Posted on 11/16/2005 8:24:04 AM PST by JTN
You wouldn’t have expected it during any other week, but for a few days in mid-November, pot smoke wafted throughout the hallways and meeting rooms of the Westin Hotel in Long Beach, California.
Upscale hotels aren’t typical hangouts for barefoot young hippies, recovering addicts, or a handful of self-described “harm reduction hotties” toting their own 12-month calendar and information about how to minimize disease and other damage from injection drug use.
But here they were, rubbing elbows with retired police chiefs, academics, addiction specialists, attorneys, non-profit directors, religious leaders and formerly incarcerated prisoners.
The occasion? The 2005 International Drug Policy Reform Conference, organized by the Drug Policy Alliance. With nearly 1,000 registrants from all over the United States and many parts of Europe, Latin America and Canada, the event offered attendees nearly 75 sessions over three days, on topics such as harm reduction psychotherapy, rogue anti-drug task forces, and cutting edge cannabis research in Canada.
The group causing the biggest buzz, by far, were the representatives of LEAP, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which calls for an end to the drug war altogether. In the three years since the group’s founding, the not-for-profit has cultivated an impressive advisory board with the likes of former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson; Joseph McNamara, San Jose’s former police chief; Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell; former Seattle police chief Norm Stamper and U.S. District Court Judge John Kane.
Years ago, police officers would only have mingled with this crowd as undercover agents, but here, burly LEAPers were treated like celebrities in their own right, easy to spot because of their buzz cuts, cowboy hats and/or extremely large lettering on their brightly colored t-shirts: “Cops Say Legalize Drugs. Ask Me Why.”
A LEAP panel discussion yielded shocking stories from the drug war front lines. Admissions from LEAP Director and former New Jersey state police lieutenant Jack Cole, a 26-year veteran and narc, surprised even this drug war-savvy crowd. “We lied regularly about the numbers of drugs we were seizing,” Cole said, explaining that if his fellow officers were lucky enough to bust someone for one ounce of cocaine, they’d immediately look for a cutting agent to double the amount of the seizure. And if a seizure’s street value stood at $1,500, the cops would bump it up to $20,000. “Who’s to question it,” Cole asked.
Other panelists spoke of leaving the profession because they couldn’t stomach the lies or the corruption, especially when they noticed fellow cops striking deals with the people they were supposed to arrest, selling and smuggling drugs, and buying cars, trips and multi-million dollar homes with their proceeds.
Garry Jones, a retired senior lieutenant who has worked in prisons across the country, including the federal system, recalled instances where people would come to prison on visiting day just to buy drugs from the inmates. “My [colleagues] were bringing drugs inside the prisons, making big money … There was no way to escape drugs in prison. You couldn’t do it yesterday and you can’t do it today,” he said.
Jones said that he was particularly troubled to see ever-increasing numbers of African American men being locked up, often on drug-related offenses.
In this session and many others, plenty of talk was devoted to the plight of the poor people and people of color who make up the vast majority of American jail and prison populations. The few formerly incarcerated men in attendance echoed the sentiment that it felt good to hear so many people acknowledging the seriousness of the problem.
But if there’s one thing that prison teaches longtime inmates, it’s that there’s no point to talking if you can’t back it up. People who have been locked up tend to have little patience for bullshit, even if it’s well-intentioned and comes from a gentle medical marijuana activist selling colorful, close-up pictures of fat buds, or from red-eyed college students passing joints on the hotel patio.
“Building a movement with integrity has to be about more than weed,” says Dorsey Nunn during the conference’s only session by and about the formerly incarcerated.
Nunn, a former crack addict and prisoner, is now the program director of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, and co-founder of an advocacy group, All of Us or None.
“There are a lot of people advocating on our behalf,” he said, “but are we allowed to come and sit at that table with them?” Nunn’s question was straight and to the point, but the sentiment is still relatively new within the drug policy reform movement.
Just as the drug policy reform movement has benefited from the insight and visible presence of LEAPers, so, too, can it be made more powerful and effective if it creates more seats at the table for the men and women who have lived through this brutal war, and experienced it from the inside out.
Its my opinion that yours are the insane comments, but thanks for bringing up the subject.
I don't believe in conspiracies. I believe the facts are pretty plain that at their inception, both the laws against opium and the laws against marijuana were designed to allow the government to 'deal with' what were considered 'undesirable' non-white minorities.
Nowadays, these laws are kept in place for financial reasons, however, even though certain officers of the law may exhibit racism in their application.
It's all about the money, NOT 'public health', and the tissue-thin veil of lies drawn across the truth does nothing to obscure it for those who have eyes to see.
No complaints here!!
It is a tactic typical of leftism to (1) assume there is a conspiracy until it is disproven and (2) accuse law enforcement officers of being racists just for doing their job.
Back many years ago (about 25) when I knew the local marijuana market, I was always amused when cops would give the value of a haul. They were always paying a lot more than I was, and I was buying just tiny amounts, not in bulk.
Then produce evidence of this.
Since I know you cannot, I'll point out that, if anything sinister was involved, the original statutes were written to provide a semimonopoly to pharmaceutical and medical interests.
Or come to Ohio. $100 ticket for simple possession. As long as I stick to the Black Market and don't grow the stuff myself, its the same as a traffic citation.
Then produce evidence of this.
Since I know you cannot, I'll point out that, if anything sinister was involved, the original statutes were written to provide a semimonopoly to pharmaceutical and medical interests.
Okay.... Whats a WOD?
Ethnic minorities are disproportionately incarecerated for violent crimes as well. Are the statutes against assault and battery, forcible rape and second degree murder racist too?
Do your own GD research! There is no mystery around this issue.
Isn't the righteous flock a hoot? They'd like for you to underline the plentiful evidence before they reject it.
The initial campaign against cannabis was the brainchild of one LEO named Harry Anslinger.
While I'm sure his personal racial attitudes were not particularly enlightened, the outlawing of cannabis and opiates seems to have been a singleminded personal agenda he pursued across the globe from Egypt to Venezuela on law-and-order grounds.
Some say that since he worked for the Bureau of Prohibition and he saw that with the relegalization of alcohol he'd need more work, he decided to take up arms against cannabis to keep his job going.
BrainyQuote.com has it as Ben
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/b/benjaminfr109067.html
But, they don't reference it.
BTW, it is positively annoying how many FReepers make wildeyed leftist assertions and then when challenged on the factual basis of said wildeyed leftist assertions respond by saying: "It's your obligation to substantiate the thesis I can't substantiate!"
Guess what? It isn't. If you're going to uncategorically state that US drug laws are a racist conspiracy, you have to provide hard evidence because the statutes as written contain no racial language whatsoever.
From then to now ~ who do you think blacks call 'the man' what is he doing to hold them down?
Exactly.
But apparently you can't.
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