's lust
for the products it produces. The United Nations estimates that in 1997,
worldwide trade in illicit drugs amounted to $400 billion per year, or 8
percent of the global economy. Law enforcement acknowledges that it only
intercepts a minute fraction of illegal drugs that are sold around the
globe, but we continue the fight undeterred, as though somehow, through
some miracle, these insane policies someday just may succeed, even though
we're no closer to a solution after throwing over a trillion dollars at
this disaster.

Although there are other ways of controlling these substances, Americans
are rarely allowed to hear the ideas true drug-policy professionals
propose. Instead, we must let generals, bureaucrats, political appointees
and legislators -- who, more often than not, know very little concerning
the substances they attempt to control -- direct the War on Drugs. If
that's not enough, the vast majority of "educators" we pay to teach our
people about these drugs probably know less than that. That basically
defines U.S. drug policy: the blind leading the blind.

Fresh ideas have no place within our current system. Why? Money, and lots
of it, on both sides of the issue -- for those who fight drugs and those
who supply these illegal substances, with the taxpayer's wallet caught dead
in the middle.

Denise Plylar

Kremmling