Dear Thomas,
My name is Jack Cole. I am the executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP). I am also a retired detective lieutenant—26 years with the New Jersey State Police and 14 in their Narcotic Bureau, mostly undercover. I bear witness to the abject failure of the U.S. war on drugs and to the horrors produced by its unintended consequences.
Thank you for joining LEAP.
I am attaching my bio and the essay from which I draw the talk I have given over 950 times around the world in the last six years. That paper was selected by The International Harm Reduction Association as one of the “50 documents worldwide, which provides the best information on the subject of policing and harm reduction.”
You might also find it interesting to view the 12-minute LEAP promo at http://www.leap.cc/cms/index.php?name=Content&pid=28, or the many LEAP videos at http://YouTube.com/CopsSayLegalizeDrugs, where police, judges, and prosecutors give powerful reasons why prohibition will never work.
After looking them over please feel free to contact me with questions or comments.
Again, thank you for becoming a member of LEAP. There are no dues, fees, or meetings to attend. We don’t release the names of our membership to anyone because we are joined by working DEA agents and working politicians. We don’t fill up your inbox with countless unwanted email messages. We do guarantee that when we get a large enough membership we will change drug policies around the world. In fact we have already started doing that.
LEAP Background
LEAP is an international nonprofit educational organization created to give voice to law-enforcers who believe the US war on drugs has failed and who wish to support alternative policies that will lower the incidence of death, disease, crime, and addiction, without destroying generations of our young by arrest and imprisonment.
As our name implies Law Enforcement Against Prohibition wants to end drug prohibition just as we ended alcohol prohibition in the United States in 1933. When we ended that nasty law we put Al Capone and his smuggling buddies out of business overnight and we can do the same to the drug lords and terrorist who today make over 500 billion dollars a year selling illegal drugs around the world.
Legalized regulation of drugs will end the violence and property crimes that are a result of prohibition of those drugs. That means drug dealers will no longer be shooting each other to protect their turf, no longer killing cops charged with fighting this useless war, no longer killing children caught in crossfire or drive-by shootings.
Legalization will also allow us to provide clean needles for injection drug users, which, in the US, will prevent half of all potential cases of AIDS and Hepatitis.
Regulation with standardized measurement of the drugs purity will virtually end unintended overdose deaths. People die because they don’t know how much of the tiny package of powder they purchase on the illegal market is really the drug and how much is the cutting agent. Too much drug and the user is dead.
We can then treat drug abuse as a health problem instead of a crime problem and save the lives of our children, which we are now sacrificing at the altar of this terrible war.
In six years LEAP increased from the five founding police officers to a membership of over 15,000, across the United States and in 76 other countries, which is fitting since U.S. drug policy has ramifications that affect the entire world. All 80 LEAP speakers are former drug-warriors; police, judges, prosecutors, parole, probation, and corrections officers, DEA and FBI agents.
How we do it
LEAP presents to civic, professional, educational, and religious organizations, as well as at public forums but we target civic groups; Chambers of Commerce, Rotaries, Lions and Kiwanis Clubs, etc. The people in these organizations are conservative folks who mostly agree with the drug-warriors that we must continue the war on drugs at any cost. They are also very solid members of their communities; people who belong to civic organizations because they want the best for their locales. Every one of them will be voting in every election. Many are policy-makers and if they are not, they are the people who can pull the coat tails of policy-makers and say, “We have someone you must hear talk about drug policy.” We believe the vast majority of these audience members agree with the goals of LEAP by the end of our presentation.
Even more amazing is that we are now attending national and international law-enforcement conventions where we keep track of all those we speak with at our educational exhibit booth; After we talk with them on a one-on-one basis, we find that only 6% want to continue the war on drugs, 14% are undecided, and an astounding 80% agree with LEAP that we must end drug prohibition. The most interesting thing about those who agreed with us is that before LEAP came along only a small number of that 80% realized anyone else in law enforcement felt the same. Officers are so frightened of being labeled “soft on drugs” that are afraid to tell each other their real feelings about the war on drugs.
This also holds true for policymakers. LEAP speakers staffed an educational booth at the last four National Conferences for State Legislators in Seattle, Nashville, Boston, New Orleans and Philadelphia. We spoke with 2,273 of the attendees on a one-on-one basis and 81% of them agreed that we should legalize drugs—only 6% wanted to continue the war and the other 13% were undecided.
