Drug War, A War On People.

I am the retired executive officer of a Northeastern police department, and I applaud the letter you recently published from John G. Chase of Palm Harbor, "Drug war a waste."

As a former undercover officer, I booked literally thousands of youths for small amounts of marijuana. Never did I consider that they might lose their right to vote, their right to live in public housing, their right to certain scholarships.

Thanks to my zealousness, those youths, now grown men and woman, may well have a career track that involves saying something like, "Do you want to supersize that?"

The "War on Drugs" is not that at all. It's a war on people. And it is militarizing police forces and creating a generation of Americans who are cynical, seeing the corporate coke users get away with it in their offices and boardrooms with little fear of being discovered, while cops in poor neighborhoods make "stop and frisk" stops all the time, inevitably busting many for insignificant amounts of drugs.

I am a spokesman for LEAP, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. We believe that drugs are bad, but the "War on Drugs" is worse. We believe that controlled substances should be legalized, and regulated like tobacco and wine.

If this were done, the insanity of having almost 2.2 million Americans behind bars, many for victimless crimes, would stop, and we might arrive at a more enlightened, compassionate means of dealing with those whose biggest crime is simply "not being like us."

Lt. Richard Craig ( RET. ) Tallahassee

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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom

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Drug War, A War On People.

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