Views » November 14, 2005 » Web Only

Cops and Harm Reduction Hotties, Oh My!

By Silja J.A. Talvi

You wouldn’t have expected it during any other week, but for a few days in mid-November, pot smoke wafted throughout the hallways and meeting rooms of the Westin Hotel in Long Beach, California.

Upscale hotels aren’t typical hangouts for barefoot young hippies, recovering addicts, or a handful of self-described “harm reduction hotties” toting their own 12-month calendar and information about how to minimize disease and other damage from injection drug use.

But here they were, rubbing elbows with retired police chiefs, academics, addiction specialists, attorneys, non-profit directors, religious leaders and formerly incarcerated prisoners.

The occasion? The 2005 International Drug Policy Reform Conference, organized by the Drug Policy Alliance. With nearly 1,000 registrants from all over the United States and many parts of Europe, Latin America and Canada, the event offered attendees nearly 75 sessions over three days, on topics such as harm reduction psychotherapy, rogue anti-drug task forces, and cutting edge cannabis research in Canada.

The group causing the biggest buzz, by far, were the representatives of LEAP, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which calls for an end to the drug war altogether. In the three years since the group’s founding, the not-for-profit has cultivated an impressive advisory board with the likes of former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson; Joseph McNamara, San Jose’s former police chief; Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell; former Seattle police chief Norm Stamper and U.S. District Court Judge John Kane.

Years ago, police officers would only have mingled with this crowd as undercover agents, but here, burly LEAPers were treated like celebrities in their own right, easy to spot because of their buzz cuts, cowboy hats and/or extremely large lettering on their brightly colored t-shirts: “Cops Say Legalize Drugs. Ask Me Why.”

A LEAP panel discussion yielded shocking stories from the drug war front lines. Admissions from LEAP Director and former New Jersey state police lieutenant Jack Cole, a 26-year veteran and narc, surprised even this drug war-savvy crowd. “We lied regularly about the numbers of drugs we were seizing,” Cole said, explaining that if his fellow officers were lucky enough to bust someone for one ounce of cocaine, they’d immediately look for a cutting agent to double the amount of the seizure. And if a seizure’s street value stood at $1,500, the cops would bump it up to $20,000. “Who’s to question it,” Cole asked.

Other panelists spoke of leaving the profession because they couldn’t stomach the lies or the corruption, especially when they noticed fellow cops striking deals with the people they were supposed to arrest, selling and smuggling drugs, and buying cars, trips and multi-million dollar homes with their proceeds.

Garry Jones, a retired senior lieutenant who has worked in prisons across the country, including the federal system, recalled instances where people would come to prison on visiting day just to buy drugs from the inmates. “My [colleagues] were bringing drugs inside the prisons, making big money … There was no way to escape drugs in prison. You couldn’t do it yesterday and you can’t do it today,” he said.

Jones said that he was particularly troubled to see ever-increasing numbers of African American men being locked up, often on drug-related offenses.

In this session and many others, plenty of talk was devoted to the plight of the poor people and people of color who make up the vast majority of American jail and prison populations. The few formerly incarcerated men in attendance echoed the sentiment that it felt good to hear so many people acknowledging the seriousness of the problem.

But if there’s one thing that prison teaches longtime inmates, it’s that there’s no point to talking if you can’t back it up. People who have been locked up tend to have little patience for bullshit, even if it’s well-intentioned and comes from a gentle medical marijuana activist selling colorful, close-up pictures of fat buds, or from red-eyed college students passing joints on the hotel patio.

“Building a movement with integrity has to be about more than weed,” says Dorsey Nunn during the conference’s only session by and about the formerly incarcerated.

Nunn, a former crack addict and prisoner, is now the program director of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, and co-founder of an advocacy group, All of Us or None.

“There are a lot of people advocating on our behalf,” he said, “but are we allowed to come and sit at that table with them?” Nunn’s question was straight and to the point, but the sentiment is still relatively new within the drug policy reform movement.

Just as the drug policy reform movement has benefited from the insight and visible presence of LEAPers, so, too, can it be made more powerful and effective if it creates more seats at the table for the men and women who have lived through this brutal war, and experienced it from the inside out.

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• Reader Comments

  I’m so hip to the cause, I joined “LEAP” and posted its link in my blog post But “They’ll bust you for smoking a joint!”

  Posted by neilemac on Nov 15, 2005 at 7:39 AM

  While i am in favor of updating the laws against soft drugs (repealing them, really), i am surprised that more people are not against it, especially here.

