This is refreshing. In an editorial in today's
Seattle Times former Seattle police chief comes out in favor not just of decriminalization, but of legalization, and not just of marijuana, but all drugs, "including heroin, cocaine, meth, psychotropics, mushrooms and LSD."
He explains why.
"As a cop, I bore witness to the multiple lunacies of the "war on drugs." Lasting far longer than any other of our national conflicts, the drug war has been prosecuted with equal vigor by Republican and Democratic administrations, with one president after another -- Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush -- delivering sanctimonious sermons, squandering vast sums of taxpayer money and cheerleading law enforcers from the safety of the sidelines.
It's not a stretch to conclude that our Draconian approach to drug use is the most injurious domestic policy since slavery. Want to cut back on prison overcrowding and save a bundle on the construction of new facilities? Open the doors, let the nonviolent drug offenders go. The huge increases in federal and state prison populations during the 1980s and '90s (from 139 per 100,000 residents in 1980 to 482 per 100,000 in 2003) were mainly for drug convictions. In 1980, 580,900 Americans were arrested on drug charges. By 2003, that figure had ballooned to 1,678,200. We're making more arrests for drug offenses than for murder, manslaughter, forcible rape and aggravated assault combined. Feel safer?
I've witnessed the devastating effects of open-air drug markets in residential neighborhoods: children recruited as runners, mules and lookouts; drug dealers and innocent citizens shot dead in firefights between rival traffickers bent on protecting or expanding their markets; dedicated narcotics officers tortured and killed in the line of duty; prisons filled with nonviolent drug offenders; and drug-related foreign policies that foster political instability, wreak health and environmental disasters, and make life even tougher for indigenous subsistence farmers in places such as Latin America and Afghanistan. All because we like our drugs -- and can't have them without breaking the law.
As an illicit commodity, drugs cost and generate extravagant sums of (laundered, untaxed) money, a powerful magnet for character-challenged police officers.
Although small in numbers of offenders, there isn't a major police force -- the Los Angeles Police Department included -- that has escaped the problem: cops, sworn to uphold the law, seizing and converting drugs to their own use, planting dope on suspects, robbing and extorting pushers, taking up dealing themselves, intimidating or murdering witnesses."
Boldly, he characterizes legalization not just in practical terms, but in humanistic terms. "In declaring a war on drugs, we've declared war on our fellow citizens. War requires "hostiles" -- enemies we can demonize, fear and loathe. This unfortunate categorization of millions of our citizens justifies treating them as dope fiends, less than human."
Stamper goes on to explain how regulation might work in the context of legalization, suggesting a national regulatory agency, a ban on advertising, taxes on the substances (to pay for education, treatment, and regulation), and predicts a modest rise in casual drug use, coupled with a small rise in addiction (this is certainly in line with what happened after prohibition was repealed, and the initial celebratory drunkeness over).
Sadly, few politicians today of either party have the courage to venture beyond the safe pastures of medical marijuana (and most of them Republicans), admit that the so-called war on drug was initiated during the Wilson years for largely racist and narrowly political (rather than public safety reasons), admit that it has had devastating effects (in particular) on poor communities of color in America and poor communities in Latin America and Asia, and admit that it has had poisonous consequences for civil liberties and the growth of the prison and deportation industrial complex, costing taxpayers many billions every year.
As it stands, Independents are ahead of Democrats and Republicans alike in supporting decriminalization and legalization. I hope to live to see the day when we can at least have an honest and rational national conversation about this subject. Until then, kudos to Chief Stamper and all those in law enforcement and politics who share his moral courage.