Retired Cop Waves White Flag in War on Drugs

The Standard-Times (MA) ^ | 15 Jan 2003 | John Doherty

[MrLeRoy]

After fighting the war on drugs for nearly 30 years, Lt. Jack Cole is ready to admit defeat.

The retired New Jersey State Police detective -- who spent 12 years as an undercover narcotics officer -- spearheads a movement to legalize all narcotics as a way of ending the bloody, expensive war.

"The war on drugs was, is and always will be a dismal failure," said Mr. Cole yesterday to a meeting of the Fairhaven Rotary Club.

Mr. Cole is one of the founders of an international nonprofit group called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition -- LEAP.

That group, which includes current and former police officers, judges and others, is proposing nothing short of legalizing all narcotics -- including heroin, cocaine and marijuana -- and having the federal government regulate them.

While that might sound radical for a detective who spent the better part of his career looking to jail both users and sellers of drugs, Mr. Cole said it is the only rational viewpoint after a career on the front lines of the war on drugs.

While spending what Mr. Cole estimates to be $69 billion per year in law enforcement and prison costs for drug offenders, Americans have seen drug supplies become more plentiful and the drugs themselves more powerful and cheaper.

Mr. Cole acknowledged to the dozen Rotarians yesterday that the idea of legalizing narcotics -- similar to policies in Amsterdam -- sounds foreign.

The first question many people ask is whether drug decriminalization will increase drug use, especially among the young.

Mr. Cole pointed to studies in which young Americans said it was easier to obtain marijuana and other drugs than it was to purchase government-regulated alcohol and tobacco products.

Holland sees a lower rate of marijuana use among its young people, in part because decriminalization has made the drug boring, Mr. Cole said.

"We at LEAP are asking you to listen and to think about these ideas," said Mr. Cole, who is pursuing a doctorate in public policy at UMass Boston.

[MrLeRoy]

if those bodies, or parts of bodies, have no right to life, why does a collection of cells that ALSO has no brain, have a "right to life?"

Because it has the potential to have a reasoning free-willed brain.

[MrLeRoy]

... as I already explained at length in post #308.

[Mark Bahner]

"Because it has the potential to have a reasoning free-willed brain."

OK, does an anencephalitic fetus have a "right to life?" That is, a right to be born (since they are guaranteed to die, within, at most, a few days)?

http://www.mit.edu/afs/net.mit.edu/project/attic/usa-today/news/43

[MrLeRoy]

does an anencephalitic fetus have a "right to life?"

No.

[Mark Bahner]

I wrote, "Does an anencephalitic fetus have a "right to life?"

Mr. LeRoy responded, "No."

Hmmmm. This is presumably because there is no "potential for reasoning free-willed individuality."

But why have the government involved in protecting a group of cells that merely have the "potential" to form a brain? Why not only get the government involved when a brain truly exists?

[MrLeRoy]

Explained at length in post #308.

[Mark Bahner]

"Explained at length in post #308."

One paragraph...filled with logical inconsistencies.

You say only humans have the "potential" for "reasoning free-willed individuality."

And you later agreed that anencephalic fetuses have no right to be born. (Presumably because they have no potential for "reasoning free-willed individuality.")

But there are PLENTY of animals (chimps, parakeets, dogs, dolphins) that are far more "reasoning free-willed individuals," than various human beings who have extremely damaged brains.

So your criteria for what deserves the "right to life" is essentially "whatever Mr. LeRoy says."

In contrast, *my* suggested guidelines are far more consistent (although they are "specie-ist"):

1) Nothing without any brain has a right to life,

2) Entities that have a human brain, no matter how poorly functioning, have a right to life. HOWEVER,

3) Those entities also have a "right to die." And,

4) If those entities are in another entity's body, the host entity also has rights. (Including the right to abort the entity, if that entity was conceived through involuntary sexual intercourse.) Finally,

5) In most cases, the woman who is the host entity is likely to be the best judge of what is best for the entity inside her.

Summary: I still don't see the point in having the government involved in protecting something that has the POTENTIAL to have a brain. When that something actually HAS a brain, then I can at least see the potential wisdom of having the government involved.

[MrLeRoy]

filled with logical inconsistencies.

False.

But there are PLENTY of animals (chimps, parakeets, dogs, dolphins) that are far more "reasoning free-willed individuals," than various human beings who have extremely damaged brains.

They are neither reasoning free-willed individuals nor members of species for which that state is the norm. No inconsistency there.