“End Prohibition Now!”

 

a 30 minute talk

Jack A. Cole^[*]

Note: Click on the [SLIDEnn] links to display the presentation slides related to this talk

[SLIDE1] I represent LEAP (law enforcement against prohibition) an international nonprofit educational organization that was created to give voice to all the current and former members of law enforcement who believe the war on drugs is a failed policy and who wish to support alternative policies that will lower the incidence of death, disease, crime and addiction.

The first thing I need to tell you good people is that the US policy of a “war on drugs” has been, is, and forever will be, a total and abject failure. This is not a war on drugs, this is a war on people—our own people—our children, our parents, ourselves.

After three decades of fueling the war with over half a trillion tax dollars and increasingly punitive policies, illicit drugs are easier to get, cheaper, and more potent than they were 30 years ago when I first started buying heroin. While our court system is choked with ever-increasing drug prosecutions our quadrupled prison population has made building prisons this nation's fastest growing industry, with 2.2 million incarcerated and another 1.6 million arrested every year—more per capita than any country in the world. Meanwhile drug barons continue to grow richer than ever before and our citizens continue dying on our streets.

[SLIDE2] I joined the New Jersey State Police in 1964 and six years later joined their narcotic bureau. I started working in narcotics with the beginning of the “war on drugs,” a term first coined by Richard Millhouse Nixon when he was running for president in 1968 on a platform of getting tough on crime. After elected to office he got Congress to pass a bill giving federal funding to any police department willing to fight his war on drugs. Overnight the NJSP, like police departments across the nation, went from a seven-man narcotic unit to a seventy-six-person narcotic bureau. All paid for by our federal tax dollars.

In 1970 we really didn’t have much of a problem with drugs. In order to make things look worse than they were so our bosses could keep the federal cash‑cow in our barnyard: we lied about most of our statistics; upgraded arrested drug-users to drug-dealers; and inflated the weights, as well as the street values of the seized drugs, when we released information to the media. Three years into the war, we finally started arresting some mid-level dealers, such as, the members of “The Breed” Motorcycle Gang who were selling methamphetamine out of the Philadelphia area.

In 1977, seven years into the drug war, I kicked a door down in the Corona section of Queens, New York and seized around 350 thousand dollars and what was touted by the newspapers as “the largest shipment of Mexican brown heroin ever seized,” up to that point in time—nineteen pounds (more about this later). By 1979, the “drug problem” had expanded to the point that I was working on International Billion-Dollar cocaine and heroin rings.

During my first three years of working undercover, my perception of what the drug war was about changed because of what I saw and experienced while working the street. I learned firsthand of the family destroying consequences of sending drug users (often mothers and fathers) to jail. I can’t think of a better policy for creating the next generation of drug addicts than to remove parents from children. I also realized that when police arrested a robber or rapist they made the community safer for everyone but when I arrested a drug pusher, I simply created a job opening for someone in a long line of people willing to take his place. I finally came to understand that the small amount of good I might have been accomplishing for the government could never outweigh the harm I was causing countless people.

[SLIDE3] When I started buying heroin in 1970 we bought “tre-bags” so called because they cost three dollars per bag. An addicted person needed two of those bags to get high because at that time the purity of the product was only about 1.5 percent. However, after ten years of “drug war,” the purity had more than doubled and the cost to get high had dipped to $3.90. After thirty years of “drug war” the price to “get off” on heroin had plummeted to 80 cents because the quality of heroin had increased by 20 times its original level—now registering over 38 percent pure in street buys.^[1] And we wonder why so many people are overdosing on drugs today? Addicts don’t consume more and more drugs until their bodies can no longer take the poison, they overdose because they get what is, in the trade, called a “Hot-Shot.” One day the drug dealer, for whatever reason, doesn’t correctly mix the nearly pure heroin he bought with the powder he is using to dilute the drug before reselling it. On that day some of his clients are going to be really mad because they get the part that contains much more cut and they think the dealer tried to beat them out of their money, but another group of his clients will get the part of the mix that contains mostly pure heroin—when they cook up the powder they think is 10 percent pure and it is really 60 or 70 percent pure they aren’t angry they are dead. That is why we are hearing of more and more cases where 5, 10, even 20 people overdose in the same town on the same day.

[SLIDE4] The worse the problem gets the more police and money we throw into the mix. The Federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), created in 1973, had tripled its staff by 2001 but its budget had increased by 20 times, from $75 million the first year to $1.55 Billion in 2001. [SLIDE5] “Lock them up,” screamed the drug-warriors and lock them up we did—tripling our yearly arrest figures over the last twenty years—with fully half of those arrests for marijuana violations.

