A COP SAYS LEGALIZE POT. WHY?
WAR ON DRUGS! HOW IS THAT WORKING IN OKLAHOMA?
Is it reducing your crime?...Rates of death and disease? Is it reducing your
taxes? Is it keeping drugs and drug dealers away from your
kids?...These are very important questions for a policy which costs us
taxpayers 70 billion dollars a year.Riding my horse across America, I wore a T-shirt that stated: COPS SAY LEGALIZE POT, ASK ME WHY: I had many encounters because of the shirt and they showed me the truth of an old Turkish Proverb: If you are about to tell the truth, always have one foot in the stirrup…. Throughout the ages, the person who stands up and says the emperor is wearing no clothes tends to be the first one shot out of the saddle. Welcome to my world. A bit of my back ground. I have 18 years of police experience; the last three as a detective. I am a graduate of Michigan State UNIV. I speak four languages + horse. I am a member of the NRA and MADD. On a personal level I All of us here know that all drugs, whether legal or illegal can be dangerous, even deadly. I encourage all of you to not use drugs, unless absolutely needed for medical reasons. If you are unsure about something you want to put in your mouth, consult with your friends, your doctor or perhaps your religious advisor. I am a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, LEAP. We are made up of police officers, judges and prosecutors who learned from being in the trenches that drug prohibition is a catastrophic failure for both the individual and society. We believe that all drug use issues should be a public health matter, handled by doctors and clinics. Mind altering drugs have used by mankind for thousands of years and always will be. Please know that there IS NO SOLUTION TO DRUG USE. There are only APPROACHES OR WAYS TO MANAGE THEM. We in LEAP advocate a policy whose cornerstone is PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. We are not managing these illegal drugs, so who is? Who sets the purity for the 10 prohibited drugs? THE DRUG DEALER. Who checks the ID of those who buy the drugs to make sure they are old enough? THE DRUG DEALER. Who sets up the distribution points, franchises if you will? THE DRUG DEALER. Who decides where the profits are spent? THE DRUG DEALER. Whether you agree with the policy proposed by LEAP or not, you should know that we in law enforcement are a mosquito on the butt of an elephant. We make no difference in this policy. The drug dealers, the criminals and terrorists are completely in control of illegal drugs. THE POLICY IN USE TODAY, PROHIBITION, IS A FAILURE ON EVERY LEVEL Illegal drugs are cheaper, stronger and easier to buy than ever. Prohibition as a policy has not worked well, since Adam and Eve bit on the apple. Why is it that my profession of law enforcement MAKES NO DIFFERENCE? Understand some basics. Drug Dealers accept as a condition of employment DEATH and long prison terms. Though we have arrested millions of drug dealers, there is always someone stupid enough or desperate enough to take their place. Know that the only net effect of arresting a drug dealer, is you, the taxpayer, will build another prison. In Texas we built 77 prisons in the 1990s hoping to incarcerate our way out of the problem. As in Colorado, those prisons are over-full today and drugs are cheaper, strong and easier to buy than ever. The same is true in Oklahoma. Maybe I am some person with an agenda to hurt America. Riding Misty thru Georgia a man accused me of being an agent of the KGB, sent by Mother Russia to destroy America. Who knows? So I will ask you just ONCE to believe something from the federal government which will corroborate & support what I am trying to say here today. COMPASSION VS INCARCERATION:If anyone in the group today is addicted to the two deadliest drug products in America, alcohol and cigarettes, what is society’s response? We made your addiction a medical issue, handled by doctors & clinics. We offer you the patch, nicotine chewing gum, hypnosis or a 12-step program at AA. On a personal level we offer sympathy, understanding and keep you in the community where there is family, friends, and a church. If you have a relapse, more words of encouragement. But may God help you, because no one else will, if you choose heroin instead of whiskey as your drug of comfort. We condemn you, throw you in prison with its violence, rape, death and disease. What does your faith teach you? To show compassion, love and understanding or does it teach you to hate and punish those with an addiction?As an officer, I wanted to protect the weak from the strong, to protect the victim from a suspect. My focus was PUBLIC SAFETY. The police have enough to do trying to protect the public. Every hour we spending protecting a person hurting themselves with drugs equals an hour that we don’t catch the bad guys who hurt others. Prohibition is the engine which has driven our crime stats thru the roof…about 75% of all felony crime is caused by the prohibition of drugs, not drug use. When I was a detective, 8 out of 10 people I caught breaking into your home, were addicted to crack or heroin. We lost our focus on public safety in the 80s and especially the 90s, by looking for a baggy of pot under some kid’s front seat, allowing DUIs to kill 17,000 Americans every year. Our detectives were busting drug dealers, allowing rapists and child molesters to remain free. In September, I stopped at a Waffle House in Fort Smith, Arkansas wearing my t-shirt. The waitress asked why. I replied so we could focus on drunk drivers and child molesters. The 20 in the café went dead silent. I looked around, knowing I had said something. The waitress finally said she agreed with me. She said that 4 days ago, someone had kidnapped, raped, killed and throw the body of the 7 year old girl in the bushes. Yes, I made 20 converts to my position that morning. But how many more dead little girls must there be, until this policy is replaced?
