Marijuana Policy Project

Jack Cole To Speak To Rotary

After three decades of fueling the U.S. war on drugs with over half a trillion tax dollars and increasingly punitive policies, illicit drugs are easier to get, cheaper, and more potent than they ever were. The prison population has quadrupled and has made building prisons this nation's fastest growing industry, with 2 million incarcerated - more per capita than any country in the world. Meanwhile people are dying in the streets and drug barons grow richer than ever before.

We must change these policies.

Current and former members of law enforcement recently created this new drug-policy reform group that believes the United States' drug policies have failed and that to save lives, lower the rate of addiction, and conserve tax dollars, the United States must end drug prohibition.

LEAP believes a system of regulation and control is more effective than one of prohibition.

Jack Cole retired as a detective lieutenant after a 26-year career with the New Jersey State Police. For 14 of those years Cole worked as an undercover narcotics officer. His investigations spanned the spectrum of possible cases, from street drug users and mid-level drug dealers to international "billion-dollar" drug trafficking organizations. The overwhelming failure of these efforts propelled him to speak out and call for a set of genuine alternatives. Alternatives that would dramatically change the landscape of American and world politics.

Cole holds a B.A. in criminal justice and a master's degree in public policy. Currently writing his dissertation for the Public Policy Ph.D. Program at the University of Massachusetts, his major focus is on the issues of race and gender bias, brutality and corruption in law enforcement. Cole believes ending drug prohibition will go a long way toward correcting those problems.

Cole is passionate in his belief that the drug war is steeped in racism, that it is needlessly destroying the lives of young people, and that it is corrupting police. Cole's discussions give his audience an alternative prospective of the U.S. war on drugs from the view of a veteran drug-warrior turned against the war.

Cole will be speaking to civic leaders, community organizations and the media to discuss America's greatest public policy disaster since Slavery.

© 2004 The Hannibal Courier-Post and Morris Digital Works.

Newshawked-by: Jane Marcus

Posted-by: Jay Bergstrom