And what have we accomplished with all our hard work and monetary investment. Remember that I mentioned the newspapers reported for a week our seizing the largest shipment of brown heroin ever taken in the United States, up to that point in 1977. It occurred in the Corona section of Queens, New York. Nineteen pounds of heroin and we were in the newspapers for a week. [SLIDE6] On the screen you see a photograph I cut out of the New York Times Newspaper in 1994. There was no accompanying article, just the picture. The caption relates, “police and federal authorities recovered 4,800 pounds of cocaine, with an estimated street value of $350 million…in the Corona section of Queens.” Nearly two and a half tons of cocaine and it didn’t even rate an article. Why not? Because by 1994 police were regularly seizing tons of not just cocaine but heroin. [SLIDE7] So much so, that the New York Times took to just summarizing the multi-ton shipments in single articles. Like this one from July 15, 1994: “Three tons of cocaine hidden in cargo at the Port of Newark; Five tons of Cocaine in Houston; Three tons in San Francisco; Five more tons in El Paso—and all in a two month period.^[2]

[SLIDE8] And how has the war on drugs aided our school children? Drug Czar John Walters would have you believe we are winning this war. He points to a 2002 study, “Monitoring the Future,”^[3] and says, “This survey confirms that our drug-prevention efforts are working….”^[4] The truth is that study shows that [SLIDE9] between 1991 and 2002 marijuana use among students in all school grades increased—[SLIDE10] 30 percent increase for twelfth graders; [SLIDE11] 65 percent increase for tenth graders; and [SLIDE12] 88—did he say, “88” percent increase for eighth graders. How can this study show our drug prevention efforts are working?

[SLIDE13] According to another 2002 national government study, school children report it is easier to buy illegal drugs than it is to buy beer and cigarettes.^[5] How can that be? The answer is really not very complicated; no drug dealer is going to worry about checking your child’s birth certificate to see if he or she is old enough to buy drugs. When I first worked undercover I was hanging out with about 20 kids in front of a bowling alley at a strip-mall. These kids, none of whom were 21 years old could, and did, sell me any kind of illegal drugs you can name but they used to come up to me and say, “Hey, Jack, we’re thirsty—will you go into the liquor store and buy us some beer? They could get all the illegal drugs they wanted but couldn’t buy beer.

[SLIDE14] So, how much money are we talking about here? Enough money to bribe a cop, to bribe a judge, to bribe a politician, to bribe a banker—ladies and gentlemen we are talking about enough money to buy whole countries—over 400 billion dollars each year is spent on drugs—eight percent of the world’s gross product, about the same size as the international textile industry.^[6]

So what do we do to stop the death, disease, crime and addiction wrought by drug use? The current policies are obviously failing because as I said at the start of this talk, drugs are cheaper, more potent and easier to get now than they were thirty years ago, when I started buying heroin on the street.

Is there anything that can be done to stop this scourge on our nation and the world? I think so. I believe we can change the direction of these horrible circumstances and began to rollback the incidence of death, disease, crime, and addiction. The first thing we must do is admit that most of the death, disease, crime, and addiction, is not caused by drug use but by drug prohibition. [SLIDE15] Then we can stop the horrors associated with the prohibition of drugs by removing the profit motive from the drug culture.

How do we do that—simple—[SLIDE16] we end drug prohibition! We legalize drugs! [SLIDE17] “Ah…but won’t legalization cause everyone to use drugs?” I hear you saying. The answer is NO! If we just look around the world, we have many fine examples of policies we could try that show us drug use will not increase. In Holland were drugs are virtually legal because the police look the other way unless the user is causing some other kind of trouble; where you can go in a coffee shop if you are an adult and order from a menu that offers a choice of six brands of marijuana and six brands of hashish—you can purchase five grams and smoke it there or put in a doggy-bag and carry it out. There a survey of tenth graders shows that 28 percent have tried marijuana. In the United States, we will not only arrest and try to incarcerate your children for using marijuana but we will take away their driver’s licenses hampering their ability to get to school and causing them to loose their jobs. If they live in government subsidized housing, we will throw their whole family out of their home. And when the child finally gets free from the lockup or probation or parole and wants to go back to school to better him or herself we tell them they can never in their lifetime get a federal educational grant or loan. In this country 41 percent of tenth graders have used marijuana.^[7] Again, I hear you saying, “How can that be? Twenty-eight percent where marijuana is virtually legal and 41 percent where marijuana is treated like the devil’s own weed. Well, when asked about it, a chief constable in Amsterdam said, “We have just managed to make pot boring.”

[SLIDE18] So what are the outcomes of drug legalization?

• 1.6 million people would not have to be arrested each year;
• 69 Billion dollars would not have to be spent each year on interdicting drugs, arresting, prosecuting, and warehousing violators;
• [SLIDE19]  and we could alleviate some of the more egregious forms of institutionalized racism within our legal system.

[SLIDE20] According to the 1998 Federal Household Survey:

• Whites constitute 72% of all drug users in the U.S.
• Blacks constitute 15% of all drug users in the U.S.
• But 37% of those arrested for drug violations are Black.
• Over 42% of those in federal prisons for drug violations are black.
• African-Americans comprise almost 60% of those in state prisons for drug felonies.^[8]

[SLIDE21] According to U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics

• Punishment is 100 times worse for Crack than for powder cocaine.
• Of convicted defendants, 33% of whites received a prison sentence and 51% of African-Americans received prison sentences.
• In New York State prisons Nine in 10 of those serving mandatory sentences for drug offenses are black or Latino
• A Black male baby born today has a one in four chance of serving time in prison
• Disenfranchisement: Over 10% of the total voting population of black men in the U.S. have lost their right to vote due to felony convictions. In Texas the rate is 31%.^[9]

[SLIDE22] Step 2 would be to have the government produce the drugs and control them for [SLIDE23] quality, consistence, and potency. This would virtually end overdoses.