This means, if we can show these legislators that they won’t lose one more vote than they will gain by backing drug policy reform, they will end drug prohibition. The way show them is to create a grassroots organization of a MILLION private citizens who agree ending prohibition is the correct policy. If you think we are on the right track, please join LEAP and help us in this struggle. We don’t release names of members to anyone.
LEAP has debated United States Attorneys, ranking DEA leaders, Drug Czars of the US and the United Nations, and others consider by the drug-warriors to be experts in drug policy. In the many cases where the moderator has asked for a vote on who won the debate, the worst a LEAP speaker has fared is 70 percent in our favor and 15 percent for the other side.
Things are already changing
LEAP presentations have created an atmosphere, legitimizing the discussion of legalized regulation of drugs, to where some politicians feel it is now safe to raise the issue.
In New York State the prosecutor for Albany County and the Executive for Erie County both said the failed war on drugs must be replaced.
On Good Friday in April 2006, Sister Karen Klimczak was murdered in Buffalo, New York by a self-confessed crack-addict who said he killed the nun to get her cell phone which he wanted to sell to buy more crack. The next morning reporters descended on Erie County Executive Joel A. Giambra demanding to know what he was going to do about the drug problem that was wreaking havoc on the county. Mr. Giambra took a deep breath and replied, “It’s time to start talking about legalizing drugs.” The amazed reporters immediately set out to demonize him; how could someone with views such as this have ever been elected to office? The following Monday Mr. Giambra called another press conference, where he was joined at the podium by Peter Christ, founding Board member and speaker for LEAP, who explained to the media why Mr. Giambra was correct in his assessment. Peter then appeared on many talk-radio and television shows in the Buffalo area supporting Giambra’s call for legalized regulation of drugs. Within two weeks the Buffalo News decided to allow Mr. Giambra to publish an Op Ed titled “DRUG LAWS DON'T WORK; IT'S TIME TO TRY LEGALIZING THEM.” The next day the paper published its own article, “GIAMBRA A PIONEER ON DRUGS?” suggesting in the lead paragraph, “Years from now, they may look at him in the same way we see Susan B. Anthony and other pioneers for women's rights.” This amazing media turnaround was a direct result of the credibility that LEAP brought to Mr. Giambra’s courageous statement.
In November 2006, the National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators passed a resolution condemning the failed war on drugs and calling for treatment rather than incarceration. That resolution was echoed by a similar resolution passed unanimously by the 225 Mayors attending the National Mayors Conference in June 2007. That month Newark, New Jersey’s Mayor Cory Booker said the war on drugs is destroying his city and he intends to stop it if it means taking the issue to the streets and going to jail, as was done by civil rights protestors. On October 4, 2007, San Francisco’s Mayor Gavin Newsom told television reporters, "If you want to get serious, if you want to reduce crime by 70% in this country overnight, end this war on drugs. You want to get serious, seriously serious about crime and violence end this war on drugs."
LEAP has a worldwide impact
In addition to the 4,000 presentations we have made in the United States, LEAP is also affecting policies in other countries.
LEAP started its international work in 2003 with a presentation at the European Parliament, in Brussels. Since then we have made hundreds of presentations in Albania, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Kyrgyzstan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, and the United Kingdom.
For each of the last three years LEAP presented in Cambridge, England to 900 law-enforcers and bankers from 90 countries, who participate in the International Symposium on Economic Crime. When they learned that legalized regulation of drugs would mean the 500 billion dollars spent on illegal drugs each year would no longer be laundered by investing in corporations, with which honest business people cannot possibly compete, the majority of attendees agreed that we should end drug prohibition.
In July 2008 LEAP was one of the 300 NGOs from around the world to participate in the event the UN conference Beyond 2008 in Vienna. The product of that conference was a declaration presented to the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs in March 2009, which suggested policy for world drug control over the next ten years. The suggestions included:
· Recognizing "the human rights abuses against people who use drugs"
· "Evidence-based" drug policy focused on "mitigation of short-term and long-term harms" and "full respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms"
· The U.N. to report on the collateral consequences of the current criminal justice-based approach to drugs and to provide an "analysis of the unintended consequences of the drug control system"
· Comprehensive "reviews of the application of criminal sanctions as a drug control measure"
· Recognizing harm reduction as a necessary and worthwhile response to drug abuse (harm reduction is a set of practical strategies that reduce negative consequences of drug use, incorporating a spectrum of strategies from safer use, to managed use, to abstinence; harm reduction strategies meet drug users "where they’re at," addressing conditions of use along with the use itself)
· A shift in primary emphasis from interdiction to treatment and prevention
· Alternatives to incarceration
· Provision of development aid to farmers before eradication of coca or opium crops
Recent Events in drug policy
On December 5, 2008, to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the end of alcohol prohibition, LEAP released a report by Harvard Economist Jeffrey Myron, which concluded by legalizing and regulating all drugs the United States treasury could realize an additional 76.8 Billion dollars each year. For the report see www.WeCanDoItAgain.com.
