VLVL Former drug warriors now agree with Pynchon re drug prohibition

[pynchonoid]

August 29, 2003
Altered Minds
Former drug warriors turn against prohibition. 
[by] Jacob Sullum

[...]  Forest Tennant  [...]  A physician and
researcher with a doctorate in public health, he
operated a chain of drug treatment clinics in
California and was widely cited and consulted as an
expert on drug abuse and addiction. 

Tennant has published hundreds of scientific articles,
testified in high-profile trials, and advised the NFL,
NASCAR, the California Highway Patrol, the Food and
Drug Administration, and the National Institute on
Drug Abuse. The Times described him as "riding at the
forefront of the current wave of anti-drug sentiment."


So when the folks at the Hoover Institution who
produce the PBS show Uncommon Knowledge were looking
for someone to debate drug policy with me, Tennant
must have seemed like a natural choice. Imagine their
surprise when he ended up agreeing that the war on
drugs has been a disastrous mistake. 

[...] Tennant says the September 11 attacks had a big
impact on his thinking about drug policy. He
recognized that the connection between drugs and
terrorism, cited by the government to justify the war
on drugs, was actually a consequence of prohibition,
which makes the drug trade a highly lucrative business
and delivers it into the hands of criminals. "We've
got to take the profit out of it," he says. 

Tennant is also troubled by the impact that U.S. drug
policy has on countries such as Colombia, where it
empowers thugs and guerillas, sows violence,
undermines law and order, and wreaks havoc on the
economy. And he believes the war on drugs has fostered
systemic corruption in the United States. "We need to
try something different," he says. 

As a first step, Tennant would like to see states
experiment with various approaches to drug policy,
including decriminalization of marijuana, a drug he
considers much less dangerous than the government
claims. He thinks it plausible that in 15 years
Americans will be able to purchase pot legally. 

This is the same man who made waves in the 1980s by
promoting a home eye test kit to help parents detect
and deter drug use by their children. Parents were
supposed to administer the test every few days,
beginning when their kids were about 7. No one could
have accused Forest Tennant of being soft on drugs. 

Tennant is by no means the only former drug warrior
who has become a critic of current policy. Law
Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), founded last
year, includes more than 400 current and former police
officers, judges, federal agents, prosecutors, and
parole, probation, and corrections officers. The group
is headed by Jack Cole, a 26-year veteran of the New
Jersey State Police who worked in narcotics
enforcement for 14 years. 

"After three decades of fueling the US war on drugs
with over half a trillion tax dollars and increasingly
punitive policies," says LEAP, "illicit drugs are
easier to get, cheaper, and more potent than they were
30 years ago. While our court system is choked with
ever-increasing drug prosecutions, our quadrupled
prison population has made building prisons this
nation's fastest growing industry...Meanwhile people
are dying in our streets and drug barons grow richer
than ever before. We must change these policies." 

As an attorney quoted in a recent Seattle Weekly
article about LEAP observed, "The news story is not
that the war on drugs has failed. It's who's saying it
now." 

Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason and the
author of Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use
(Tarcher/Putnam).



<http://www.reason.com/sullum/082903.shtml>

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