jamesgierach

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2024 WORLD DRUG REPORT: $514 million (US dollars) Spent Promoting Drug Prohibition through the United Nations in furtherance of the FAILED AND FUTILE WORLD WAR ON DRUGS

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Trump’s Hoover Commutation: The Perfect Drug War Joke

by James E. Gierach

President Donald Trump has just commuted the prison sentence of Larry Hoover, former leader and mastermind of the Chicago-based Gangster Disciples, a violent, drug-dealing empire, from life in prison to time considered served.

Former federal lead prosecutor of Hoover, Ron Safer, is not happy. In contrast, Hoover’s relatives are thrilled as, understandably, is Larry Hoover. Life confined in a supermax federal prison in a sweltering “prison valley” without air conditioning in Colorado, padlocked to the likes of Mexican drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel, Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, and former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich was no picnic.

For me, Trump’s use of his magical pardoning power is a perfect crowning blow to a bad, murderous joke, called “America’s War on Drugs.” The war is better described and more accurately conceptualized as the “World War on Drugs,” because 186 nations of the world signed onto the drug-prohibition paradigm by agreeing to the terms of the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. The seminal United Nations drug-control treaty was driven by President John F. Kennedy’s appointee, Harry Anslinger, a staunch American drug prohibitionist.

Trump’s exercise of his presidential pardoning power is somewhat analogous to Pontius Pilot pardoning Barabbas while crucifying Jesus. It seemed to make little sense to pardon a murderer rather than a harmless, soft-spoken man preaching kindness and altruism. But what sense does it make to pour $1 trillion into America’s war on drugs, overwhelmingly recognized by public opinion to be an abysmal failure. Commonplace drug seizures by the kilo in the 1990s are now by the ton.

As a brazen real estate businessman and casino owner in 1990, Trump accurately called the war on drugs a “joke.” Speaking at an awards luncheon in Miami, Trump condemned the “war on drugs” and said, “We are losing badly the war on drugs. You have to legalize drugs to win that war. You have to take the profit away from these drug czars.”

Of course, Trump was right in 1990. People are overdosing and dying, most recently from fentanyl and synthetic dope. But the current fentanyl rage was preceded by many other drug calamities with LSD, PCP, crack cocaine, date rape drugs, marihuana and others.

People are being shot and dying. In 2024, St. Louis, Missouri, earned the title of “America’s Murder Capital.” Many other American cities earned that drug-war distinction, including Chicago. Like the weather and stock markets, crime waves are cyclical.

Gangs, guns and violence are another unavoidable drug-war byproduct, often matching the heartbreaking power of accidental drug overdose deaths.

But don’t try to tell the electorate that as I tried, calling the drug war a “joke” running for Cook County state’s attorney in 1992. That shtick transformed me from a former tough prosecutor into a “soft on drugs” and “soft on crime” unelectable wannabe politician.

Trump and I were right in the 1990s. The War on Drugs is a joke.

Drug war causes what it aims to prevent. It’s a drugogenic, criminogenic and corruptogenic policy. The cancerously violent war on drugs leaves people fearful, shot on expressways, playgrounds, caught in crossfire and, habitually, on the west and south sides of Chicago. Because of the perceived violence, America has become an armed camp with more firearms than people.

None of this is new.

Al Capone said, he was just a businessman supplying people with what that wanted. People wanted alcohol. They consumed alcohol to relax after a hard day’s work, to forget their troubles, to party, or simply alter their mental state.

Prohibition in the 1920s just said, “No,” but the people in speakeasies just said, “Yes.”

Alcohol is a mind-altering substance. What is cocaine, heroin, marijuana, mushrooms and dozens (hundreds) of other drug substances?

Mind-altering substances. All other substances—uppers, downers and far-outers—are no different. Some outlawed drug substances are much less harmful than alcohol, some more dangerous or more addictive.

The logical answer to death, blindness, corruption and violence from bad booze was the legalization of alcohol.

Identically, the logical answer to accidental fentanyl overdose, violence, corruption and death is the legalization of opioids. Generally, people don’t intend to use fentanyl, but often the drug user (and drug dealer) doesn’t know the substance is fentanyl.

The difficulty getting the public to sign onto legalized drugs —“Oh, my!”— is the fear of drugs (taught by D.A.R.E, the Ad Council, etc.) and the army of people employed in drug-war industries: law enforcement, dozen of federal agencies, the military, prison builders, drug treaters, counselors, probation and parole officers, correctional officers, crime laboratories, urine collectors, diplomats, attorneys and academics. Drug war-beneficiaries abound and depend on continuation of the War on Drugs.

That’s the reality, but who can solve this drug-war problem, common denominator to a dozen global and national crises?

Ironically, successful, drug-entrepreneur Pablo Escobar could, but who’s listen to him? Pablo said: “I’m sometimes accused of drug trafficking. It’s an activity that for the time being, historically, shall we say has been declared illegal. It’s illegal at the moment, but in the long run and in the future, we’re going to show that it will head for legalization.”

