Breaking Rank by Norm Stamper Page B

program in Seattle. I replaced it with—nothing. We were fortunate in that city to have a public school system teaching a comprehensive “healthy living” curriculum in the elementary grades, which included a superb drug prevention/education component. Based on the work of J. David Hawkins and Richard F. Catalano at the University of Washington, it remains a model for the nation.
    I would insist on the enforcement of existing criminal laws and policies against street dealing, furnishing to minors, driving under the influence, or invoking drug influence as a criminal defense. Consequently, if someone chose to take a drug, anything they did under its effects would be 100 percent their responsibility, which would make them 100 percent accountable for any and all results. If they rob a bank, drive high (or low), furnish drugs (including alcohol) to a minor, smack their neighbor upside the head, slip Ecstasy into their date’s drink, they should be arrested, charged, and prosecuted. If convicted, they should be forced to pay a fair but painful price for their criminal irresponsibility. Moreover, if they’ve injured or killed someone in the process, they should be slapped with civil damages. I’ve never understood defense attorneys who argue, “Gee, your honor, my client was so loaded she didn’t know what she was doing.”

    But what of the undeniable harm caused by drugs? Wouldn’t legalization make things worse? Who knows? We’re too scared to approach the subject in a calm, open, levelheaded manner. But, I’ll tell you what I think would happen: there would be a slight increase in drug use, and no measurable increase in drug abuse. Experiences in Portugal and the Netherlands suggest that decriminalization does not unleash a mad rush for drugs among the currently abstemious.
    In the 1970s, at the time New York governor Nelson Rockefeller was crafting his eponymous drug laws, Amsterdam, not unlike New York City, was witnessing huge increases in heroin use. And in socially upsetting, often violent incidents as hypes fought to obtain and keep their dope. Unlike New York’s officials, however, the Dutch set about a rational, compassionate civic dialogue on what to do about the country’s drug problem.
    Recently, I met in Seattle with about a dozen police and prosecutorial officials from The Hague. They told me that while Dutch law enforcement continues to zealously pursue drug-related organized crime, it treats all drug-dependency as an illness, not a criminal offense. Today, marijuana may be cultivated, sold in cafes (in small quantities), and used (responsibly). Methadone is available on demand, heroin by prescription. Bottom line, according to both my foreign colleagues and the research of this nation’s Drug Policy Alliance? Drug use, in every single category, is lower in the Netherlands than in the U.S.
    Handled properly, legalization would improve the overall health—physical, emotional, and financial—of our society and our neighborhoods.
    How? For starters, it would put illicit traffickers out of business, and their obscene, untaxed profits would evaporate overnight. Dealers and runners and mules and nine-year-old lookouts would be off street corners, and out of the line of fire. It would take much of the fun out of being a gang member (gang-banging being synonymous these days with drug dealing, “markets” synonymous with “turf”). Firearms, big, rapid-fire firearms, employed in the expansion and protection of drug markets would go quiet—a welcome change for peace-loving citizens, and the nation’s cops. Drug raids on the wrong house would be a thing of the past. *
    And since most junkies finance their addiction by breaking into your home, stealing or prowling your car, or mugging you on the street, crimes like burglary, robbery, auto theft, and car prowl would drop. A lot. Justice Department studies linking patterns of property