Black police officers? You can't talk about them here.

The moderators over at the Blue Line forums have locked my post about the National Black Police Association's endorsement of Proposition 19 in California. This means further discussion is prohibited as no one can add any responses.

I certainly respect the rights of the moderators to make such decisions. It's their web site, after all, which is why I am posting my response here on the LEAP blog.

Now, I love Blue Line. It's Canada's national law enforcement magazine. I wrote a couple of opinion essays for the magazine last year. And I've learned a lot from the Blue Line discussion forums. As a junior police officer, I feel it is important to keep up to date with the latest developments in the complex world of law enforcement.

The forum in which this post appeared is called The Rant. It's supposed to be a grab all for subjects that don't fit any of the other sections of the web site. Here's a few of the hot topics debated in the forum:

Maryland man arrested after recording of T-stop surfaces

RCMP commissioner uses his BlackBerry at Mountie memorial

Strangle your kid to death, get a suspended sentence.

LAPD Unlawfully Detains Photographer

Child Porn ISNT art

... and my personal favourite:

Even Robert Munsch is on Blow!!!

Clearly, in this context, an article about black cops who want to regulate cannabis is way over the line. (Sarcasm intended.)

This is not any group of black police, mind you. It's the National Black Police Association, representing some 15,000 black law enforcement officers in the United States.

This brings me to the heart of the reason why I don't post more often on Blue Line. Like policing itself, the forum is dominated largely by social conservatives. Without getting into my own political beliefs too much, suffice to say I'm not a fan of an ideology that insists, "it is the role of the government to enforce traditional values because __________."

My problem is that I rarely see anything logical in the last part of that sentence. Law Enforcement Against Prohibition is a big tent organization and we welcome folks from across the political spectrum. But my personal feeling is that locking a thread on a discussion forum is a knee jerk reaction from someone who is afraid of the issue. It doesn't even come close to the kind of intellectual rigour needed to defend social conservatism.

In fairness to social conservatives, I have seen one strong argument advanced in their name that favours drug policy reform. You won't find it on the Blue Line forums though. It was articulated by "Inspector Leviathan Hobbes," the pseudonym for the founder of the Thinking Policeman blog. He was kind enough to let me write a guest post back in August 2009 about Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

The post generated a number of comments and eventually Hobbes himself waded into the discussion:

I've kept reasonably quiet throughout this debate. In fact, I've been reading through the links Officer Bratzer provided, as well as the one-stop-shop of complete information provided by 200 Weeks. Not only have I been reading, but I've been thinking. It's difficult as a police officer to agree with the legalisation and regulation of drugs. Why? It's because we see the evil ruination that it has upon addicts. Not only that, but those who are the real dealers, the Mister Bigs, are extremely difficult to bring to justice. Add to this the consequential victims, the ones who have their property stolen to fund habits, and it seems difficult to say to all of them that what LEAP proposes is the way forward. However, after nigh on 20 years of reading philosophy, I've fallen foul of the Platonic adage I swore I never would - 'an expert is someone who knows nothing at all.'

What I mean by this is, just because as police officers or MOPs we see the full impact that drugs misuse has on the wider community, not only on the user themself - and because we know the law inside and out regarding drugs - we can sometimes become blind to the alternatives. Just because the law and societal opinions have been the same throughout the lives of almost all of us, it doesn't mean it's right. It doesn't mean the law was devised because it works. Sometimes it's wrong. I can point to many examples, as I am sure many of you can. Think about it this way - if drugs WERE legalised and regulated, the Mister Bigs would suffer - the ones who deserve to suffer. Prostitution, a drug-reliant trade, I'm guessing would halve at the very least, as would most ascquisitive crime. You can't get away from the fact that the majority of acquisitive crime is committed by habitual drug users. Yes, there are issues around the practicalities of this proposal, but they're not unachievable in the overall aim.

-- snip --

So, I'll subscribe to LEAP. Sometimes what appears radical actually isn't. It's a conservative reaction to restore order to that similar to times gone past. My only hope is that if we ever did take on the experiment, the current government would be long gone, because otherwise they'd screw it up. As with everything else.

Thank you, Inspector. You said it better than I ever could.

Save our Police Budgets: Legalize and Tax Marijuana

The following article appeared in the November 2009 issue of Blue Line (Canada's national law enforcement magazine). It was titled "Save our Police Budgets: Legalize and Tax Marijuana." This is my second article in Blue Line. The first one was published in June and it was titled The Failure of Drug Prohibition: A Law Enforcement Perspective. In this new essay I am using some of the arguments promoted by SAFER (ie. marijuana is safer than alcohol, so why are we driving people to drink?). If you like this article please Digg it!