James E. Gierach

Palos Park, IL 60464

May 29, 2025

James E. Gierach is a former Cook County assistant state’s attorney, ConCon delegate, author of “The Silver Bullet Solution: Is it time to end the War on Drugs?”, former director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), and draftsman of the first comprehensive proposed amendment of United Nations drug-control conventions.

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DOJ Civil Rights Division and Mission Upended by Trump the Fool

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DRUG PROHIBITION DRIVES GUN VIOLENCE

by James E. Gierach

Andy Grimm writes about a new book written by Jens Ludwig, Director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, “Unforgiving Places,” circulating the mistaken idea that drug prohibition does not cause gang war violence over drug-selling and gun proliferation. (“Most Conventional Wisdom About What Causes Shootings Is Wrong,” Chicago Sun-Times, 4/27/25.)

In 1991, F. Thomas Braglia, then-director of the Northeastern Metropolitan Enforcement Group, said “Drug sales are the ‘lifeblood’ of gangs,” a statement quoted in a new book, “The Silver Bullet Solution: Is it time to end the War on Drugs?”

Similarly, Frank Radke, then-Chicago police commander of the Deering district said in 1990, “Basically, the vast majority of violence is over territory for the drug business. It’s an unfortunate waste of human life. I’ve seen it for years and years.” (“Youth homicides up 22% in city,” Chicago Tribune, 1/28/90.)

In 2016, 764 people were murdered in Chicago. (“Gun Violence in Chicago, 2016,” University of Chicago Crime Lab, https://urbanlabs.uchicago.edu/attachments/c5b0b0b86b6b6a9309ed88a9f5bbe5bd892d4077/store/82f93d3e7c7cc4c5a29abca0d8bf5892b3a35c0c3253d1d24b3b9d1fa7b8/UChicagoCrimeLab+Gun+Violence+in+Chicago+2016.pdf) In September of that year, federal prosecutors in Chicago tried members of a “super gang,” the Hobos for nine murders and torture on Chicago’s South and West sides.

Why the sudden increase in violence in 2016? Well, gangs, guns and drug prohibition.

After Tyshawn Lee, a 9-year old, was lured from a basketball court and executed on a warm afternoon in Nov. 2015, his father, Pierre Stokes, calmly said, “It’s going to to be war.” That gang war was between the Gangster Disciples Killa Ward group and the Black P. Stone Nation Bang Bang gang. Pierre’s prognostication was prophetic.

Drug sales are the lifeblood of gangs, and drug prohibition is the lifeblood of drug sales. That reality has necessitated the armament of America with more guns than people for “self-defense” in times of “Drug War.”

In 2017, the New York Times came to Chicago aiming to help quell the violence, organizing panels of experts to discuss solutions to violence. Panelists included Jens Ludwig, Arne Duncan of Chicago CRED, Dr. Selwyn O. Rogers, Jr., the then-new director of the University of Chicago Trauma Center, and representatives of the Cook County state’s attorney’s office and Chicago police department. Incredulously, the panelists discussed stopping Chicago violence for over two hours without ever mentioning the word “drugs” or “drug prohibition.”

That’s what’s wrong. Refusing to face the violent reality of drug prohibition. Think—Al Capone.

The question we must all ask ourselves: “Is it time to end the War on Drugs?” And the answer is, and the Silver Bullet Solution is, yes.

James E. Gierach

Palos Park, IL 60464

April 28, 2025

James E. Gierach is a former assistant state’s attorney, author and former CAN-TV show host of “Chicago’s War on Drugs.” (13 weekly shows in 2017)

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Full article here, https://jacknews.net/gierach-drug-policy-declaration/

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New Book Description

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Hitler, Trump & Musk. It’s not a law firm.

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AN OPEN LETTER TO THE COMMISSION ON NARCOTIC DRUGS 2024

RE: AMEND UNITED NATIONS “DRUG-CONTROL” CONVENTIONS

UNODC: Please forward this email to the CND Chair and all Vice Chairs.

Dear Chairman Philbert Isaac Kobina Abaka Johnson:

I write to bring your attention to the failure of UN “drug-control” treaties. Every year in advance of the annual March CND session in Vienna, a report on drug use and another on drug trafficking are produced. Those reports evidence, without fail, that the recreational drug use prohibition, intolerance and punishment paradigm is a drugogenic, criminogenic and corruptogenic failure.

Special sessions of the UN General Assembly regarding “the drug problem,” most recently UNGASS2016, likewise collect evidence of that failure, despite giving rise to hope that the future will be better. But it never is better. Reports regarding new drugs, new precursors, more overdose deaths, more health problems, more death penalty punishment, more violent crime and corruption follow UN drug prohibition like a permanent tattoo or darkened shadow, impeaching the very relevance and usefulness of the United Nations.

I believe in the United Nations idea, its potential and the critical need for it, if we are to collectively enjoy a better future, or I would not be writing. The IDPC Shadow Report prepared preliminary to UNGASS2016 documented, using UN-collected data, the systematic, unrelenting failure of the drug prohibition paradigm. Reports and books documenting the UN drug policy failure since 1961 fill libraries.