[SLIDE24] Step 3, the one that actually removes the profit motive, distribute free maintenance doses of drugs to any adult requesting them.

This sounds radical but it isn’t. We are currently giving free drugs to addicted people enrolled in the methadone programs. Can giving free drugs to drug addicted people help end those addictions? The answer again, is yes! [SLIDE25] In both Switzerland and Holland where heroin addicted people are treated by giving them heroin, the authorities have made wonderful progress in doing just that. [SLIDE26] Among those treated: fulltime employment more than doubled; unemployment was cut in half; crime was slashed by 60 percent; cocaine use among addicts plummeted from 35  to 5 percent; unstable housing situations dropped by nearly two-thirds; homelessness fell from 12 percent to zero; and drug-caused deaths dropped 34 percent between the years of 2001 and 2002.^[10]

 [SLIDE27] What are the outcomes of free governmental distribution?

1. No profit motive for drug distribution
2. No individuals selling drugs
3. No crimes committed to obtain drugs
4. No criminal association for drug users
5. No diseases passed by sharing needles
6. Users able to stabilize their addictions and ask for help
7. [SLIDE28] No shootings of dealers by other dealers
8. No kids caught in crossfires
9. No police killed fighting drug war
10. No one killed by police in the drug war
11. No advertisement to further drug use
12. Nobody soliciting one more drug user

 

[SLIDE29] The fourth step is to take that 69 billion dollars we save each year and redirect it to programs that offer hope for the future. Over the 35 years I have worked in this field I have found that addicted people tend to have one thing in common—they have nearly no hope for the future. Give them hope and the vast majority will leave their addictions behind them.

[SLIDE30] Hope comes in the guise of available rehabilitation centers that offer a way out of the addictions. Two-thirds of those asking for help can’t find it because we are spending so much money locking them up we don’t have any left to help them end their addictions.

[SLIDE31] Hope can also rise on the wings of guaranteed minimums. Minimums for: Housing; Health Care; Education; Job Training; Employment; Livable Wages. [SLIDE32] Give drug users hope and they have less need to use drugs—less need to use drugs—less drug addicts.

[SLIDE33] The last half of step four is to redirect another part of those saved billions to programs that offer true education about drugs. I’m not talking about the failed policy of teaching D.A.R.E.^[11] but real programs that tell the truth about drugs. Does drug education work? You bet it does! Again, we have a perfect example of a policy that did work: [SLIDE34] In 1965, 41.9 percent of the US population smoked tobacco—after a drug education policy in the early 1990s aimed at lowering tobacco use—by 1998 only 24 percent of the US population smoked tobacco [SLIDE35] (a drug that kills five million each year throughout the world and over 450,000 in the US).

Perhaps we should listen to some of our great thinkers expound on US drug policy. [SLIDE36] Albert Einstein had this to say about prohibition:

The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the Prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this.”^[12]                               Albert Einstein, 1921

That was in 1921 and Einstein was talking about alcohol prohibition. There is little difference between alcohol prohibition and drug prohibition but what difference existed was better under alcohol prohibition. For instance with alcohol prohibition we didn’t arrest users, only sellers and distributors. The drive to arrest drug-users came with the Reagan Administration. So now we have a policy that says we have to arrest our children in order to save them.

I say, “When will we ever learn?—SAVE OUR CHILDREN—STAMP OUT PROHIBITION!”^[13]

SOURCES

Baum, Dan. Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1996.

Beck, Allen J., Ph.D. and Christopher J. Mumola. US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. Prisoners in 1998. (Washington DC: US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, August 1999).

Brown, Justice Henry Billings. "Majority opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson," Desegregation and the Supreme Court , ed. Benjamin Munn Ziegler (Boston: D.C. Heath and Company, 1958) 50-51.

Levin, David J., Patrick A. Langan and Jodi M. Brown. US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. State Court Sentencing of Convicted Felons, 1996. (Washington DC: US Department of Justice, February 2000).

Lusane, Clarence Pipe Dream Blues: Racism & the War on Drugs, Boston: South End Press, 1991

McCoy, Alfred W. The politics of heroin:  CIA complicity in the global drug trade, New York:  Lawrenceville books, 1991.

Miller, Richard Lawrence. Drug Warriors and Their Prey:  From Police Power to Police State. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1996.

National Household Survey on Drug Abuse: Summary Report 1998. (Rockville, MD: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 1999).

Prisoners and Jail Inmates at Midyear 1999. Bureau of Justice Statistics. (Washington DC: US Department of Justice, April 2000).

Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 1998 Bureau of Justice Statistics, (Washington DC: US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, August 1999)

Summary of Findings from the 1999 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse. (Rockville, MD: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, August 2000).

Trebach, Arnold S. "Can Prohibition Be Enforced in Washington?" The Truth Seeker, Sept/Oct 1989.