{"id":1754,"date":"2011-07-16T14:07:28","date_gmt":"2011-07-16T18:07:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/07\/too-many-people-are-making-literally-billions-from-the-illicit-drug-trade-major-neill-franklin.html"},"modified":"2011-07-16T14:07:28","modified_gmt":"2011-07-16T18:07:28","slug":"too-many-people-are-making-literally-billions-from-the-illicit-drug-trade-major-neill-franklin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/07\/too-many-people-are-making-literally-billions-from-the-illicit-drug-trade-major-neill-franklin.html","title":{"rendered":"Too many people are making literally billions from the illicit drug trade —Major Neill Franklin"},"content":{"rendered":"The only way to stop drug lords from reaping billions from the drug trade is to end drug prohibition,\nsays a former leader of the drug war.\nThe same applies to private prison companies reaping millions.\n

\nTony O’Neill wrote 14 June 2011 in The Fix,\n\nWhy Growing Numbers of Police Are Slamming Drug Prohibition<\/a>:\n

\n\n<\/a>\nFor decades, police were convinced that total prohibition was the only\nway to end America’s deadly drug wars. Now thousands of cops are not\nonly having second thoughts but actually taking to the streets in protest.\n

\n\u201cI was pro-prohibition: that\u2019s what my training was about!\u201d says\nMajor Neill Franklin, Executive Director of\n\nLaw Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP)<\/a>,\nwho previously served for 33 years with the Maryland\nState Police and the Baltimore police forces on the front line of\nAmerica\u2019s longest running war. \u201cEven though I grew up in Baltimore\nand saw what was going on, we were taught and trained to believe that if\nwe push hard enough, if we lock up the people involved, then this will\neventually dissipate, or at least be reduced to a manageable level.\u201d\nHe gives a long, world-weary sigh. \u201cOf course back then I had no\nclue…You just can\u2019t tell somebody not to use and they\u2019re gonna\nstop using! As long as there are people willing to buy, and as long as\npeople don\u2019t have employment, then you\u2019re going to have an illicit\ndrug trade. I saw that we made these arrests\u2014we locked up dealers and\nusers alike\u2014and it might get quiet for a few days, or even a couple\nof weeks, but give it time and it all starts up again.\u201d\n<\/blockquote>\nThe War on Drugs has failed.\nLike alcohol prohibition before it, it breeds more violence.\nLaw enforcement against it just makes it worse:\n\n\n

\nIn the late \u201880s and the \u201890s, the Baltimore drug business \u201cbecame\na lot more violent. A big reason for that was that law enforcement\u2014with\nthe persuasion of federal government and financial grants and other money\ncoming from the Department of Justice\u2014started to dismantle the many\ndrug organizations that were out there. Many of these organizations in\nBaltimore were huge.\u201d\n

\nThese successes brought unexpected consequences, Franklin\nexplains. \u201cWhen we started infiltrating these organizations and\nbreaking them up, we left a huge void in the market. The demand for the\ndrugs has always been there and will always be there\u2014so many young\nentrepreneurs saw this as an opportunity to come in and grab a share\nof the market. That\u2019s when we saw the advent of the open-air drug\nmarkets. These younger guys realized they had to arm themselves to protect\ntheir share and that brought about a massive upturn in street violence.\n<\/blockquote>\nIt’s time to end the violence by ending drug prohibition,\nthus ending the massive money flows that fuel the violence.\nLegalize, regulate, and tax.\n

\nAnd for those who don’t think it will happen:\n

\nThose of us who agree that prohibition has been a failure can sometimes\nget sucked into pessimism. But when you speak to a man who has lost\nfriends in this war and is still willing to risk alienating his old\ncomrades by speaking out, it’s hard not to feel inspired.\n<\/blockquote>\nIt took Franklin years to change his views,\nbut it was his front-line experience leading the drug war in Baltimore that did it.\nIf he can change his tune, anyone can.\nThis is the song he’s singing now:\n
\n\u201cYou can say what you want about why we don\u2019t change our drugs\nlaws,\u201d Franklin muses, after we talk about how hard it can be to\nchange hearts and minds, \u201cand sure, we always here a lot of stuff from\nthe other side about how we do this to save the children or whatever,\nbut the simple reason is this: too many people are making literally\nbillions from the illicit drug trade. And believe me, it\u2019s not those\nyoung men standing out on the corners who are making it. They are the\nones getting the least of what\u2019s being generated. If we were really\nserious about helping our kids and our communities, we\u2019d put our\nenergies into education and treatment, and teach people, so they make\nthe right decisions, period.\u201d\n<\/blockquote>\nWe don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia.\nSpend those tax dollars on rehabilitation and education.\n

\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The only way to stop drug lords from reaping billions from the drug trade is to end drug prohibition, says a former leader of the drug war. The same applies to private prison companies reaping millions. Tony O’Neill wrote 14 June 2011 in The Fix, Why Growing Numbers of Police Are Slamming Drug Prohibition: For […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,1113,48,40,15,72,20,178],"tags":[3381,8817,77,8705,8701,2883,80,2650,7,632,4110,1297,79,2651,2712,60,8749,82],"class_list":["post-1754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-cca","category-code-enforcement","category-community","category-education","category-incarceration","category-law","category-vlcia","tag-baltimore","tag-cca","tag-drugs","tag-education","tag-georgia","tag-law-enforcement-against-prohibition","tag-leap","tag-legalize","tag-lowndes-county","tag-maryland","tag-neill-franklin","tag-private-prison","tag-prohibition","tag-regulate","tag-rehabilitation","tag-tax","tag-vlcia","tag-war-on-drugs"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-si","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1754\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}