Secondly, I write to introduce you to my book released late November, The Silver Bullet Solution: Is it time to end the War on Drugs? (Gaudium, 2023), https://www.amazon.com/Silver-Bullet-Solution-time-Drugs/dp/1592113389/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=. I encourage you and every 53 voting CND Member State representatives to read it. All UN ambassadors, representatives, attendees and national and world leaders should also read it.

Without any nation having filed a proposed amendment of UN drug conventions with the Secretary-General, sadly, there is no hope for any productive outcome of this years’s CND session. Talk of human rights, harm reduction and drug policy reform is not action for reform. Statements are just statements, much like this letter. I know UNODC, INCB and CND realize that fact as these UN agencies zealously guard and protect UN drug gospel from amendment—the Treaty Trilogy of UN Drug Prohibition. Like it or not, that gospel is the foundation of the “World War on Drugs.” But UN drug-control treaties desperately need amendment, as I called for in a CND side event in 2015. I drafted several such amendments on behalf of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, now known as Law Enforcement Action Partnership (LEAP), to demonstrate how easy the process can be. (Please Note: I no longer am affiliated with LEAP.)

In any event, without any hope of meaningful change at CND this year, I will not attend or speak.

But optimistically, and respectfully, I hope my letter and my book will encourage you and other CND chairs and members will charge UNODC, Civil Society, experts, and others, with the task of conceptualizing and drafting proposed amendments of UN drug-control conventions for CND consideration and adoption next year.

Kind regards,

James E. Gierach

Palos Park, Illinois 60464 USA

drugnews1@yahoo.com

#CND #INCB #UNODC #IDPC #ACLU #drug-prohibition #crime #overdose #AIDS #corruption #drugs #violence #UN

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CND 2025, WHAT TO EXPECT

by James E. Gierach

AN OPEN LETTER TO WORLD LEADERS, DRUG CARTELS, DRUG USERS AND CITIZENS OF THE WORLD

Dear Friends, Colleagues and Citizens,

Tomorrow, Monday (March 10th) in Vienna, the 68th Session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (“CND”) begins a full week of drug-policy talk. As I think about these annual CND sessions and my experience as a former Chicago-area prosecutor, I am not optimistic that anything constructive will come of this one. Universal international support of drug prohibition is the reason.

Drug prohibition—the criminalization of the recreational use and sale of drugs and a growing laundry list of precursors—is embedded in three United Nations drug-control conventions.

Because the treaties (“the conventions”) require treaty member nations to adopt drug laws that mimic the U.N. drug-prohibition conventions, the drug-prohibition paradigm resonates around the world. Secured by scores of implementing national drug statutes, state laws and local ordinances, little chance exists for a dynamic change in global drug policy at any CND session. The status quo, good or bad, is virtually guaranteed.

And the status quo is clearly bad. We are confronted with the facts: unlabeled fentanyl found in illegal street drugs is killing hundreds of thousands of people, cocaine production is at an all-time record level, and raids and drug seizures measured by the ton are commonplace.

At annual CND sessions, and throughout every year, no nation is brave enough to suggest the amendment of foundational, international drug-prohibition treaties.

Therefore, United Nations “drug-control” treaties remain inviolate. And because those treaties embrace the worst choice of all drug policy choices as a “given,” year after year at CND sessions in Vienna—drug problems grow larger every year. Equally harmful, the problems associated with drug-prohibition strategies (gangs, guns, violence, corruption and mass migration to name just five) also flourish every year.

Contrastingly, drug legalization as a drug policy would allow the legal sale and use of drugs. Surprisingly to some people, drug policy that legalizes drugs would enable government to control and regulate the drug trade just as legalization allows government to regulate and control alcohol and tobacco, two of the most dangerous substances.

I choose not to use tobacco anymore. It’s a killer. I choose to use alcohol in moderation. I choose not to use any other drugs. Well, yes, I do use chocolate, sugar and coffee, but those substances are legal. And my choices are not criminalized.

People of the World, we don’t have to live like this. We are empowered to choose our global drug policy. We are empowered to change the status quo, amend drug conventions, and end the awful Drug Prohibition Era. Drug war is a choice, just as drug peace is a choice. Drug legalization is a drug policy choice we should all support to reduce public health and safety harms, restore human rights, and secure the blessings of life, freedom and choice.

Kind regards to all,

James E. Gierach

Palos Park, Illinois USA

March 9, 2025

See “The Silver Bullet Solution: Is it time to end the War on Drugs?” by James E. Gierach

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IMMIGRATION and DRUG POLICY REFORM

by James E. Gierach

Public officials serving Illinois, Chicago and its counties continue to spend lavishly trying to provide for incoming immigrants, but fail to consider major drug policy reform to discourage that influx. Migrant influx to Illinois and sanctuary USA can best be discouraged by making life more livable in the countries from which migrants flee. Governors, legislators, mayors and county board public officials overlook the deleterious consequences of bad, American drug-prohibition policy on the decision of families to migrate to America.

Bad American drug policy increases the power of drug gangs and drug cartels at home and abroad. Stronger gangs and cartels increase violence and corruption, inevitable partners of drug-prohibition policy, both adding significant pressure to the immigration pipeline already at capacity because of hard economic times there. Despite this reality, presidential candidates, governors, mayors and legislators refuse to go anywhere near the politically-charged, drug-policy-reform third rail. Talk of drug-policy reform is perhaps the most toxic of all political third-rails.

