Pubdate: Sat, 23 Oct 2010
Source: Times Record (Brunswick, ME)
Contact:  2010 Times Record Inc.
Website: http://www.timesrecord.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/705
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10/n820/a03.html
Author: Steve Wellcome

THE 'WAR ON DRUGS' IS A FAILURE

I believe James Friedlander's proposal to legalize, regulate and 
control drugs is the correct course of action ("A modest proposal: 
Should we legalize drugs?" commentary, Oct. 8). Drug prohibition 
doesn't work any better than alcohol prohibition did. After 40 years 
and a trillion-dollars worth of Nixon's "war on drugs," drugs are 
cheaper, more potent and more available than ever.

We also get the added bonus of ever-increasing prohibition-related 
violence as drug dealers fight over the market. Drug dealers don't 
kill each other, and innocent bystanders, because they are high any 
more than Al Capone killed rival bootleggers because he was drunk. 
It's the money.

Prohibition facilitates drug sales to kids. Under prohibition, 
criminals decide what gets sold, where and to whom. A drug dealer 
doesn't check age limits. All he wants to see is the money. 
Prohibition provides no impediment to drug purchases by kids. That's 
why teens regularly report that marijuana is easier to get than alcohol.

A growing number of law enforcement personnel, having witnessed 
firsthand the ineffectiveness and the social destruction caused by 
prohibition, are calling for an end to drug prohibition and for legal 
regulated sale of drugs. The organization Law Enforcement Against 
Prohibition (www.leap.cc), composed of several thousand current and 
former law enforcement professionals, may be the leader of this 
growing voice. Look at its website, watch their videos and read their 
articles before you dismiss the idea of ending drug prohibition and 
establishing legalized regulated sale.

Decide whom you want selling drugs in Maine. If you want criminals to 
continue selling drugs of unknown purity to anybody with money 
wherever and whenever they choose, stay with drug prohibition. If you 
want licensing and zoning boards to decide where drugs can be sold, 
the hours they can be sold and to whom, we need to move to legal 
regulated sale.

It's going to be one or the other.

The desirable third option, no drugs, isn't reality. The best we can 
do is to adopt a policy that ensures they do minimum damage -- and 
prohibition isn't it.

Steve Wellcome

Steve Wellcome lives in Brunswick. 
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