LEAP

People who know me as the crazed libertarian are usually just amused. But those who remember the ball crunching Assistant DA, are often quite shocked to find I think it high time America pull a cut and run in the War On Drugs.

But the reality is, I am not alone. People tend to look upon groups such as NORML as a cabal of stoners and the Libertarian Party as a collection of crackpots. But often even the current variety of conservative will pay attention when it is law enforcement officers speaking out. They won’t change their view—but they will sometimes listen.

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) was formed in 2002. It is not a bunch of stoners. Rather it is a group of public servants who often risked their lives in a cause they now say is mistaken. They are former police officers, and ex- prosecutors and judges.

What a lot of the couch potato law and orderly types do not realize is the whole thing breeds lawlessness, corruption and contempt for the law not appreciated unless you have actually been a part of it.

Tony Ryan, one of LEAP's newest members and a well-decorated, 36-year Denver police officer recently wrote in an op-ed, "the huge lure of money is always there, either through bribes by drug dealers, or during busts where piles of money are lying around. Corruption of law enforcement was at its highest during alcohol prohibition and we see it now with drug prohibition."

And what it breeds is emotional waste and a spiritual vacuum. Many just push all the crap to the back of their minds and concentrate on that golden era dreamed of every day by police officers everywhere—retirement. But for some, the Nirvana dreamed of, over countless donuts, is not enough to exorcise the guilt. Many of these former officers lug around a weighty burden.

They realized early in their careers the drug war was a failure, and would always be a failure. They regret now they never said anything.

As one officer says in LEAP's promotional video, "Even though I knew that the drug war was harmful financially and psychically and spiritually . . . I should have been saying much more of that, much more strenuously…”:

The Righteous will say all need be done is vigorously prosecute and indict the bad apples in law enforcement. And they will accuse the stoners of making a broad-brush indictment of all police officers. But when the message comes from former police officers and prosecutors perhaps some will realize that pointing out the wide spread corruption is not an indictment of law enforcement personnel. Rather it is an indictment of a system and policy where temptation and corruption comes begging.

The hippies and the Bill O’Reilly’s of the World have one thing in common. On this issue they are living in la la land.

These veterans of the War on Drugs are not.