Unfortunately, pols call for MORE DRUG WAR to improve their election and reelection prospects, rather than less drug war to make us all safer from drugs and violence. American politics needs a “Profile in Courage” character to reverse field and run for a drug-policy-reform touchdown. That is how we can meaningfully release the pressure on the immigration pipeline.

Must we wait until state, local and federal budgets become bloated beyond manageable limits—driven by migrant housing, food, education and healthcare costs—before reconsidering drug-prohibition policy? A dozen American and international crises are provoked by the worst of all drug policy choices —drug prohibition.

When will the Fourth Estate start asking public officials questions about the unintended consequences of drug prohibition policy, nationally and internationally?

Leaders should be asked, “Does drug prohibition serve to empower gangs, increase violence, encourage foreign migration, assure fentanyl overdose, accelerate militarized policing, stigmatize minority communities, and increase illegal drug availability while depriving pain patients of needed legal meds and empathetic prescribing physicians?”

Come March 2024, the United Nations will solidify international support for drug-prohibition policy at the annual March session of its Commission on Narcotics Drugs, as the Commission does in Vienna, Austria, every March. America’s president, and the United States Senate charged with Advise and Consent responsibility concerning U.S. treaty decisions, will acquiesce or, worse yet, support, that counterproductive, UN crisis-making drug policy.

That international drug-prohibition policy, embraced and codified by three United Nations “drug-control” treaties (“Conventions”), basically requires 186 drug-treaty member nations to criminalize recreational drug use. The conventions accomplish that criminalization by legalizing drug use limited to “medical or scientific” purposes only and requiring member nations to pass laws outlawing and criminalizing all other drug-use purposes. The U.S. Controlled Substances Act is our country’s legislation implementing the UN drug-prohibition treaty mandate.

After 63 years of that international drug policy regimen, the global drug problem became so bad that the United Nations General Assembly advanced its scheduled 2019 discussions of global drug policy to 2016 at the urgent request of Mexico , Colombia and Guatemala. That year, 2016, the United Nations convened a rare Special Session of the UN General Assembly at its headquarters in New York. Disastrously, the Special Session opportunity turned into a monumental failure, a kick-the-can-down-the-road exercise. UNGASS 2016 regarding drugs was a facade, a historic scroll written to maintain the global, drug-prohibition status quo. Rather than debate or discuss revision of UN drug-control treaties, the GA adopted its “Outcome Document” as its first order of business, rather like a jury reaching its decision before hearing any evidence.

One paragraph of the Outcome Document synthesized all that the 2016 General Assembly Special Session regarding drugs accomplished—nothing. Not a single amendment of UN drug treaties was drafted, filed, presented or discussed. Although the Outcome Document was 32-pages long and contained much sound-good talk, it was all superfluous. It took no action, and it called for no action. One paragraph capsulized its status-quo essence, to-wit:

“We underscore that the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 as amended by the 1972 Protocol, the Convention on Psychotropic Substances of 1971, the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988 and other relevant international instruments constitute the cornerstone of the international drug control system; . . .”

By God they do, but I wish they didn’t.

Migrants are marching to the United States-Mexican border from South and Central American countries by the hundreds of thousands, largely because of unlivable drug-gang violence and systematic drug-prohibition corruption. Yet, American leaders are not even talking about drug policy. They bemoan an influx of unregulated Chinese fentanyl and accidental drug overdose, ignoring the fact that drug-prohibition policy prevents drug manufacturing limits, inspection, warnings and labels. The same leaders complain of an IMMIGRATION INVASION and an OPEN BORDER, but ignore the impact of extraterritorial UN drug-prohibition policy on these crises that we Americans, through our leaders, support.

Deviously, drug-prohibition policy ALWAYS escapes scrutiny. Drug-prohibition policy is always accepted as an immutable GIVEN. It does not have to be.

Prohibition (alcohol) ended in the United States by popular demand, because of the prolific harms caused by the prohibition of alcohol. With an end to Prohibition in America, alcohol became an inspected, labeled, controlled, taxed, licensed and regulated business. Violence, lawlessness and corruption caused by prohibition ended. Al Capone was put to bed, and his violent, lawless era ended by a seismic policy shift to tolerance, regulation and the legal manufacture, distribution and sale of mind-altering substances—alcohol in many forms and strengths.

We, Americans, can do that again.

We Americas can lead the world and the United Nations out of the DRUG PROHIBITION MORASS for other mind-altering substances. We can control, inspect, tax, label and regulate all drugs once we take the big-step through the DRUG LEGALIZATION THRESHOLD. We can license drug dealers, limit the number of drug licenses, and require fixed places of business with reasonable hours of sale, just as we do bars, restaurants and liquor stores.

