VOICES FOR REFORM
The reform movement is led by many of our nation's most highly regarded and well informed citizens.
Most of the below oppose prohibition, viewing it as a more disastrous repeat of the errors of alcohol Prohibition. Others simply call for major changes in the structure of the drug war, a conversion to what is generally called "harm reduction."
See: Change
Official propaganda would have the public believe that those who support reform are radicals or are only interested in using drugs themselves. This is an effort to avoid open debate with clearly credible opponents who can point out inaccurate claims.
The unofficial leader of opposition to prohibition for decades has been Milton Friedman, a Nobel prize winner in economics, and a senior research fellow with the Hoover Institution. [1] President G.W. Bush recently called him "a hero of freedom" and Alan Greenspan called him the most formidable economist of the past century. Friedman is now over 90 and has never used an illegal drug. He has lived through alcohol prohibition.
Friedman is one of hundreds of world leaders who signed a Public Letter in the New York Times, the source of the quote on our home page, "We believe that the global war on drugs is now causing more harm than drug abuse itself."
We offer the very abbreviated list below of various proponents for reform (some signed the letter) to emphasize that it is an insult to the American people to deprive them of the opportunity to hear more about why such people are so opposed to current policy and to hear their suggestions.
Generally regarded as the foremost medical journal in the world for over a century.
[See: Lancet's argument in favor of legalized marijuana. ]
This magazine has long been respected as a conservative and thoughtful voice in its analyses of world events.
* Drug Policy Project of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS)
FAS is sponsored by over 60 Nobel Prize winners. FAS favors major change but does not oppose prohibition itself.
* Physician Leadership on National Drug Policy [PLNDP]
PLNDP includes 37 of the nation's best- known physicians, including Lonnie Bristow, past president of the American Medical Association, Louis Sullivan, M.D., former Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) under President Bush, and David Lewis, director of the Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies at Brown University, Providence, R.I.
"A critical new finding is that teen-age conduct problems typically precede substance abuse. The PLNDP-sponsored research found important steps that are not yet being taken to save our troubled children. These include targeting high risk youth; increased involvement and mentorship by an adult; a program reaching across a person's early years and through high-risk periods of puberty; and skill-enhancing programs for youth, rather than those based on punishment. Without building on these efforts, delinquency, drug abuse, criminal activity, suicide, risky sexual behaviors and psychiatric and health problems will continue to rise. "
* International Coalition Of NGOs For Just And Effective Drug Policies
"Our Coalition, composed by 114 NGOs [Non Governmental Organizations] from 28 countries across the world, represents, among others, millions of citizens who experience the day-to-day reality of the drug problem, and failing drug control policies, in their own lives."
* Judges
Many are quoted in "Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It: A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs" by former prosecutor Judge James P. Gray of the California Superior Court.
www.drugpolicy.org/library/bookstore/judgegray.cfm
Note: Former Rep. Tom Campbell, R-San Jose, is an outspoken critic of federal drug policies. Now dean of the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business, Campbell says: "Judge Jim Gray ... I have the highest admiration for his integrity and his thoughtfulness in approaching this most difficult problem, and in his recognition that the present approach to America's drug problem is a tremendously costly failure."
J. Lawrence Irving, U.S. District Judge:
A Reagan appointee who resigned in 1990, rather than hear drug cases where mandatory sentencing laws mean a small-time drug dealer may receive a harsher sentence than someone convicted of murder. "I can't continue to give out sentences I feel in some instances are unconscionable."
Robert Sweet, U.S. District Judge:
Sweet argues that we must end prohibition and focus on "those conditions which result in drug use.... If we are not willing to become our brothers' keepers, then we will have to become our brothers' jailers."
* Law enforcement officers
Dr. Joseph McNamara:
The retired police chief of Kansas City and San Jose, California, and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His doctoral dissertation at Harvard University was on the history of criminalizing drugs and its negative impact on the American police force.
William Bratton, former New York Police Commissioner
Patrick Murphy, former Police Commissioner of New York City
Richard Guillen, Chief of Police, Española, NM
Dr. George Napper, Jr., Chief of Police (Ret), Atlanta Georgia
Jerry Oliver, Chief of Police, Detroit
Also see Law Enforcement Against Prohibition [LEAP] at www.leap.cc and an article opposing prohibition by the former head of the Scotland Yard Drug Squad, Edward Ellison.
Among the most prominent are William F. Buckley, Walter Cronkite, Hugh Downs, John Stossel, Cynthia Tucker, Molly Ivins, Paul Craig Roberts, Christopher Hitchens, Gwynne Dyer, Scott Burns and Jack Anderson. They all oppose prohibition.
"It seems to this reporter that the time has come for President Clinton to do what President Hoover did when (alcohol) prohibition was tearing the nation apart: appoint a bipartisan commission of distinguished citizens
...a blue ribbon panel to reappraise our drug policy right down to its very core with a commission with full investigative authority and the prestige and power to override bureaucratic concerns and political considerations.
Such a commission could help us focus our thinking, escape the clichés of the drug war in favor of scientific fact, more rationally analyze the real scope of the problem, answer the questions that bedevil us, and present a comprehensive drug policy for the future..."
* Religious leaders
Interfaith Drug Policy Initiative
Walter Wink has been a leading writer about the drug policy problem for many years.
Also see: Drug War Sermon
* Nobel Laureates
Gary Becker (Economics)
Nicolaus Bloembergen (Physics)
Val L. Fitch (Physics)
Milton Friedman (Economics)
Robert E. Lucas, Jr. (Economics)
Ferad Murad (Medicine)
Richard E. Smalley (Chemistry)
* Experts
Dr. J. Thomas Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, UCLA; Presidential Appointee (Nixon), National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse
Hamilton Beazley, Former President of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence.
Dr. Jeremiah A. Barondess, President, New York Academy of Medicine
Ernest Drucker, Professor of Epidemiology & Social Medicine, Montefiore Medical Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine; Member of the National Academy of Sciences
John Edsall, Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry, Harvard University; Member of the National Academy of Sciences
Dr. Alfred G. Gilman, Chairman, Department of Pharmacology, University of Texas
Alex Inkeles, Sociologist, Senior Fellow Emeritus Hoover Institution, Stanford University
Donal E. J. McNamara, Former President American Society of Criminology
Allan Rosenfield, Dean, Columbia School of Public Health
Saul P. Steinberg, Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Public Health, Cornell University
Andrew Weil, Clinical Professor of Internal Medicine, University of Arizona; Author of "Spontaneous Healing" and "Natural Health, Natural Healing"