Thursday, April 29, 2010
Former DEA to East Bay: Prohibition Doesn't Work
Law Enforcement & Crime David Downs — Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 11:10 AM
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition might be the abolitionists of our time. Protesting senseless death and wasted tax dollars, the national non-profit of police and others includes retired chiefs of police and the late Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman. Noted LEAP speaker Russ Jones is a Bay Area native and retired San Jose undercover narcotics detective who's coming back to Cali this week, on a mission to convert suburban conservatives to LEAP's cause.
Various Rotary clubs in places like Diablo Valley and Pleasanton invited Jones to speak in half-hour sessions where he will weave his riveting life story into the facts of the War on Drugs, and make a compelling case for ending prohibition in favor more sober regulation. In this series of micro-interviews with LN: Jones — who holds a Master's Degree in Education — discusses seeing a kid die over a baggie of pot, working Iran-Contra-era intelligence in South America, and some of the regrets he has from a history in what he calls a "War on People."
Legalization Nation: Why should people come out to these events? They can read up on LEAP's position on online. Is there anything better about hearing it in person?
Russ Jones: What brings people out is seeing it from a personal perspective. You can read the newspaper. You can read the articles, but when you have someone who has been on the front line and I was there from day one in 1970 when Richard Nixon came into office and he had proclaimed the war on drugs and I've been involved in one form or another for 50 years, so to be able to hear someone's story and be able to ask questions is what interests people.
Legalization Nation: Tell me about your background, how did you end up being a cop in San Jose?
Russ Jones: I was born in and raised in Los Gatos. After a tour of duty in Vietnam as a helicopter pilot I came and I actually was a sheriff in Alameda County first, but that was short-lived because I got hired by the City of San Jose and that was closer to home where I really wanted to be. I was a patrolman and got into the detective bureau and worked narcotics and got into a DEA task force.
Legalization Nation: This is in the '70s. What was the drug war like then?
Russ Jones: This was throughout the '70s. We did not have gang warfare. There were no drive-by shootings. There were no big proclamations about San Jose papers about drug seizures. I didn't originally see a real problem with drugs. We had drug prohibition but, then we had a war on people. I went on to the DEA task force and it was the same thing. We kept arresting more people and seizing more dope but of course nothing was changing. All we were doing was creating job openings for the next guy to step in and fill his shoes, whoever we arrested.
I left law enforcement and I worked intelligence. I made some connections and some contacts and I ended up in Central America working intelligence and my primary concern was small arms weapons trafficking during Iran-Contra, but I could not help but see that our government was looking the other way while drugs were being smuggled into the U.S.
Legalization Nation: How did your worldview develop, was it slowly or did you have an epiphany?
Russ Jones: I never had an epiphany. Mine was a slow, gradual change. In fact in 1986, '87 I was already speaking at Rotary Clubs on a very informal basis throughout San Jose and the Bay Area. Whenever people would hear about me and request me and I was already speaking out, and I wasn't very articulate about it then. It was more of a gut feeling.
I didn't quite have the facts and evidence, but in 1989 I traveled as a guest of the Soviet Union and Red China. I traveled throughout their countries and I worked with their law enforcement I worked with their narcotics detectives, and the Soviet Union would let me go out on the street and I saw drug dealing on the streets in Moscow, Leningrad and Yalta and I went on search warrants where they seized meth labs and saw rehabilitation programs.
And I came home and I said, "Iif the communist Soviet Union couldn't control drugs in the country through law enforcement means and through totalitarianism, then how are we as a free people ever going to?"
I always ask this in the crowd, I say, "Show me a drug free prison." We can't keep drugs out of prison. How more secure can you get than that? So prohibition doesn't work. Prohibition has never worked. The first historical prohibition event was one cop, two people and one apple tree — and it didn't work.
Russ Jones speaks Friday, April 30 at the Rotary of Pleasanton North followed by a talk Saturday May 1 at Cabrillo College's Annual Social Justice Conference. The next micro-interview will run Friday on Legalization Nation.
Comments (5)
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The DEA agents are not lying. The ones that are lying are the ones that want pot to remain prohibited.
And is pot prohibition unconstitutional?
Find out for yourself @ http://satanssmoke.us
like
dislikeAMERICAN DEATHS CAUSED BY DRUGS
TOBACCO ..................... 400,000
ALCOHOL ...................... 100,000
ALL LEGAL DRUGS .............20,000
ALL ILLEGAL DRUGS ..........15,000
CAFFEINE .........................2,000
ASPIRIN ...........................500
MARIJUANA ...................... 0
MARIJUANA ARREST Per Year.... ABOUT 800,000
The numbers speak volumes!?
statistics furnished by Dr. Nathan, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.
