"Weekend sees rash of killings," the headline read Tuesday in another Chicago newspaper. The paper reported that Chicago violence led to 11 people being killed within 30 hours. As a former Chicago drug and homicide prosecutor who worked in Branch 66, a homicide preliminary hearing court at 26th Street and California Avenue in the early 1970s during Chicago's peak killing years, I remain attuned to homicide news and the correlation between drug-war prohibition and rampant killings.

Dr. Gary Slutkin is an epidemiologist and the founder of CeaseFire Illinois, an organization aiming to "stop the killing." He and I debated the solution to Chicago violence in 1994, not long after 12 kids were killed in a single weekend by Chicago gunfire. Slutkin argued that violence needed to be treated as an epidemic disease like cholera, with systemic changes.

I argued that violence was the inevitable and unstoppable consequence of drug prohibition modeled after Al Capone-style alcohol prohibition, and that drugs needed to be legalized, controlled and regulated to minimize two distinct types of crime - addict crime and turf-war crime. Drug addicts make huge crime waves fueled by:

# The insatiable and incessant need to raise money to pay exorbitant prohibition drug-prices to gang-affiliated street drug vendors.

# Turf-war shootings, in which drug entrepreneurs, young and old, compete with guns for control of lucrative drug sales at a particular street, corner, building or neighborhood.

Identically, drug cartels in Colombia, Italy, Mexico and elsewhere compete with violence for the control of whole drug markets, cities and countries.

Slutkin formed CeaseFire and received millions of dollars for his organization from the same elected officials who enacted or supported drug laws that, in large measure, cause the wholesale killing of our children, and destroy entire neighborhoods and the quality of life for many. As a drug-policy reform crusader, I received no public funds and have lost elections while raising the issue. I continue to point the finger at drug-prohibition as the chief cause of the redundant killings and shootings, speaking and advocating on college campuses and at media venues across America, along with other law-enforcement leaders who once led the fight against drugs but who now belief that the drug war itself is the heart of the problem with drugs, crime and a dozen other American crises. Those former drug-war crusaders are members and speakers for an organization called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, or LEAP. Visit LEAP's website at www.LEAP.cc

In the words of CeaseFire Illinois director Tio Hartiman: "The community is sitting in a pot of gasoline. And every once in a while, someone lights a match and an explosion happens. Nobody is trying to drain the gasoline."

That is not entirely true. The pot is not filled with gasoline; it's filled with drug-war soup. Some of us are trying to throw out the soup and substitute the legalization, control and regulation of drugs that are too dangerous to leave to the gangs and cartels to manage and control. Nothing frightens a drug dealer, cartel or gang like legalized drugs.

James E. Gierach is a former Cook County assistant state's attorney, a municipal attorney, a LEAP board member, a delegate to the Sixth Illinois Constitution Convention, a father of three, chairman of a church council, former president of the Oak Lawn United Way, and Democratic primary candidate for Cook County state's attorney and Illinois governor who advocates drug policy reform.