By simply legalizing drugs, America can (and one day it will) ameliorate a dozen crises that are caused, or certainly aggravated by, drug-prohibition intolerance devolved into a 63-YEAR-OLD WORLD WAR ON DRUGS. Those crises include, but are not limited to, “Violence, Gangs, Guns, Drug Overdose, Abusive Policing, Mass Incarceration, Racism, Immigration Excess, Human Rights Deprivation, Unaffordable Healthcare, AIDS Proliferation, Corruption and Lawlessness.”

What American political party or presidential candidate will lead this essential reform of America, society, UN drug-control conventions, and the world?

“James E. Gierach is a former Chicago prosecutor, former director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), now known as Law Enforcement Action Partnership, and author of “The Silver Bullet Solution: Is it time to End the War on Drugs?” (Gaudium, 2023)”

Venice, Florida

January 18, 2024

Email Address of James E. Gierach: drugnews1@yahoo.com

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PRES. OBAMA TASK FORCE 21st CENTURY POLICING RECOMMENDATION: END THE WAR ON DRUGS

President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing

Statement of JAMES E. GIERACH of LEAP

Honorable Co-chairs Charles Ramsey and Laurie Robinson and TaskforceMembers:

OneTaskforce Recommendation

LEAP has only one recommendation for this Taskforce:

Call upon Congress and the President to End the War on Drugs. Call upon them to jointly push for an Amendment of the Three United Nations Drug-Control Treaties[i] that serve as Fountainhead for the World War on Drugs. Call upon them to replace the Criminalization and Incarceration Model of Drug Control with a System of Legalized, Controlled and Regulated Drug Markets, making Drugs primarily a Health Problem and Not a Law Enforcement One. And Call upon them to introduce a new Drug Policy Paradigm Based upon Individual Freedom, Human Rights, Harm Reduction, Accessible Medications, Economic Development, Fundamental Fairness, Racial Equality and Respect for the Law, Its Enforcers and One Another.

The LEAP Organization

My name is Jim Gierach. I am a former assistant state’s attorney of Cook County, delegate to the Sixth Illinois Constitutional Convention 1970 and now a director and former acting Board Chairman of LEAP, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. LEAP is an international, nonprofit organization with “consultative status” received from the United Nations regarding illicit drugs. I am also the draftsman of LEAP’s “Proposed Amendment of UN Drug Treaties – 2014.”[ii]

LEAP is an organization composed of currently serving and former soldiers in the war on drugs – police, prosecutors, judges, federal agents, undercover narcotics officers and other criminal justice professionals. After decades of service in the front lines of the war on drugs, we, individually and collectively as an organization, now oppose it. We do so not because drugs are good, but because the war on drugs is worse.

What does the “War on Drugs” have to do with policing in the 21st Century and your Taskforce assignment? Everything.

Disrespect for the Law and Law Enforcement

As American street gangs prove daily, we cannot have safe streets and drug prohibition. It’s one or the other but not both. With drug prohibition not only do we want for safe streets but there is also little respect for the rule of law, law enforcement and its mission. For example, when 7.4 percent[iii] of the U.S. population violates an unpopular marijuana prohibition law monthly, no amount of improved community policing, better training or racially representative hiring can fix the problem. When competing drug gangs fight over lucrative drug turf and battle police trying to stop their business operations, violence escalates, guns get bigger and deadlier, and people become “the enemy” and are treated as such, engendering disrespect. The militarization of local police and the use of ever-more force (battering rams, tanks, smoke and concussion grenades, assault weapons, etc.) make the police “the enemy” to people on the other-side-of-the-coin and their families, friends, neighbors and relatives, and militarization is the inevitable consequence of drug-war policing, again breeding disrespect. Likewise, in a drug-prohibition environment, corruption in the criminal justice system becomes more prevalent, and corruption is again anathema to respect for law enforcement officers, their mission and the law.

Constructively, American voters and state legislatures are changing bad drug laws that police have been asked to enforce for years, doing what the U.S. Congress has been unable to do: approve the lawful use of medical marijuana for the sick. In 23 states and the District of Columbia, voters have repudiated federal drug law, changed state law and rethought policing. Likewise, voter approval of the recreational use of marijuana in Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska says something about the changing mission of policing. Uruguay, the first nation of the world to legalize the recreational use of marijuana, is saying the same thing as voters in these four American states. The lesson: people do not respect laws with which they fundamentally disagree. 

How great is the public disrespect for American drug laws and drug-war policing? So great that the judicial and executive branches of government are attempting to minimize the harms caused by the prohibition laws enacted by the legislative branch, the U.S. Congress. “Jury nullification” seeks to avoid the harm of intolerant, drug prohibition laws aimed at nonviolent offenders and mandatory-minimum prisons sentences. Within the executive branch, on-the-other-hand, the U.S. Attorney General has administered, in effect, a form of “executive nullification” by admonishing assistant U.S. attorneys within the U.S. Department of Justice not to bring certain charges against nonviolent drug offenders to avoid the harm and injustice of those laws and applicable sentencing mandates.

Unfortunately, as American states and Uruguay lead the world out of The Drug-War Dark Ages, the United States is being pressured[iv] by the United Nations to get these four states back into prohibition line, as UN officials and agencies call upon Pres. Obama to smash state marijuana legalization. These developments underscore the need to reexamine the mission of American policing in the 21st Century to see where policing went “off the rails,” leading to Ferguson, police executions, national protests, examination of the grand jury process, police impunity, poor police-community relations, the alleged use of excessive force, the militarization of local police departments, and the creation of this Taskforce.

