"Miller-McCuneApril 27, 2011
Fighting Drug War Creates Drug War
When the United States starts talking about illicit drugs, why does the word “war” always make its way into the conversation?
By Michael Scott Moore"
Wealthy criminals and the corrupt public officials that make organized crime possible would not disappear if we did legalize all drugs but legalization of drugs would bankrupt nearly all of them. International organized crime began here; we should end it. Violence and illegal drug profits driven by drug use in the USA are destroying Mexico and we're next. It's time to try something different and that time is now.
Stanford “Neill” Franklin
Maryland State Police Major (ret.), Narcotics Enforcement and Executive Director of LEAP
“Two people permanently changed his steadfast belief in fighting the drug war: the Mayor of Baltimore, and Ed Toatley, one of the best undercover agents the State of Maryland had ever seen. Sometime in the mid nineties, Kurt Schmoke, the sitting mayor of Baltimore, declared on television that the drug war was not working. ‘We need to have a discussion about where we go from here,’ Neill recalls him saying, “because the drug war is not working.” Schmoke put forth the reasoning that fighting a war on drugs was not only violent, but also counterproductive to fighting the high rates of AIDS and Hepatitis C in the city.
I knew instantly, ‘ Neill says, ‘that he had said something profound, and that this deserved some looking into.’ This was the beginning of Neill’s new direction, and it started with researching and evaluating his own experiences in law enforcement. He compared the areas in his jurisdiction with the people and cases that came across his desk. ‘We worked in predominantly white areas, but most of our cases and lock ups were minorities. There were only a couple of cases in the outlying areas that involved whites.
Not too long after Schmoke’s announcement, Neill's good friend, Corporal Ed Toatley, was killed in Washington, DC, while making a drug deal as an undercover agent. “When Ed was assassinated in October 2000, that is when I really made the turn. That’s when I decided to go public with my views. I even contacted my police commissioner at the time and warned him that I was going to start speaking out on this. I didn’t want him to be blindsided.”The institutionalized racism and cost of life to both civilians and police officers are just two of the many unintended consequences of our drug policy that keep Neill Franklin speaking for LEAP."
Former New Jersey State Police Undercover Officer
"This is Not a War on Drugs - it's a War on People."
James Gierach
Secretary of LEAP
"Prohibition - not drugs - is at the hub of most U.S. crises worth talking about"
“As an attorney representing a ‘zero-tolerance’ municipality, Jim once dutifully advised an applicant for street-sweeper that because he failed his drug test for marijuana he was ineligible for the job. However, Jim noted, the test results would not disqualify the applicant from running for President of the United States.”
See:
No comments:
Post a Comment
You can add your voice to this blog by posting a comment.