There are certain hard scientific facts that would support the Legalization, but the "orthodox" addiction medicine establishment, being anything but independent from tight DEA control, is not nearly as forthcoming with this information as it should be for scientific integrity. As opposed to alcohol and most controlled prescription drugs, marijuana use has not been associated with one single case of fatal overdose, marijuana does not have a documented physical withdrawal, and its addiction liability is only 3% compared with 10% for alcohol and around 20% for opiates, both legal (morphine) and illegal (heroin). Cannabis use has been shown to reduce the violent crime (Substance Abuse: A Comprehensive Textbook, 4-th Edition, page 267). After working for years with seriously drug-addicted patients in Philadelphia, PA, I understand the scientific fallacy of classifying cannabis in the same group with heroin and cocaine. The so-called "gateway drug" theory is by now completely discredited, but this scientific fact is not widely advertised or known. At the same time, the medicinal properties of marijuana plant are by now so clearly beyond dispute, that even the "opponents" are no longer fully comfortable in repeating the old nonsense that the plant has "no medical benefits". Between 74 and 81% of Americans support legalization of marijuana for at least medical use. I know that whatever decision people make in the end (and I hope it will be to legalize this natural medicinal plant), they should make it with all the facts at their disposal.
Perhaps the whole situation regarding the legalization of marijuana can be summarized by quoting a true expert whose dedication to scientific truth is stronger than any disinformation the "opponents" can possibly offer:
"Cannabis will one day be seen as a wonder drug, as was penicillin in the 1940s. Like penicillin, herbal marijuana is remarkably nontoxic, has a wide range of therapeutic applications and would be quite inexpensive if it were legal". Dr. Lester Grinspoon, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Los Angeles Times, May 5, 2006
Another voice of reason in a growing chorus. However, he's not a "former DEA", but rather a former San Jose cop who served on a DEA task force.
Prohibition is a sickening horror and the ocean of incompetence, corruption and human wreckage it has left in its wake is almost endless.
Prohibition has decimated generations and criminalized millions for a behavior which is entwined in human existence, and for what other purpose than to uphold the defunct and corrupt thinking of a minority of misguided, self-righteous Neo-Puritans and degenerate demagogues who wish nothing but unadulterated destruction on the rest of us.
Based on the unalterable proviso that drug use is essentially an unstoppable and ongoing human behavior which has been with us since the dawn of time, any serious reading on the subject of past attempts at any form of drug prohibition would point most normal thinking people in the direction of sensible regulation.
By its very nature, prohibition cannot fail but create a vast increase in criminal activity, and rather than preventing society from descending into anarchy, it actually fosters an anarchic business model - the international Drug Trade. Any decisions concerning quality, quantity, distribution and availability are then left in the hands of unregulated, anonymous, ruthless drug dealers, who are interested only in the huge profits involved.
Many of us have now, finally, wised up to the fact that the best avenue towards realistically dealing with drug use and addiction is through proper regulation which is what we already do with alcohol & tobacco, clearly two of our most dangerous mood altering substances. But for those of you whose ignorant and irrational minds traverse a fantasy plane of existence, you will no doubt remain sorely upset with any type of solution that does not seem to lead to the absurd and unattainable utopia of a drug free society.
There is an irrefutable connection between drug prohibition and the crime, corruption, disease and death it causes. If you are not capable of understanding this connection then maybe you're using something far stronger than the rest of us. Anybody 'halfway bright', and who's not psychologically challenged, should be capable of understanding that it is not simply the demand for drugs that creates the mayhem, it is our refusal to allow legal businesses to meet that demand.
No amount of money, police powers, weaponry, diminution of rights and liberties, wishful thinking or pseudo-science will make our streets safer, only an end to prohibition can do that. How much longer are you willing to foolishly risk your own survival by continuing to ignore the obvious, historically confirmed solution?
If you still support the kool aid mass suicide cult of prohibition, and erroneously believe that you can win a war without logic and practical solutions, then prepare yourself for even more death, corruption, terrorism, sickness, imprisonment, unemployment, foreclosed homes, and the complete loss of the rule of law and the Bill of Rights.
"A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded."
Abraham Lincoln
The only thing prohibition successfully does is prohibit regulation & taxation while turning even our schools and prisons into black markets for drugs. Regulation would mean the opposite!
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