The Misdirected Policing Mission

Forever, it has been the time-honored police mission “to serve and protect” the public, but that mission has morphed into “morality policing,” where violent crime takes a back seat to drug policing. Drug-dealer profits and property are subject to seizure, civil forfeiture and a law-enforcement “split of the plunder,” nurturing mission temptation and “policing for profit.” In the process, the rate of solving violent crime has plummeted as more police are deployed to stop drug-dealing between consenting adults. The motivation for the deployment is, of course, to accomplish the typical trilogy seizure of cash, drugs and guns. Why? Because drugs are “bad” and “against the law.” Maybe “yes” sometimes to the first notion but “no” for sure to the second because it should not be. 

Cops aren’t doctors, and abusing drug users have greater need for medical help than police help, though sometimes that too. The use of mind-altering substances was not a crime until America and the world made it one, and then with fickle selectivity and poor judgment. For example, once upon a time (c.1650), Sultan Murad IV of the Ottoman Empire made smoking tobacco a death penalty crime. In the 1920s and 1930s, America and other countries made it a crime to sell alcohol but Prohibition failed, and regulated, legal sales displaced the Al Capone’s and the gang business of that era. Before and after Prohibition, some people died of alcohol. In contrast, no one has ever died of a marijuana overdose yet some Americans are serving life[v] sentences for pot crimes. Hundreds of thousands die from alcohol and tobacco each year, yet both of these mind-altering substances are outside the recreational-prohibition scope of UN drug treaties and the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). It is nonsensical and difficult to respect these senseless disparities, since drugs constitute a huge part of American policing and the problems assigned to the Taskforce for recommendation. Therefore, we must refresh our memories how we got to the so-called “War on Drugs,” resulting in widespread disrespect for the law and its enforcers. 

Some “War on Drugs” History

America has been fighting the “War on Drugs” with bipartisan political support since Pres. Richard Nixon declared it on June 17, 1971, and even earlier, dating from the U.S. Senate approval of the foundational United Nations treaty that effectively declared a “World War on Drugs” in 1961. The seminal treaty declaring that war is called, “The 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs” (eff. 12/13/64). Article 4 of that treaty provided that the initial 153 signatory and party nations[vi] (now 186 nations) “shall” legislate and pass laws that criminalize the recreational use (use other than for medical or scientific purpose) of drugs from marijuana to heroin along with pages listing other drugs in treaty schedules.[vii] Every year, the UN drug prohibition list gets longer, according to the Global Synthetic Drugs Assessment[viii] with more than 100 new drugs invented the prior year and at a rate faster than authorities can add the newly invented drugs to UN prohibition lists.

Pursuant to its treaty obligation, “the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) was passed by the 91st United States Congress as Title II of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 and signed into law by President Richard Nixon. The CSA is the federal U.S. drug policy under which the manufacture, importation, possession, use and distribution of certain substances is regulated. The Act also served as the national implementing legislation for the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs.”[ix] Thus, the CSA criminalized consensual drug transactions even between consenting adults, exploding America’s prison population.[x] In 1986, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986[xi] was passed by the U.S. Congress. Among other things, these laws changed the system of federal supervised release from a rehabilitative system into a punitive system. The 1986 Act also prohibited controlled substance analogs. And the bill enacted new mandatory minimum sentences for drugs, including marijuana. When that was done, America had a prison inmate population of 300,000,[xii] not the current 2.2 million.[xiii] When the CSA was passed, a kilo of cocaine or heroin was a “big” drug bust,[xiv] crack cocaine[xv] wasn’t invented, meth started getting “better,”[xvi] ecstasy[xvii] (alias MDMA, first synthesized in 1912 by Merck chemist Anton Köllisch) was not a problem and, as noted above, 100 new synthetic drugs created in just the last year did not exist.

At the outset of the drug war in 1971, the best American heroin was only two percent pure but now 80-percent pure heroin, and even 90 percent-pure heroin, is commonplace in America. Thank you “War on Drugs,” or rather “No thank you.” 

What as police, politicians and parents have we done to American kids with the drug war?

50 States and Local Law Enforcement Followed the Federal Lead

Soon 50 states followed the United States lead, and every state passed its localized version of the UN-mandated, federal prohibition drug laws with thousands of local police agencies to enforce sumptuary prohibition laws.[xviii] Gangs[xix] began to proliferate, crime increased[xx] and political leaders rather than addressing neo-substance prohibition called for tougher drug and crime penalties.[xxi] Pres. Clinton’s 100,000-more-police “solution,”[xxii] initially federally funded, was a popular response to burgeoning addict crime and turf-war crime caused by the war on drugs but that solution failed to address the fact that those crimes were caused by prohibition itself.

