Posted on 08/21/2006 5:54:00 PM PDT by Know your rights
Former Seattle police Chief Norm Stamper doesn't have dreadlocks, a Zig-Zag T-shirt or a single Phish album. He just sounds like it. "It's laughable when people say we are winning the drug war," said Stamper, who had just finished a main-stage speech to the crowd gathered Sunday at the Seattle Hempfest in Myrtle Edwards Park. "The people who are prosecuting the drug war are invested psychically and financially. It's a holy war for them.
"We should legalize all drugs."
While the comments might be unusual for most law enforcement careerists, they are nothing new for Stamper, who was Seattle's top cop from 1994 to 2000. That is why organizers brought him in for the popular two-day, pro-pot festival.
Organizers estimated 150,000 people flowed into the waterfront park, which for the weekend turned into a dense village of food booths, stages, arts-and-crafts sellers, hemp product manufacturers, leafleteers, hackysack circles and picnickers.
Now in its 15th year, Hempfest is at its core all about decriminalizing marijuana. So is Stamper, especially after years of witnessing firsthand what he sees as the futility of the federal drug war.
The drugs are winning, he said. It's time to change tactics.
"Police should be focused on violent crime," he told the crowd.
Stamper, a member of pro-legalization Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, said many of his peers agree with him but will only say so privately. He told a story about a recent chat with a police chief in a "major American city" who had read Stamper's 2005 book, "Breaking Rank."
In it, Stamper advocates legalizing and regulating drugs as a way to reduce collateral problems such as addiction, violence and property crime.
"He came up to me after a talk and said he agreed with the chapter on drugs," Stamper said. "I asked, 'Can I quote you publicly?'
"He said, 'What have you been smoking?' "
Stamper saw similar reticence Sunday, as he preached to the choir in the sunny, 90-degree heat.
Waiting for hand-dipped ice-cream bars in the festival's munchie midway, Seattleites Tony Witherspoon, 31, and Neil Toland, 28, said they don't see pot as a rip in society's fabric.
"I wouldn't think a little weed is going to hurt anybody," Witherspoon said.
Added Toland, "There needs to be a little space for (pot)."
Creating that political space is what the festival is all about, chief organizer Dominic Holden said.
Hempfest has matured over the decade and a half it's existed, he said. Initially, it went unnoticed by local police. Then, Holden recalled, it became tense and even adversarial between organizers and police in the late 1990s -- at a time when Stamper was chief.
"For a while there, it seemed like it would go downhill," Holden said. "They were doing backstage raids looking for pot. They didn't find any."
Since then, the political landscape has changed, Holden said.
First, state voters approved medical marijuana. Subsequently, Seattle residents said they are not worried about pot as a law enforcement issue.
Now, he said, the relationship is much more mellow.
"We all want it to be a safe festival," Holden said. "The police have been great. Very collaborative.
"This might be our biggest festival ever."
There are many good reasons to smoke pot.
1) It gets you stoned so you can deal with life.
2) It makes things that are not funny, seem funny.
3) It improves your driving...well, more than alcohol.
4) It improves your sex life... OK, it doesn't, but sounds good.
5) It makes you more calm while using woodworking equipment.
6) It helps you to deal with an injured child if one was unfortunate enough to get injured while mommy/daddy was getting stoned.
7) It helps you to concentrate concentrate.
9) It gets you stoned so you can deal with life.
10) It grows easy on your neighbors property.
8) The kids love it when they find some in your drawer.
"This music sucks!"
Dunno about that, but there certainly are many good reasons to legalize pot.
Same here (but I've only recently heard it, so I still get a kick out of it).
Let all the Soros' sympathizers start posting why pot should be legalized....it happens every thread with the opportunity to get pot legalized on FR.
And Eve told Adam to eat the apple...
Just say no!
While I completely disagree that we should legalize all drugs, I see no harm in marijuana. It is a mild drug, far less harmful than alcohol.
Iran has tough anti-drug laws ... does that make you an "Iran sympathizer"?
it happens every thread with the opportunity to get pot legalized on FR.
Pot's going to be legalized on FR? A CA Guy, is that you? It's the same feeble grasp of the English language.
Legalizing marijuana might leave us with a War on Drugs we can actually win. (I don't think it will, but I could be wrong.)
In a "free society", government needs a legitimate reason to make something ILLEGAL. Otherwise, it should be legal. The societal risks provided as reasons for making marijuana illegal were greatly exaggerated, and in some cases racist.
Each time a "legalize pot" discussion occurs on FR, the SAME posters who want to get the drug legalized (consistent with legalizing all drugs in the Soros' plan), will bombard the pages of FR with their irrational rants on the benefits of pot laws being repealed.
Ask for help, if you can't understand the posts.
Those who want them illegal are consistent with Iran's plan.
will bombard the pages of FR with their irrational rants on the benefits of pot laws being repealed.
So you can write English if you really try. Good. Now can you support your claim that posts on the benefits of pot laws being repealed are "irrational"?
Given all the people who wish to legalize pot, why do you specifically point out Soros? Why not former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson? He is a conservative Republican who supports legalizing marijuana.
" Longitudinal research on marijuana use among young people below college age indicates those who used marijuana have lower achievement than the non-users, more acceptances of deviant behavior, more delinquent behavior and aggression, greater rebelliousness, poorer relationships with parents, and more associations with delinquent and drug-using friends. Research also shows more anger and more regressive behavior in toddlers whose parents use marijuana than among the toddlers of non-using parents (Michael Farrell, M.D., British Medical Journal) "
" A gateway drug is a drug that is considered to lead the user to experiment with harder more addictive drugs. "There is a fairly long history of research showing that early cannabis (marijuana) use is associated with increased risks for later use of so-called 'hard drugs,' but that research is based on the fact that most heroin and cocaine users report first having used cannabis," says lead author Michael T. Lynskey, Ph.D., a visiting assistant professor of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and senior research fellow at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research in Brisbane, Australia (Lynskey). "
So I guess the 41% of Americans who support legalization are unprincipled, anti-family, irresponsible, and indecent?
here's a bit of what legalization will do:
No, that's what USE may do (but note that all they have are correlations). What legalization will do is stop putting inflated profits in criminal hands ... and show respect for individual liberty.
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