 | NORML News: Police Against Prohibition |
 Members of the international group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition recently toured New Zealand, spreading the word about the perils of drug prohibition. STEPHEN MCINTYRE reports on the tour and interviews former undercover cop Jack Cole for NORML News Winter 2004.
Hard on the heels of Clifford Thornton's visit here over the summer, in April three speakers from LEAP - Law Enforcement Against Prohibition - spent two weeks touring the country speaking to the media, the public, and to politicians from both sides of the House.
They were: Jack Cole, a Detective Lieutenant who spent 26 years with the New Jersey State Police; Eleanor Schockett, a former Judge from Miami; and Eddie Ellison, a Detective Chief Superintendent and the Operational Chief for three years of Scotland Yard's Drug Squad.
The LEAP tour was an unqualified success thanks to the calibre of the speakers as well as the sheer range and number of engagements they undertook.
Twenty different Rotary groups from Coromandel to Dunedin were addressed; public meetings were held in the Christchurch and Dunedin Community Law centers, Canterbury University, Bay of Plenty Poly- technic, Ponsonby Unitarian Church, Christchurch Media Club, and even prohibitionist Nick Smith's electorate office in Nelson. Even the Christian radio station Rhema broadcast interviews with them, while Eddie Ellison appeared on both The Breakfast Show and Havoc's Quality Time.
Both the Sunday-Star Times and The Listener ran pieces spelling out the aims of LEAP. After Eddie Ellison's talk at Fielding Rotary, the Manawatu Stand- ard ran an strongly pro-reform editorial proclaiming his argument for legalisation ieeminently reasonableln and stating that the prohibitionist side iifails to come to grips with the dynamics of supply and demand, just as it did in the US in the 1920s in relation to alcohol.la Government officials also got to hear the facts from LEAP. Meetings were held with policy and crime prevention analysts from the Ministry of Justice; Damien O'Connor (Associate Minister of Health); Justice and Electoral Committee chair Tim Barnett; MPs Russell Fairbrother (Labour); Rodney Hyde (ACT); and Green MPs Nandor Tanczos, Rod Donald, Jeanette Fitzsimmons and Mike Ward. Most signifi- cantly perhaps LEAP founding member Jack Cole got to talk face to face with both Greg O'Connor from the Police Association (who, like Jack, is a former undercover cop) and New Zealand's own drug czar Jim Anderton.
Jack says the meeting went well: "When we first got there he said‚ I've got another meeting to attend; I only have ten minutes to give you.' I said ‚that's fine' and we started talking and ninety minutes later I said‚ You probably should get to your other meeting'. So he sat and he listened for an hour and a half, and so did his chief of staff. It was very promising".
NORML News: How's the reception been so far in New Zealand? Jack Cole: Wonderful. We're reaching about eighty percent of our audience, regardless of how conservative they are, and sometimes we're getting one hundred percent of them onboard. I've had standing ovations from Rotaries by getting up in front of them and saying ‚we have to legalise all drugs so we can regulate them, control them and keep them out of the hands of our children'.
How do you explain such a high success rate? It mainly has to do with who the messenger is. LEAP members are all police officers, judges, prosecutors, corrections officers, probation and parole people. We have unassailable credibility in speaking out on ending this terrible war on drugs.
But your proposals sound so free and liberal. How do you convince the conservative element? It only seems liberal and free when you let the drug warriors define what you mean by legalisation. When a drug warrior defines it they say ‚those reformers want us to legalise drugs which means we should all go out and party', and of course that's not true at all. When we define legalisation we mean regulat- ing and therefore controlling drugs. We know you cannot control or regulate anything that is illegal. Right now illegal drugs are in the hands of the criminal market and so criminals are in control. None of the good people have anything to do with it, so naturally we have the worst policy going.
And the current law just helps create a powerful magnet for organised crime doesn't it? The policy we have today is donating $400 billion a year to local gangsters, murderers and terrorists because that's how much is spent on illegal drugs all around the world.
The moment we ended alcohol prohibition in 1933 Al Capone was instantly out of a job - that ended everything for him. This is what we're talking about with legalising all drugs - let's put the organised criminals out of a job.
What do police say about drug legalisation? I hear police officers saying‚ if you legalise drugs then I'll be out of a job' and so I say 'no you won't be out of a job'.
Every day the police say that they can't solve all these violent crimes because they're just too taxed and need more officers. The fact is under regulation they'd have more officers doing more of the jobs we'd want them to be doing.
What turned you around on this matter? I spent 26 years in the state police and after three years of working undercover narcotics I realised that the sort of people I was working on weren't demons with horns growing out of their heads.
They were humans like the rest of us who chose to put stuff into their bodies that I didn't choose to put into mine, and because of that they were going to jail. That was a bit of an epiphany for me.
Do you see any chance of a let up in present US drug policy? Eighteen months ago I was one of the most cynical and negative people around. When we started our speaker's bureau I wasn't sure how much good we could do and was thinking that at best we could convince ten percent of people about the rightness of our cause. After speaking now over two hundred to conserva- tive groups I see we're actually convincing between eighty and a hundred percent of our audiences! It's gone far beyond my wildest hopes.
I've learned that the public are more than ready to end drug prohibition. I just have to tell them the truth about what's been going on.
People say ‚this is so logical, why haven't I heard it before?' The answer to that is the drug warriors, having had the pulpit for thirty-four years, are lying through their teeth about what's going on. By talking about ending drug prohibition we mean a revolution that will change the face of the world.
The drug war reaches into every facet of life.
Convincing the general public's one thing. Surely politicians are another matter entirely? Politicians never lead, they always follow. When they do decide to make a new law it's because they've come to the conclusion that they'll get more votes than they'll lose by making that law. As we tell the public the truth about the drug war and when the public know this and get really incensed then they start writing to their legislators and demanding change. When we start to put that kind of push on them then the legislators see that they're more likely to get back in office by changing the law than by keeping it the way it is. Their goal is always to stay in office. The first thing though is to understand that you can make a change.
Even a small country like New Zealand? You could make a phenomenal difference! Your country has already made a big move by legalising sex-workers and it's just one step from there because the argument is exactly the same. New Zealanders have the sense to see the logic with one and so they'll see the logic with the other. Can you imagine what difference it would make if you were the first country in the world to legalise drugs? Everyone would be pointing at New Zealand and saying 'if they can do it, so can we.' You could have a major impact. No country has legalised drugs, although many want to.
What sort of things did you say to Jim Anderton? Well we spoke for about an hour and a half. When I talk to those folks I try not to alienate anyone. I told him, as I tell everyone, that we came here to talk about drug policy reform. We're not saying that cops are the bad guys - after all I was a cop all those years! I'm here to say that the policy is bad and we need to change it. We're not trying to tell you how to do anything; what we're looking to do is get the policy on the table for discussion. But what I also said to Mr Anderton was that I'm here to give you a warning: don't keep following us down this path of prohibition because it's a path of destruction. It's a disaster.
The next visit from a LEAP speaker is being planned for sometime later in the year - possibly by Judge James Gray who presides over the civil trial calendar for the Superior Court of Orange County, an interview with whom can be found in the latest issue of Cannabis Culture magazine.
To learn more about LEAP, go to www.leap.cc
Next issue: Part 2 of this interview. You can also read an extended version on our website (if you email Chris and ask him to find it and email it to webmaster AT norml DOT org DOT nz)
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