LEAP: Law Enforcement Against Prohibition

[Initech]

Anyone hear about this organization? Basically this is a group of former cops and law enforcement officials who want to end the drug war.

http://www.leap.cc/about/index.htm

After nearly four decades of fueling the U.S. policy of a war on drugs with over half-a-trillion tax dollars and increasingly punitive policies, our confined population has quadrupled over a 20 years period making building prisons this nation's fastest growing industry. More than 2.2 million of our citizens are currently incarcerated and every year we arrest an additional 1.6 million for nonviolent drug offenses‹more per capita than any country in the world. The United States has 4.6 percent of the population of the world but 22.5 percent of the world's prisoners. Every year we choose to continue this war will cost U.S. taxpayers another 69 billion dollars. Despite all the lives we have destroyed and all the money so ill spent, today illicit drugs are cheaper, more potent, and far easier to get than they were 35 years ago at the beginning of the war on drugs. Meanwhile, people continue dying in our streets while drug barons and terrorists continue to grow richer than ever before. We would suggest that this scenario must be the very definition of a failed public policy. This madness must cease!

[Fovea]

1. And where are most of those new prisons located.

Go ahead, guess...

[hootinholler]

4. Cuba?

No, really Texas. I don't know that is truly a guess.

-Hoot

[firefox]

2. It is a great organization for reform.

Jack Cole is an outspoken critic of the prohibition model and the corruption and harms that come with the wrong approach. He is a longrider and he and his one-eyed horse, Misty, are now on the return trip of crossing America.

L.E.A.P. provides speakers for clubs and meetings and they are a sincere and dedicated group against prohibition. It's influence can only grow.

Go L.E.A.P.

[Psephos]

3. I'm in favor of decriminalizing marijuana, but not coke or meth

To end the WOD madness, marijuana should be decriminalized ("parking ticket" prosecution), heroin and opiates should be handled as a medical problem, and we should re-focus the resources freed up on crack and crystal meth.

I used to say decriminalize all drugs until my Ph. D. fiance and my M.D. best friend both destroyed their lives through cocaine/crack addiction. I have experienced many evils in my life, but Satan himself is not as bad as that shit.

Meanwhile, alcohol and tobacco continue to fill our cemeteries.

Peace.



EDIT: changed word in headline

[wli]

5. I thought so originally as well

But I realized that the same arguments apply to all drugs, no matter how pernicious, and even civil penalties are unjust (vastly regressive, penalizing the poor vs. the rich).

The twin evils of escapism and chemical masturbation are the causes as I see it. Escapism must be combatted with social justice, and chemical masturbation can be reduced as much as possible via education. Everything else is informed consent, and shouldn't be fiddled with at all.