HARM TO KIDSI have often heard that the drug war isn’t working very well, but we have to do all we can to protect our kids. Know this:1. Current laws condemn our children to grow up in a world infested with blood-sucking drug dealers and their free samples of heroin. 2. Teens are killed everyday because we give them the option to be a drug dealer. Should the teen work as a busboy at the Denny's making chump change or make big bucks as a drug dealer. Everyday some make a terribly bad choice. Ball park, everyday 100 drug dealers are shot of which about 10-15 die. And everyday a certain % of them are 14 year old and 16 year olds. The only reason they are dead is we give them a job option.We must remember the wise advice of Ronald Reagan: Government is often the problem and almost never the solution. Ya’ll have been expecting my profession for the past 35 years to keep drugs and drug dealers away from you and your kids. We have failed every year because Reagan was right. There is no substitute for personal responsibility. It is not a perfect answer but it is way better than what the government can do. Liberty and Personal Responsibility must return as the cornerstone principles for all adult drug use. Last but not least; drug policy should be a STATES RIGHTS ISSUE. The people of Colorado do not want or need some bureaucrat politician in Washington telling us what we should or should not put in our bodies. What can you do? Remember most politicians are not leaders, they are followers. You must write them an email or visit them at their office and tell them to make all drugs a medical issue & let the Thin Blue Line get back to matters of public safety. Even better, invite your state senator and your state rep to this Rotary and hold their feet to the fire. Ask them why, why do they continue to build useless prisons, etc. Last and most important, make 911 drug overdose calls an arrest free act. Think of the concept of the Abandoned Child Act. We allow the mom to leave the baby at the church as an arrest free act. Fast forward 17 years and the teen is dying of an overdose, alcohol, heroin whatever. Allow the drug supplier to call 911 w/o fear of being arrested. Who as a parent would have me catch the drug supplier, AT THE COST OF YOUR DEAD TEENAGER??!! Let us send a message of PRO-LIFE not Pro-Death. The politicians would have you believe that millions of people will start shoving a needle in their arm, if you legalize drugs. Let us examine that. First off, I have faith in the American people. We are not that stupid. Who here can imagine the person who is so stupid they the want to use heroin and at the same time, are so smart, and sensible and intelligent to wait for it to be legal?? Also, I have contacted four doctors who specialize in addiction. They have told me there is no research that says there are more than a handful of people who would start using heroin tomorrow, if it were legal. I will leave you with a quote from the Will Rogers: When you find yourself in a hole, put down the shovel. Will Rogers opposed Prohibition. He saw it as foolish, unenforceable, and corrupting, creating more problems than it solved. He wrote, "Whenever you pass a law forbidding or debarring a substance or practice you create a demand for such things to be met illegally." Today he would write: Stop building prisons. Imagine a policy which would reduce felony crime 50%, reduce rates of death and disease and even reduce drug use. When this country has treatment on demand , instead of prisons on demand, we will reduce drug use. That’s Will Rogers' story and it's my story. I am sticking to it. |