Joseph D. McNamara writes:
California voters have a chance on this November's ballot to bring common sense to law enforcement by legalizing marijuana for adults. As San Jose's retired chief of police and a cop with 35 years experience on the front lines in the war on marijuana, I'm voting yes.
He cites the arguments of opponents of Prop. 19 and shoots them down.Regarding the claim that Mexican cartel violence would increase, McNamara says:
No one today shoots up the local neighborhood to compete in the beer market. The federal Drug Enforcement Administration estimates that Mexican cartels derive more than 60 percent of their profits from marijuana. How much did the cartels make last year dealing in Budweiser, Corona or Dos Equis? Legalization would seriously cripple their operations. With more than 20,000 people in Mexico killed in the past three years in drug turf battles, which are spreading north of the border, undercutting the cartels is an urgent priority for both Mexicans' and Americans' safety.
Regarding the lack of political courage and the vested interests of certain groups:
The same professional politicians who recklessly caused huge budget deficits predictably are taking an irresponsible position of opposing the "evil" of cannabis legalization, just as they opposed California voters' decision a decade ago to legalize medical marijuana. The California Police Chiefs Association, of which I have been a member for 34 years, is also in opposition. Personally, I have never even smoked a cigarette, let alone taken a hit from a bong, and while I have great respect for the police chiefs, I wouldn't want to live in a country where it is a crime to behave contrary to the way cops think we should.
That perhaps brings up the most significant and least considered cost of criminalizing marijuana - turning people into criminals for behavior of which we disapprove, even though it doesn't take others' property or endanger their safety. It is worth remembering that our last three presidents, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, would have been stigmatized for life and never would have become presidents if they had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and been busted for pot during their reckless youthful days. Countless other Americans weren't so lucky. California voters have an opportunity in November to return reason to our state by decriminalizing adult use of marijuana.
Politicians become irrelevant when they do not have the courage to look at facts and recognize the value of changes in laws that - in this case, most certainly - were bad laws to begin with - born of corruption and collusion with favored corporate entities. Sort of like how we can't get to the point of health care reform in the U.S. - because political institutions have been so corrupted by the corporate cartels called health insurance and the pharmaceutical industry.
McNamara is joined by other members of LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition)
From left, Stephen Downing, retired deputy chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, William Fox, former deputy Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, former Torrance Police Department beat officer and drug identification expert Kyle Kazan, at podium; and retired Orange County Superior Court Judge Jim Gray, right. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
Their statement was noted in the Press Democrat
Current law enforcement officials are obligated to support laws and are ethically unable to oppose it in public, but retired officers can speak out, said McNamara, who is now a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute.
“We’re pushing police into a war they didn’t declare and they can’t win, and that comes at so much cost to taxpayers and society,” he said.
Nationally, President Barack Obama’s director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, Gil Kerlikowske, spoke out against the proposed law. Nine former Drug Enforcement Administration bosses wrote in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder that legalizing the drug threatens federal authority.
Federally authority should be threatened when it insists on bad laws.
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