LEAP in the Christian Science Monitor

After seeing our press release from yesterday about the FBI's new 2008 arrest data, Christian Science Monitor reporter Patrik Jonsson called LEAP and ended up quoting two of our speakers and our media relations director in this great piece.

Every 18 seconds, an American is busted for drug possession, according to Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) crime statistics released Monday.

The new statistics point to a continued emphasis on drug interdiction – otherwise known as the "war on drugs" – that more and more law enforcement officers are now questioning. While many experts hold the anti-drug campaign to be the key reason for the decline in the crime rate in the US, especially violent crime, since the 1990s, these police officers, as well as current and retired judges and prosecutors see, instead, thousands of American lives ruined for small drug infractions in a costly and possibly unwinnable "war."

"Not only do these officers see the terrible results that their work has had on individuals' lives, but a lot of what I hear from beat officers and undercover narcotics agents is they've seen colleagues die in the line of fire trying to enforce laws that have no positive impacts," says Tom Angell, a spokesman for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) in Washington. "For a lot of them, this is about trying to keep good cops alive by repealing stupid prohibition laws."

Read the whole thing here.