World Drug War

America with her money and international influence inside and outside the United Nations, spread her “War on Drugs” far and wide, annually certified “cooperating nations,” and through Plan Colombia and the Merida Initiative, bought the loyalty and fealty of other nations, including Columbia, Mexico and Afghanistan. But prohibited drugs continued to flow – stronger, cheaper and more available – as noted in the Report of the Global Commission on Drug Policy.[xxiii] World disrespect for the rule of law and its enforcers increased, as weekly corruption stories were featured in Drug War Chronicle, published by StoptheDrugWar.org, and crime and incarceration thrived internationally as it did in America. Prisons filled. New prisons were constructed, filled and over-crowded. Private-for-profit prisons emerged with government contracts guaranteeing certain occupancy rates.

Eventually, the “Land of the Free” became the “Prison Capital of the World” with the highest per capita rate of incarceration anywhere. Bill of Rights liberties and control over one’s own castle and one’s own body were subordinated to the new policing mission to “get the drugs, cash and guns.” In the “drug-free world” frustrated with endless violence, the public consented or at least acquiesced to the subjugation of “others” by no-knock entries on warrant execution, drug-dog searches, cameras in the public way, metal detectors in the schools, random drug tests at school and work in the noble quest and greater good of a “drug-free-workplace, park and school.” The courts limited the sphere of “expected privacy,” okaying rampant “informant policing,” paid-informants and accomplice-satisfied probable cause, stop-and-frisk tactics, more gun-control, racial profiling if justified by any other reasoning. In a nutshell, what we see today is “Drug-War Policing” and a “Drug-Free World” in full bloom.

Drug-War Protagonists and the Drug-War Gravy Train

Some may disagree with the opinions expressed here on behalf of LEAP. The drug war tempts the “good guys” – law enforcement officers and others – to support a flagrantly failed prohibition and criminalization system, liking the financial rewards that accompany it. The rewards come in many forms, including, but not limited to, more police overtime pay, more police hires and promotions, seized and appropriated drug dealer cash, property, motor vehicles, airplanes, real estate and jewelry. It comes in the form of new police stations, bigger and better weaponry, 1033 programs, Tasers, new squad cars, vests, clothing and equipment. Often time, civil forfeiture practices and procedures following a drug raid, seizure, confiscation and government forfeiture of “drug dealer” properties handcuff citizens’ civil and constitutional protections without a criminal case ever brought, or conviction ever attained. Like Rodney Dangerfield, the War on Drugs “Gets no respect.”

Many industries – prisons, drug treatment, drug-testing, banking, drug selling, policing and academia – are benefiting financially from the war on drugs. Like the “bad guys,” the “good guys are riding the “drug-war gravy train.” We must not allow those financial interests to dissuade us from restoring the credibly and public trust in police officers who bravely and honorably work to serve and protect the public. Public trust in law enforcement can be restored by ending drug prohibition and returning to the traditional “serve and protect policing mission.

The drug-war created the crisis in policing and destroyed public support in some quarters, and that is what has brought us here today. Both police and academic leaders have offered and will continue to offer their ideas regarding improved community policing, better training, more accountability, civilian review boards, grand jury reform, gentle policing, ending police impunity for misconduct, ad infinitum. Many recommendations by others may have merit and capacity for improved policing and better community relations.

However, it is the opinion of LEAP law-enforcers and LEAP criminal justice professionals that without the reform of U.S. and world drug policy, no proposed reform or set of reforms can stop the unending perversion of American values, virtues or correct 21st Century policing. Thank you for your time and attention.

James E. Gierach

Executive Board Vice Chairman

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP)

Chicago, IL USA

www.leap.cc

drugnews1@yahoo.com

http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/amend-un-treaties-to?source=c.fwd&r_by=741743

[i] The 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances, and the 1988 United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances

[ii] LEAP’s “Proposed Amendment of United Nations Drug Treaties – 2014,” http://www.leap.cc/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/LEAP_UN_Treaty_Amendment_2.26.1421-1.pdf

[iii] “Study says Colorado has second-highest percentage of marijuana users in country,” http://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2014/12/26/study-marijuana-use-has-increased-in-colorado

[iv] “UN Demands Obama Smash State Marijuana Legalization,” 11/21/12, http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/13716-un-demands-obama-smash-state-marijuana-legalization

[v] “Sentenced To Life In Prison For Selling Marijuana,” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/13/marijuana-lifers_n_4578030.html

[vi] United Nations Treaty Collection, the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, https://treaties.un.org/pages/viewdetails.aspx?src=treaty&mtdsg_no=vi-15&chapter=6&lang=en

[vii] See Note 2, supra, page 1, footnote 2.

