I did find this on another website:
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.
The government lying about drugs? The hell you say!
Ping
An ideologue committed to the legalization of hard drugs would never lie himself, of course. Everything he says must be taken as gospel truth.
LEAP can go take a leap!
LOL!
There is no depth of corruption that will not be plumbed by those determined to make an unearned living.
China has a legal opium trade for about 100 years.
In order to save their country, China had to enact prohibition.
Legalizing drugs is not the panacea these people want to believe it is.
It will only shift the problem into new arenas and transfer resources to cope with new problems.
Is it better to let people destroy their lives and livelyhood by legalizing drugs? Is it better to enforce restrictions to stop problems from arising? In the end, it may be zero sum.
Amsterdam tried liberal drug zones and they quickly found they needed to be more tightly controlled and regulated.
“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.
Nope, it doesn't. Weed is consumed in it's natural form. That is my, and others, number one gripe about it being illegal. I do not think the government has or should have the power to outlaw a naturally occurring plant. I don't smoke it, but that's not the point. To me it's an abuse of governemnt power to outlaw sticking a seed in the dirt.
The fact that they had it for 100 years and are still around tells me that they didn't need to prohibit in order to "save their country."
Legalizing drugs is not the panacea these people want to believe it is. It will only shift the problem into new arenas and transfer resources to cope with new problems.
You're being awfully vague here. Could you tell me what you mean by "new problems?" They probably aren't nearly as big of a threat as you think they are.
Amsterdam tried liberal drug zones and they quickly found they needed to be more tightly controlled and regulated.
Amsterdam still has both much less drug use and much less violent crime than the US. This doesn't necessarily mean that drug legalization would lead to both, but it does show that you can have legalized marijuana and the place won't go directly to hell.
I wish the government had outlawed sticking Kudzu seeds in the dirt ...
then go live in amsterdam
"I wish the government had outlawed sticking Kudzu seeds in the dirt ..."
LOL! I don't know where you live but it is on everything here. It does help prevent errosion of the bluffs. That stuff will kill trees like mad, though.
I did find this on another website:
Go to Singapore.
Virginia ... "The Vine that Ate the South" isn't as bad here as in the true Deep South, but it's still present and obnoxious. We have something remotely resembling Winter, here, which may keep it under control.
"Jones said that he was particularly troubled to see ever-increasing numbers of African American men being locked up, often on drug-related offenses."
The WOD is a tool of racists used to thin the voting rolls via felony possession charges and the subsequent loss of voting rights.
The WOD allows the planting of evidence and word of the planter to send
anyone to prison that they judge themselves. Thereby, the WOD is a means
to circumvent justice for those most capable and perversely dedicated to
conducting their own personal crusades.
So - you're saying that the police smuggle cocaine and heroin into the country for the sole purpose of planting it on black men to deny them the right to vote?
Recreational drug use was so prevalent in China that in order to save the nation from economic bankrupsy, it was outlawed by imperial edict.
Did is stop opium abuse 100%. No. But it did get China back on track to become a world power. Recreational drug use is a drag on any economy.
The only reason the Amsterdam drug policy appears to work is BECAUSE it is tightly regulated and restricted.
In the last 5 years, Amsterdam, far from basking in the success of legal drugs use, has actually increased laws and restrictions.
They have stopped the expansion of drug zones. They have restricted the number of shops. And most importantly, the have given neighboring communities greater power to have troublesome shops and areas shut down.
Amsterdam in no way can be seen as a success other than on the smallest (and highly regulated) of scales. Such “success” can not be extrapolated to a greater populated area. To expand access to drugs, any nation would be committing suicide.
step away from the crack pipe.
Wow. You are out of your flipping mind.
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