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newgrowerNY

All drugs should be legalized, retired detective says
04.03.07|Sunday Gazette Mail

If Howard Wooldridge had it his way, all illicit drugs in America would be as legal as tobacco and alcohol.

The retired Michigan police detective is traveling across West Virginia this week speaking on behalf of the organization Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

The nation’s drug policy is badly in need of reform, Wooldridge said in an interview with the Gazette, and the best reform is to legalize all drugs so their sales are regulated and managed by the government, not criminals, he said.

“We have tried to make America a land that is drug free, or close to it,” he said, but those efforts have been a “catastrophic failure.”

Wooldridge says the decades-old war on drugs waged by the government is too expensive and has only made the drug situation in this country worse.

“What’s been the return on the investment for $1 trillion?” he asked. “[Illegal] drugs are cheaper, stronger and readily available. ... All we have done is filled up prison after prison.”

Wooldridge, who moved to Texas when he retired, works in Washington, D.C., trying to convince lawmakers that change is needed.

He is quick to point out, however, that drugs are dangerous and deadly. The funding that goes to fighting the illegal drug industry instead needs to go to education and addiction treatment, he said.

“Be as drug free as you can be, from coffee to heroin,” he said, stressing the importance of personal responsibility. “If one day you or a loved one has a drug problem, see a doctor, not a judge.”

LEAP and Wooldridge call the illegality of drugs the “new Prohibition,” and compare the crime issues prevalent in the drug trade to the problems that arose when the government banned alcohol in the ‘20s and ‘30s. Alcohol prohibition was repealed in 1933 after the black market increased crime and did little to lessen people’s drinking habits.

Doing something about the illegal drug trade is more important than ever in the post-9/11 world, Wooldridge said, because it funds terrorism in countries such as Afghanistan. Terrorists’ funding would dry up if drugs were suddenly legal to sell and buy. “It is only [drug’s] illegality that makes them worth their weight in gold,” he said.

After nearly 20 years of working in law enforcement, Wooldridge said he eventually became frustrated with all the time he and fellow officers had to dedicate to chasing basic drug-related crime, when they could have been going after drunken drivers or child predators.

“We could get these guys more often if we stop chasing Rush Limbaugh and Willie Nelson,” he said.

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Disclaimer: I love to grow

 

sterbo

It's reassuring to hear another affirmation of what I have been proselytizing for some time now. One would think, after all these years, that the citizenry of this country would wake up and realize it's time to take a new tack. How is it that we can be so incredibly lazy?
Or are we just hopelessly obtuse?...

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newgrowerNY

I think the average american is still "scared straight" by the propaganda the US goverment issues about drugs.

reggie_the_dog

I think that the average American does not want their drug using family members to have legal problems. The problem is that too many people that use drugs hide the fact from their families. Many times, while talking to people in my parents generation, I have found that they did not even realize that they were advocating that their own children be punished whilst they were advocating zero tolerance for drugs. Now I never dropped a dime, but I later told my friends that they should just tell their parents (we are in the 25 to 35 age range, so telling our parents really should be no big deal).

Be as vocal as you can within your families. In my opinoin this will go far to change peoples ideas about cannabis. There is also very little chance they will rat you out to the fuzz.

Buzzby

Neither. The attitude of the American public towards the currently illicit drugs has been shaped by 93 years of horror-story propaganda. Legalization advocates generally end up preaching to the choir. Some few join in organized efforts (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), Drug Policy Alliance (DPA)) to fight prohibition. Around 0.2% of marijuana users have joined and contributed. The major organizations subsist on a total of $16 million a year. The federal government spends $120 a year on those stupid ONDCP TV spots alone.

It's not a matter of laziness or obtuseness. It's a simple public relations equation, the same one used in political campaigns: it takes money to shape public opinion. If marijuana users contributed 1% of what they spend on weed and accessories to the legalization effort, it would have $400 million to spend on getting rid of prohibition every year instead of $16 million.

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