EricESterling

First, I believed in marijuana decriminalization before I started working for Congress. (In law school in 1976 I testified for marijuana decriminalization before the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. President Jimmy Carter supported marijuana decriminalization in 1977. This was not a strange position to hold.)

I started working as a lawyer for Congress in 1979 when there was still a bill to decriminalize marijuana pending in Congress. Members of Congress and the Judiciary Committee were my clients. My job was to serve them. Reagan came in in 1981, and the war on drug rhetoric heated up dramatically. I wasn't comfortable with that, but I had to serve my clients. (When I was a criminal defense lawyer defending accused burglars did not make me an advocate for burglary!)

By 1984 I was working on a bill to make robbery of pharmacies a federal crime. I realized that persons addicted to opiates or who wanted to sell opiates would rob pharmacies because the inventory included high quality drugs packaged so that users knew what they were getting and how strong. This was more dependable and thus more valuable than heroin sold in packets on the street. If drugs were legally available to people with addiction, pharmacies would not be robbery targets very often. So I saw a different logic in how legislation should be developed.

I also saw the politics around drug enforcement and feeding drug hysteria and found it disgusting.

This was during the time that AIDS was first being identified with injection drug use. At a hearing I heard a Member of Congress say that the AIDS problem will go away by itself because all the heroin addicts would die from AIDS, implying that this would be a good thing. I was revolted by this attitude.

I came to feel that I had enough knowledge and sufficient skills to work full time trying to legalize drugs and end the drug war. I found funding in 1988 and started the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation in January 1989.

(3) When marijuana is legalized, the cops will lose their "Swiss army knife" for getting into a suspect's car. If a cop has a hunch that someone they've stopped has stolen property, burglar's tools, illegal weapons, evidence of a crime, or drugs, they might not have probable cause to make an arrest and they may not have the basis for a search to seize something that is "in plain view." They may make an illegal search. The law requires the evidence seized illegally not be admitted into evidence. But if the cop says, "I smelled burning marijuana, and therefore had probable cause to search for ILLEGAL marijuana," the search is legal, even if no marijuana is found, and the other evidence is found. How credible is the suspect who says, "No, I wasn't smoking marijuana! The cop is lying, he's made it up!" The suspect may be telling the truth, but in the balance between he said/she said, the cop will usually win. When marijuana is legal, this tool to justify illegal searches will be lost to the police.

I am certain that many more politicians support drug policy reform than do so publicly. I have had several politicians tell me this privately.

Almost every politician wants to be re-elected. They know that campaigning is hard and tricky. They pick themes that they identify with: "pro-environment," "anti-tax," "pro-Israel," "anti-abortion," "pro-schools," etc. They don't want their campaigns to be distracted or diverted away from issues the issues they are choosing to run on. They don't want to face questions at a campaign stop about campaign irrelevancies. But when lots of ordinary citizens start asking the question, it is no longer an irrelevancy.

Encourage everyone you know in your district to write to your local, state and U.S. reps and Senators about the drug policy you want.

At this point, there is little political risk to simply ignoring drug issues, but being pro-reform is highly newsworthy. It might not be a problem, and has not been any kind of a problem of Members or former Members like Ron Paul, Barney Frank, Steve Cohen, Jared Polis, Dana Rohrabacher.

The way to get more support is to make it safe in your district. Write letters to the editor of local papers supporting drug policy reform issues. Write after there are news stories. Use talk radio. Encourage discussions on drug policy. Provide financial support to Students for Sensible Drug Policy (do to their webpage and click Donate) and encourage the support of chapters on campuses in your district.

Every time U.S. Rep Steve Cohen (D-Tennessee) gives the Attorney General or some other witness a speech about legalizing marijuana, I make a small contribution to his campaign and write a note that tells him why.

This is not complicated!

Dear Bootnish, I have no doubt you will, as far as marijuana goes. If you live in Colorado and Washington, you will be very close to that. If the U.S. Department of Justice cooperates with Colorado and Washington next year when legal marijuana production and sales are rolled out, you will be pretty close to that.

Sadly, it is likely that there are other laws that you break, perhaps unknowingly. But I admire your desire to be as law abiding as possible. That is really commendable.

1. Only about 600,000 cops in U.S.
2. Government has had jails, brigs and prisons as a government duty for more than a century. The prisons are not "contracts."
3. Asset forfeitures are significant but they are a very small fraction of police income, probably less than 10 percent.
4. Police aren't going to quit their jobs. No one is urging them to quit their jobs. There is plenty of work to investigate unsolved burglaries, car thefts, assaults, etc. They need better incentives to fight those crimes. The federal government gives Byrne Grants to state and local law enforcement. It does not give money to investigate burglary, robbery, assault or car theft.
5. The CIA does not import our cocaine! Our capitalist system of buying and selling for a profit, of supply and demand explains the importation of cocaine. The prohibition system makes drugs expensive. Buy cocaine in Latin America; smuggle it into the U.S. and sell it for 5 times what you paid for it. You don't need the CIA to do that -- just people who want to make money and are either desperate enough or who think they are clever enough to get away with it.