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Save our Police Budgets: Legalize and Tax Marijuana

Michael Klimm raised a number of excellent points in his letter published in the August issue of Blue Line. Although he argued against legalizing and regulating drugs, several of his statements were compatible with drug policy reform. First, he acknowledged the status quo is not working. Second, he stated that the damage caused by tobacco - a dangerous but legal substance - has been reduced through education. Third, he asserted the best way to tackle organized crime is to remove the profit motive from the black market. Finally, he emphasized that the legalization and regulation of drugs has not yet been tried anywhere in the world. With these key points in mind, perhaps it is time for a new approach?

Marijuana policy would be a good place to begin as 53 percent of the population supported legalization in a 2008 Angus Reid poll. Approximately 44 percent of Canadians have used cannabis at some point in their lives according to the Canadian Addiction Survey. Despite heavy enforcement, it remains the largest illegal drug market in the country with over two million citizens using cannabis on a recreational basis. A legal and regulated cannabis market would therefore eliminate the majority of all domestic drug trafficking in Canada.

Marijuana is not a benign substance, but it is substantially safer than alcohol. Assaults against peace officers, sexual assaults and incidents of domestic violence are frequently traced back to liquor consumption but rarely to cannabis consumption. Many of us know friends or colleagues whose personal and professional lives were ruined through alcohol abuse. Upstanding citizens have committed terrible crimes while drunk, and yet Canadians remain legally bound to abstain from using marijuana. It is time to present the public with a safer, legal alternative to alcohol.

Unfortunately, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police / Canadian Police Association joint resolution on drug abuse in 2002 insisted on the status quo. Now, seven years later, federal, provincial and municipal governments are broke. Police organizations are facing budget cuts, although leaders in law enforcement can still increase the long term financial health of their respective agencies by supporting an end to marijuana prohibition. It is the least painful concession to make, especially compared to wage rollbacks, hiring freezes and training cutbacks.

Critics might point to the Netherlands and offer anecdotal reports of a failed drug policy, but the facts show otherwise. The country adopted de facto decriminalization in 1976. Adults can buy personal amounts of marijuana in licensed outlets known as cannabis coffee shops. Alcohol is banned in the coffee shops and advertising is prohibited. Overall the system works well, although one problem is that the actual production and distribution of marijuana remains illegal. Organized crime is still involved in that part of the industry which is why it is important for Canada to legalize the entire supply chain.

The Netherlands has a cumulative lifetime incidence of cannabis use that is half that of the United States (19.4% versus 42.4%). Its cumulative incidence of cocaine use is one eighth that of the United States (1.9% versus 16.2%) according to data from the World Mental Health Surveys as compiled by the World Health Organization. The United States uses a tough justice approach with drug offenders, and yet per capita drug use rates, overdose deaths and HIV infections are significantly lower in the Netherlands. Why is this?

It appears the Netherlands’ tolerant attitude toward drugs has reduced the forbidden fruit effect. There is nothing rebellious about smoking marijuana in Amsterdam. In addition, they have separated the cannabis market from other drugs. Cashiers in the coffee shops don't lace marijuana with crystal meth or give away free samples of cocaine. In contrast, Canadians face a multitude of dangers when purchasing marijuana on our city streets.

At the end of the day, it is easy to look into our past and determine which social policies were just and effective. For example, contraception was legalized forty years ago with the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1968-1969. Prior to the Act it was illegal to advertise or sell condoms or other forms of birth control. The Pill was only prescribed to women who needed help regulating their menstrual cycle. In other words, it could only be used for medicinal purposes. (Does this kind of language sound familiar?) Today, few officers could imagine using criminal law to prevent the sale of birth control pills, in spite of their harmful side effects.

It is more difficult to look forty years into the future and consider how our children and our grandchildren will judge our actions as law enforcement officers. Institutional inertia is not a good enough reason to maintain a prohibition on marijuana or any other drug. Regulating cannabis would provide a safer alternative to alcohol, eliminate most domestic drug trafficking, generate tax revenue, free up police resources and reduce abuse by young people.

What are we waiting for?

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David Bratzer is a police officer in British Columbia, Canada, and he also manages the blog for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (http://copssaylegalize.blogspot.com). The opinions expressed in his essay are entirely his own.

LEAP speakers write about gangs, violence, children and drugs

LEAP speakers have published a couple of op-ed pieces recently. First, Jim Gierach has a guest column in the Southtown Star:

Al Capone-style bootlegging, hijacking, gang-banging, shooting and corrupting have Americans, their neighborhoods, their children and their lives by the throats, and nothing short of another Wickersham Commission can save them. The Wickersham Commission was created amid the violence of Prohibition, and it astutely recommended an end to Prohibition to stop the violence.

Judge James Gray organized a top ten list of drug policy goals and published it in the Daily Pilot.

Also, I have an article titled "The Failure of Drug Prohibition - A Law Enforcement Perspective." It was published in the June / July 2009 edition of Blue Line, which is Canada's national law enforcement magazine. (Note that the graph looked OK in print but it's blurry in the online version.)