Rowan Bosworth-Davies
Detective, Company Fraud Department, New Scotland Yard (Retired)

"An economist once said that the only reason Governments refuse to legalize drug use is because they have not found a morally-acceptable way of taxing it. We desperately need an open debate which enables us to find other ways of dealing with this issue in a more enlightened way."

Growing up in London, Rowan was always conscious of the world-famous Metropolitan Police, and when a career in law failed to provide the kind of challenge he was looking for, he joined the world's first and oldest police agency. Realizing that preventing crime was the key priority for crime management, Rowan's ambition was to become a detective and use his legal skills to go after the most dangerous criminals and challenge those lawyers who defended them. He quickly became puzzled by the obsession of the politicians on 'drug crime' which focused vast amounts of police attention on minimalist street-level possession offences.

It was during his years as a street cop that Rowan realized the futility of the "War on Drugs." Observing young people being given criminal records for a few grams of marijuana, the spiraling enforcement costs, courts clogged with cases based on a harmless lifestyle choice, and the targeting of minorities for prosecution began to cause him to seriously question the logic of the policies of drug interdiction. Being transferred to the New Scotland Yard Fraud Squad, Rowan very quickly came to realize that the real crimes being committed in the narcotics arena, were the financial crimes being committed to generate vast sums of cash, later used to comingle with the proceeds of narcotics sales, in order to launder their provenance.

These huge sums of money were funding a criminal lifestyle for the most dangerous criminals, and Government policies of refusing to engage with other ways of dealing with narcotics were simply assisting in putting huge sums of money into the pockets of the top criminals in Europe.

Rowan went on to earn a Masters Degree in Police and Criminal Justice Studies from Exeter University in Devon, England. He is now retired from the police force, but runs his own consulting practice, advising on all aspects of money laundering and terrorist financing, including the training of financial investigators. He is regularly called upon by foreign governments to advise them on money laundering policy and controls.

2008 was the year Rowan heard a LEAP specialist and realized for the first time that there are people in law enforcement around the globe who want to end the "Drug War" insanity by legalizing drug use. His goal is to raise awareness in the UK so that an honest, open debate can begin about the antiquated, destructive drug laws that prevent an informed debate from taking place, wasting more and more tax-payer's money and abusing limited police manpower in a pointless exercise in what has become little more than an act of state-sponsored stupidity.

London