DRUG BUSTS

FORMER POLICE CHIEF: LEGALIZE DRUGS

NORM STAMPER, ALTERNET - Illegal drugs are expensive precisely because
they are illegal. The products themselves are worthless weeds --
cannabis (marijuana), poppies (heroin), coca (cocaine) -- or dirt-cheap
pharmaceuticals and "precursors" used, for example, in the manufacture
of methamphetamine. Yet today, marijuana is worth as much as gold,
heroin more than uranium, cocaine somewhere in between. It is the U.S.'s
prohibition of these drugs that has spawned an ever-expanding
international industry of torture, murder and corruption. . . The remedy
is as obvious as it is urgent: legalization.

Regulated legalization of all drugs -- with stiffened penalties for
driving impaired or furnishing to kids -- would bring an immediate halt
to the violence. How? By (1) dramatically reducing the cost of these
drugs, (2) shifting massive enforcement resources to prevention and
treatment and (3) driving drug dealers out of business: no product, no
profit, no incentive. In an ideal world, Mexico and the United States
would move to repeal prohibition simultaneously (along with Canada). But
even if we moved unilaterally, sweeping and lasting improvements to
public safety (and public health) would be felt on both sides of the
border. (Tragically and predictably, just as Mexico's parliament was
about to reform its U.S.-modeled drug laws, the Bush administration
stepped in, pressuring President Vicente Fox to abandon the enlightened
position he'd championed for two years.)

[Norm Stamper is former chief of the Seattle Police Department and an
advisory board member of NORML and Law Enforcement Against Prohibition]

http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/39565/