As a former deputy prosecutor, what’s your opinion was of LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition)?
I’m starting to see, more and more, that law enforcement officers are realizing the “war on drugs” has been a failure. Even the Superintendent of the Indiana State Police has said so. The cops haven’t quite figured out what do to with the problem, but if you decriminalize or legalize certain drugs, then its no longer their problem.
My belief is that the criminal code is not and never will be an answer to a societal behavioral problem. If people want to drink alcohol, they will find a way to obtain it. That was the problem with Prohibition, and its the same problem with drugs.
Prohibitionism in regards to alcohol is not dead. The modern-day Prohibitionists find their home in MADD and other drunk-driving legal campaigns. The current drunk-driving laws don’t have anything to do with curbing traffic fatalities, it’s all about stamping out drinking. Some of the Prohibitionists have moved into the anti-smoking campaigns, too.
Ironically, it was Prohibition that begat our “war on drugs.” Most of the Federal laws regarind marijuana and other drugs began in the mid-1930s, and that’s when enforcement got its legs. It was because Prohibition had ended in 1933, and in the middle of a Depression, the government needed to find something for all the booze cops to do. So they made drugs illegal.
And that’s what I think about it.