[viii] Figure 3, page 4, graph reporting “Number of new psychoactive substances not under international control…”

[ix] The Controlled Substances Act, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_Substances_Act

[x] “Watch how quickly the war on drugs changed America’s prison population,” http://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-war-on-drugs-changed-americas-prison-population-2014-4

[xi] The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Drug_Abuse_Act_of_1986

[xii] United States Incarceration Rate, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate

[xiii] “Five things everyone should know about US incarceration,” http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/201332671936115766.html

[xiv] “Judge Jim Gray on The Six Groups Who Benefit From Drug Prohibition,” and discussing the relativity of “big drug busts” in central California, Reason TV (video, at 53 seconds), or kilos to tons. http://video.search.yahoo.com/video/play;_ylt=A0LEVvXjqrdUUkgArIYPxQt.;_ylu=X3oDMTBsa3ZzMnBvBHNlYwNzYwRjb2xvA2JmMQR2dGlkAw–?p=judge+jim+gray&tnr=21&vid=559FCA65D71114ED0EBE559FCA65D71114ED0EBE&l=523&turl=http%3A%2F%2Fts1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DUN.608023445189363272%26pid%3D15.1&rurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Db6t1EM4Onao&sigr=11bmvl29o&tt=b&tit=Judge+Jim+Gray+on+The+Six+Groups+Who+Benefit+From+Drug+…&sigt=11qivdv0q&back=http%3A%2F%2Fus.yhs4.search.yahoo.com%2Fyhs%2Fsearch%3Fp%3Dvideo%2BJudge%2BJim%2BGray%26type%3Ddnldstr%26param1%3D1%26param2%3Dcd%253D2XzuyEtN2Y1L1Qzu0DyEtA0DyB0EyD0CyDyEyCyEyEzzyCyEtN0D0Tzu0SyCzyzytN1L2XzutBtFtBtFtCyEtFtCtAyBzytN1L1CzutCyD1B1P1R%2526cr%253D269594281%2526ir%253D15sec%2526elng%253Den%2526elcl%253Dus%2526a%253Ddnldstr%2526uref%253Dg4%2526f%253D2%2526cat%253Dweb%2526ulng%253Den-US%25252Cen%25253Bq%25253D0.8%2526sid%253Ddd929539da9398d6de8a240c1f32b247%2526stype%253Ddnldstr%2526sesid%253Dd5035bd3dfbc7011c43e85760afd6f34%2526csr%253D0%2526ipblock%253D0%2526b%253DChrome%2526bv%253D39.0.2171.99%2526os%253DWindows%252B7%2526cc%253Dus%2526ip%253D108.86.220.242%2526pa%253Dmysearchdial%26hsimp%3Dyhs-fullyhosted_003%26hspart%3Dironsource%26ei%3DUTF-8&sigb=1jn4ja6qh&hspart=ironsource&hsimp=yhs-fullyhosted_003

[xv] “Crack cocaine: a short story,” Foundation for a Drug-Free World, http://www.drugfreeworld.org/drugfacts/crackcocaine/a-short-history.html

[xvi] “History of Methamphetamine,” http://www.drugfreeworld.org/drugfacts/crystalmeth/history-of-methamphetamine.html

[xvii] MDMA, alias ecstasy, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDMA

[xviii] Prohibition of drugs, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_of_drugs

[xix] In 2011, American had an estimated 1.4 million gang members, and drug tracking was a major source of their income. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gangs_in_the_United_States

[xx] “Organized Crime and Prohibition,” http://www.albany.edu/~wm731882/organized_crime1_final.html

[xxi] See Footnote 8, supra.

[xxii] “Clinton-Gore Administration, Record of Progress, ”http://clinton5.nara.gov/WH/Accomplishments/eightyears-06.html

[xxiii] See LEAP Proposed UN Treaty Amendment, page two, supra, Note 2: “Principal among the many reasons for proposing this amendment is the indisputable fact that the prohibition, criminalization, single-voice, top-down, one-size-fits-all drug policy paradigm has failed for over fifty years. Powerful evidence of that failure is offered in the June 2011 Report of the Global Commission on Drug Policy and the annual reports of the Secretariat to the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, 2013 for example, regarding the “World situation with regard to drug abuse” (E/CN.7/2013/2) and “World situation with regard to drug trafficking” (E/CN.7/2013/4).

[jamesgierach]

TIME 4 HEMP

You may enjoy my interview (Jan. 23, 2025) on “Time 4 Hemp” with show-hosts Casper Leitch, Al Byrne and Al Graham, calling for an end to “The World War on Drugs” and discussing my book, “The Silver Bullet Solution: Is it time to end the War on Drugs?”

[jamesgierach]

Take and Share: the Drug War Survey

[jamesgierach]

“WAR ON DRUGS”

Survey

by James E. Gierach and James Brauer

Directions: Answer “Agree”, “Disagree”, or “I don’t know” to each question below.

I think the War on Drugs has led to less illegal drug production.

I think the War on Drugs has led to less illegal drug availability.

I think the War on Drugs has led to less illegal drug use.

I think the War on Drugs has led to less violence.

I think the War on Drugs has led to fewer drug overdoses and deaths.

I think the War on Drugs has been a success.

I think the “Treaty” (see Background below) should be repealed.

I think the Leader of my country should call for the repeal of the Treaty in Vienna?

Background:

By signing the United Nations 1961 “Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs” (“the Treaty”), the US agreed to “adopt such measures as will ensure that cultivation, production,…possession,... shall be punishable offences… and… when abusers of drugs have committed such offences… (in addition to or instead of )... conviction or punishment… (the US) may provide… treatment, education, after-care, rehabilitation and social reintegration…”

The UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs will meet in Vienna in March, 2025 where National Leaders may call for the repeal of “The Treaty.”