By DOUG HARLOW
Staff Writer Wednesday, April 04, 2007

enlarge Staff photo by Jim Evans

Peter J. Christ is a former police captain who believes the legalized regulation of all drugs would reduce crime and addiction as well as reduce the tax burden of the ``war on drugs.''

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He even likened the bloody St. Valentine's Day Massacre to a "drug-related shooting" in today's big cities.

"When some reporter writes a story about a drug-related shooting, the reader says, 'See what drugs cause,'" he said. "Not one reporter in 1929, when reporting on the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, referred to that as an alcohol-related shooting. They all called it what it was -- a Prohibition-related shooting."

He said the same is true today. Drug policy, drug sales and drug turf wars end up in gunplay; it is not people high on drugs shooting it out.

Therefore, he said, it is the nation's failed drug policy that is causing the problems. He is calling for the legalization -- with strict regulation and control -- of all drugs: Marijuana, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and LSD.

Christ, who spent 20 years as a captain on the police force of in Tonawanda, N.Y., near Buffalo, is a founding member of LEAP -- Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

He spoke to students at Colby College on Tuesday afternoon on the topic of cocaine and later in the day in a Goldfarb lecture on the Mayflower Hill campus.

The title of the lecture was "War on Drugs? Or War on People?"

The program was sponsored by the Maine Marijuana Policy Initiative and Colby's Goldfarb Center For Public Affairs and Civic Engagement.

Christ (rhymes with wrist) said the non-profit LEAP was formed in 2002 and now has roughly 8,000 members, including 800 retired law enforcement officers.

"We are law enforcement against prohibition -- it's all drugs -- what we talk about is the policy of prohibition as being detrimental to society," he said. "We know that policy of prohibition is at the root of most of the crime and violence we associate with drugs in our society."

Christ, 60, said 75 percent of drug-related crime and violence come from people fighting over the marketplace -- who is going to sell what on what corner at what time.

"What we are about is shutting down that illegal market, so that we can take this money away from the gangsters," he said.

Christ compared the drug market to the old "numbers rackets," where illegal gambling was conducted based on what numbers came up on a given day. He said that game is still in town -- only now it is called the lottery.

"That didn't solve our gambling problem," he said. "Legalization of drugs is not to be considered as an approach to our drug problem. Legalization of drugs is about our crime and violence and today, terrorism, problems that are financing themselves off this illegal marketplace."

He said well-intentioned police and prosecutors appear to favor a policy of prohibition over a policy of regulation, all the while living with the reality that drugs are not going to go away. Drugs are available, but with no guarantee of purity or distribution sites, he said.

Christ said that, like alcohol use, drug use is not the problem. He said addiction and abuse are the problems.

He said U.S. laws target the small-time user of, say, marijuana, as a criminal, which fills the nation's jails and prisons with non-violent offenders.

He said 10 to 15 percent of all drug users are addicted. The rest are casual users.

"Any form of regulated marketplace is better than what we have now," he said. "We're going to have to figure out how to regulate these drugs. It's a war on people -- we aren't putting drugs in prison; we are putting people in prison."

He said members of LEAP believe that all of the drugs mentioned are dangerous and that they must be regulated and controlled.

"Now, here's the reality," he said. "When you chose the policy of prohibition to deal with these drugs, you give up all of your ability to regulate and control."