With the US economy tanking and prohibition’s causalities in Mexico now numbering nearly 18,000 since the beginning of 2007, many policymakers are willing to talk about legalizing drugs. In February 2009 the Latin American commission headed by former presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, Ernest Zedillo of Mexico and Cesar Gaviria of Colombia condemned harsh U.S. drug prohibition policies that are based, in Gaviria’s words, “on prejudices and fears and not on results.” They charge, the drug war is imperiling Latin America’s democratic institutions and corrupting “judicial systems, governments, the political system and especially the police forces.”
As a result of this pressure, in 2009 United States Senator Jim Webb submitted bill, S.714, the National Criminal Justice Commission Act, which will create a blue-ribbon nonpartisan commission to study the entire criminal justice system in the U.S. with emphasis on learning why we have to imprison so much more of our population than any other country in the world and why we are filling those prisons with nonviolent drug offenders. The bill has 24 cosponsors.
In May 2009 a study by Glenn Greenwald compared the 8 years since Portugal decriminalized all drugs with the 8 years before decriminalization. The results: 25 percent decline in drug use among 13 to 15 year olds, 22 percent decline in drug use among 16 to 18 year olds, 52 percent decline in heroin overdose deaths, 71 percent decline in HIV infections reported by drug users, and an overall decline in the use of every drug with the exception of marijuana. However marijuana use in the rest of the European Union increased by four to five times what it did in Portugal.
August 21, 2009 Mexico decriminalized use and personal possession of all drugs and three days later, the Argentina Supreme Court ruled it is unconstitutional to arrest for drug use or personal possession. On September 10, 2009 the Supreme Court of Colombia made the same ruling.
Former police chief Norm Stamper toured Australia for the month of October giving 75 presentations to the public, the media, ranking law-enforcement officials, and Members of Parliament.
The week of October 20, 2009, I was invited to present to the Brazilian Commission on Drugs and Democracy. Three days before I was to leave for Brazil they had a gang shoot-out in one of the Faveles of Rio de Janeiro that left 45 dead, seven buses burned and a police helicopter shot from the sky, killing three officers.
I first presented to 24 attendees at the First Working Group of Brazilian public security and law enforcement agents, which is creating a security recommendation document for the second meeting of the Brazilian Commission on Drugs and Democracy. They all seemed to agree with LEAP's theory that legalized regulation of drugs would end the violence.
I presented to the Commission itself on the following day. The Commission’s topic, “How to reduce violence associated with drug sales and policy,” was addressed by my again suggesting legalized regulation of all drugs would end the violence, stop nearly all overdose deaths, greatly reduce diseases such as AIDS and Hepatitis, end the majority of criminal activities and reduce drug addiction. After my presentation, two-thirds of the 18 commissioners stated that legalized regulation was the best solution but that it was not politically feasible for Brazil until the United States decided in favor of such a policy. The Commission was especially interested in the possibility of mimicking drug policies of Portugal and Switzerland. Switzerland, began 15 years ago treating heroin users by distributing heroin to them from clinics. The outcomes: No overdose deaths, new AIDS and Hepatitis infections dropped causing Switzerland to have the lowest rates of any country in Europe, crime was cut by 60% and new heroin users in Zurich decreased by 82%.
While in Brazil, LEAP’s proposals also received a great reception when I presented to 150 attendees at the Judicial School, and 45 attendees at the Institute of Criminal Justice in Rio de Janeiro.
The first two weeks of 2010 I will be presenting in Denmark and Norway to, among other venues, the Danish Parliament.
By joining LEAP you are becoming a part of positive changes happening around the world. We are looking forward to working with you to end the agonies created by the war on drugs and to renew and deepen respect for the honorable profession of policing that has been severely weakened by the role police have been required to play in enforcing drug prohibition laws.
Together we can make a better and safer society by serving it in a more efficient and ethical manner.
Thank you,
Jack A. Cole
Executive Director
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
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