  Isn’t the liberal ideal a state that protects its citizens, even against themselves? Isn’t that why we “need” social security (we as individuals are not responsible enough to save on our own), for instance?

  Further, when people start buying via legitimate outlets such substances as pot, who will lead the vanguard as it becomes clear (duh) that smoking it causes cancer?

  So i wonder why liberals in particular are not jumping on the bandwagon of protecting us from ourselves. Many precedents exist, from seatbelt/helmet laws (very analgeous, if you ask me) to SS to anti-prostitution laws, etc. Not to mention the broad support of anti-smoking laws in general. . .

  But then again, maybe many (most?) posters here have “a dog in the fight”?

  Posted by wolf on Nov 15, 2005 at 11:33 AM

  Cancer from pot is another scare tactic from an unifomed poster. As research will attest, cannabis does not have to be smoked. Here’s a little tidbit to get your education started.
  Sativex, a pulverized, liquefied, and doctor-prescribed form of marijuana, has the potential to transform the drug-war landscape.
  Besides,” fear reverses all intelligent processes!” (Leland Powers)
  [According to Gore Vidal, there isn’t a difference between the Republicans (Conservatives) and Democrats (Liberals); they’re two wings of the same party.] Now relax and have a toke, it’s great for what ails you. namasté

  Posted by neilemac on Nov 15, 2005 at 12:05 PM

  While it is true that pot does not NEED to be smoked to be used, i rather doubt this is relevant. From what i can tell, the vast majority of people who actually use pot do so by smoking it, with a relatively small minority ingesting it in food.

  While i am against “scare tactics” i prefer accuracy to wishful thinking. Clearly pot not only contributes to cancer, but to other diseases as well (emphysema comes to mind).

  Discussions that start as neilemac’s post does remind me of the cigerette companies of the old days.

  BTW - i do not wear a uniform! :)

  Posted by wolf on Nov 15, 2005 at 1:22 PM

  Wolf, you must have missed the recent Univ. of Colo. study on marijuana and cancer. It turns out that the THC actually counteracts any cancer causing agents in the smoke.

  As a “liberal” you’ve got us all wrong. We don’t much like heavyhanded governments as to liberties as much as the next person, particularily drug laws which seem so fascist in practice. The drug war has been predominantly conservative driven.

  We care about society as a whole. When we incarcerate drug users to the extent that America has the largest prison system on earth, something is not quite right for our society. The cost of running such a system is a burden to our economy as well as the questionable practice of rooming drug users with hard criminals is probably only going to produce higher hard crime later.

  As to seat belts/helmet laws it’s simply if a road accident occurs we don’t want the stupidity of the person who refuses to protect themselves to then come back and sue for the greater injuries they’ve incurred. And it is stupidity as all the stats show that protection saves lives and reduces injuries. And all that puts more stress and wasted dollars into the economy and society.

  And your observations of social security is off. When our capitalist society nearly came to collapse in the great depression something was needed for all those older folk no longer wanted by capitalism. Social security is there in case our society once again plunges into the abyss. And looking at how the Bushies have run the debt into the stratosphere, I wouldn’t be suprised if once again we hit another depression wall in the near future.

  Also I may remind you that retirement plans were non-existent for anyone but the rich prior to WWII, but wait a second, looks like that is becoming the truth again. Now it’s all about 401Ks based on the stock market. We saw how retired workers re-rentered the job market when the stock market turned sour in 2002 because those 401Ks were becoming losers, what if we have another 1929 crash/depression? Social security will be life savers for those that did indeed save for retirement through 401K plans that get slammed by the stock market. 401Ks are nothing more than a gamble on the market, not a savings plan, but that’s what we’ve been told/forced to do in the last two decades.

  All you have to do is look at Enron and other companies to see how fast a “retirement plan” such as 401K can vanish in the wink of an eye. Or check out the retirement plans at any major airline, oops they aren’t there anymore. Those are now in the governments hand as a “bailout” but now are at reduced benefits. Corporate promises for workers futures are increasingly turning out to be outright lies.

  Do I think social security is great? No, but I’ll trust the baby boomer voters as they head into the AARP age to vote heavily to make sure SS is still there in some form. Much more than I can trust corporate retirement plans. SS is not going to make any retiree rich, but it will at least make sure people can still eat. Oh, that’s so “liberal” of me, caring about individuals that are too old to work after getting shafted by a corporate retirement plan.

  Posted by Jon B on Nov 15, 2005 at 1:31 PM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 37 posts.

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