High Noon: Sherif Bill Masters goes Gunning for the War on Drugs

http://www.westword.com/issues/current/feature.html

<SNIP>
A shade of weariness creeps into his voice as he heads back to Telluride. The sheriff has every intention of seeing this case go down -- meth is meth, after all, and he's sworn to uphold the law. "If we come across a situation that we think is dangerous to the community, we're going to take action," he says. But doing your job isn't the same as believing in the cause, and when it comes to the drug war, Bill Masters is no longer a true believer.

His disillusionment has been shaped by his experiences in the trenches of that war as it's been played out in the Rocky Mountain fantasy camp known as Telluride.
</SNIP>

I think he may be one of the first American Law Enforcement Officers to 'get it' and end the war on (some) durgs.

A columnist I like in the Hollinger (ex-Conrad Black) newspapers, a rarity.

http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=612c2b1e-84e5-4796-9aea-283666355900
("die on the order paper" means become non-existent when the legislative session ends without it being passed, just in case the expression is foreign)

A welcome flame out: The Liberals' bill to decriminalize marijuana was bad policy and deserves to die on the order paper.

Dan Gardner
The Ottawa Citizen
May 15, 2004

Barring unforeseen plot twists, a federal election will soon be called and a bill decriminalizing marijuana will go up in flames. As a supporter of marijuana reform, I say, goodbye and good riddance. Decriminalization was not only bad public policy, the bill's production and presentation were deceptive, even fraudulent -- as demonstrated by documents obtained under the Access to Information Act.

... Decriminalization did, however, raise the possibility of what criminologists call "net-widening" -- when punishments are reduced, but not eliminated, lesser offenders who would have got only warnings from the police are no longer let off. In effect, lighter punishment causes more enforcement, which is precisely what happened in South Australia when marijuana was decriminalized in 1987.

... Polls show a clear majority of Canadians favour either decriminalization or legalization, and they do so because they want less punishment or none at all. They want liberal reform, in other words. And that's certainly how the government pitched decriminalization, primarily by talking up the unfairness of giving young people criminal records. The media bit hard: Canada was praised as a hip young thing in The New Yorker and pictured on the cover of The Economist as a moose in sunglasses.

But behind closed doors, the justice department described decriminalization very differently. In a draft cabinet submission labelled "secret," Australian experience with decriminalization is cited as evidence that decriminalization in Canada "will likely increase enforcement" -- a conclusion listed under the heading "Advantages."

This moose wears sunglasses and carries a nightstick.

From the article about Sheriff Masters:

The only path out of the mess, he contends, is to take the profits out of the illegal drug trade through decriminalization and, ultimately, legalization. Treat drug use as a health issue, not a criminal offense, borrowing from the lessons learned through treatment and education programs launched in Europe, Canada and even America's own distant past.

Legalization, and not "decriminalization" of the kind proposed in Canada, is the only way to get out of the trap of punishing people for doing things that harm them.

We don't need to frame the issue in "libertarian" mode --

"The central mistake is to treat all moral issues as if they should be political issues," says Ari Armstrong, a Libertarian activist ... .

-- to make that point.

A lot of people genuinely care about the harm that drug users suffer -- drug use isn't a "moral" issue to them/us in the sense that they/we regard drug use as "immoral". What they/we regard as "immoral" is abandoning people to that harm, and the law is indeed an instrument for protecting people from harm. The problematic aspect of drug laws is that they cause people harm for harming themselves.

A "mind your own business" admonition fails to address those concerns. And in my opinion, it is counter-productive to frame the issue that way in opposing criminalization (and that is not in fact what I perceive Masters to be saying).

.

See also:

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition

Current and former members of law enforcement who support drug regulation rather than prohibition.

http://www.leap.cc/

Both may be indicators that our law enforcement individuals are 'getting it'.