I heard an interview with someone from this group on NPR the other day.
It¹s current and ex law enforecment officers and other offcials (eg,
judges, lawyers, etc) who have taken the logical position: the Œdrug
war¹ has been a total failure:
From: Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP):
Current and former members of law enforcement who support drug
regulation rather than prohibition.
About LEAP
After nearly four decades of fueling the U.S. policy of a war on drugs
with over half-a-trillion tax dollars and increasingly punitive
policies, our confined population has quadrupled over a 20 years period
making building prisons this nation's fastest growing industry. More
than 2.2 million of our citizens are currently incarcerated and every
year we arrest an additional 1.6 million for nonviolent drug
offensesÐmore per capita than any country in the world. The United
States has 4.6 percent of the population of the world but 22.5 percent
of the world's prisoners. Every year we choose to continue this war will
cost U.S. taxpayers another 69 billion dollars. Despite all the lives we
have destroyed and all the money so ill spent, today illicit drugs are
cheaper, more potent, and far easier to get than they were 35 years ago
at the beginning of the war on drugs. Meanwhile, people continue dying
in our streets while drug barons and terrorists continue to grow richer
than ever before. We would suggest that this scenario must be the very
definition of a failed public policy. This madness must cease!
The stated U.S. drug policy goals of lessening the incidents of crime,
drug addiction, and juvenile drug use, while stemming the flow of
illegal drugs into this country, have not been achieved. This failed
policy of fighting a war on drugs has only magnified our problems but
the U.S. still insists on continuing the war and pressuring other
governments to perpetuate these same unworkable policies.
With this in mind, current and former members of law enforcement have
created a drug-policy-reform group called LEAP. The membership of LEAP
believe that to save lives and lower the rates of disease, crime and
addiction, as well as to conserve tax dollars, we must end drug
prohibition. LEAP believes a system of regulation and control is far
more effective than one of prohibition.
The mission of LEAP is to reduce the multitude of harms resulting from
fighting the war on drugs and to lessen the incidence of death, disease,
crime, and addiction by ultimately ending drug prohibition.
Cont: http://www.leap.cc/about/index.htm
--
Will Brink @ http://www.brinkzone.com/