Questions:
How many of you all believe that we are winning the war on drugs? How many of you all believe that we are going to win the war on drugs? How many of you all believe that the war on drugs was meant to win?

Do you know we are spending 69 billion dollars a year to fight the war on drugs?

If we are spending 69 billion dollars a year to fight the war on drugs, why is the government cutting back on staff in law enforcement to tackle the issue such as the police, corrections, and the border patrol? Shouldn’t the government give law enforcement everything they need to fight the war on drugs?

Does anyone know the story about Nicky Barnes? He was a notorious heroin kingpin. In Vietnam, he and a guy name Jimmy Atkinson were working together with some high official in the armed services and other powerful people. They implemented an operation to transport drugs from Vietnam to the United States by cutting open the body of dead soldiers and putting heroin and opium in their dead bodies and placing them in a body bag to be shipped to the United States. Some high ranking officials in the military were suspected of having something to do with this illegal operation.

Fact: The first round of mandatory minimum sentencing was enacted in 1951 and 20 years later it was repealed with bipartisan support. Guess who was the person that backed the repeal? You guessed it - George W.Bush, then a congressman from Texas. With his son now in the White House, this would be a good time for history to repeat itself.

Fact: In 1969 President Nixon called for the war on drugs and he created the mandatory minimum sentencing. Sixteen years later, for the second time, it didn’t work. It almost broke the country and the population was still using drugs and more drugs were entering the country.

Fact: On June 19, 1986, an election year, a basketball star from Maryland selected by the NBA for the Boston Celtics, died of a cocaine overdose.

Fact: Len Bias died of a Cocaine overdose not a crack cocaine overdose.

Fact: In 1986, after Bias’ death, the Democrats in Congress saw a political opportunity to outflank Republicans by getting tough on drugs. During the 1984 election year the republicans successfully accused Democrats of being soft on crime. House Speaker Tip O’Neill was from Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Celtics had signed Bias. During the 4th of July Congressional recess, O’Neill’s constituents were so consumed with anger and dismay about Bias’ death that O’Neill realized how powerful an anti-drug campaigned would be and he went for it.

Fact: 2006, and 20 years after Len Bias death, there are more drugs coming to this country, the drugs are cheaper and we haven’t put a dent in stopping the war on drugs. The only thing the U.S. is doing is putting people in prisons and throwing away the key. If the United States wants to stop the war on drugs, why are they still funding Mexico and South America where most of the drugs are coming from? The drug war was not about Len Bias, the drug war was about incarcerating minorities and keeping them in prisons for a long period of time to make products for Victoria’s Secret, Boeing, and Eddie Bauer. These companies subcontracted with companies using low cost prison labor to manufacture everything from aircraft components to lingerie and software packages. The airline TWA contracts with the California Youth and Adult Correctional Agency to use prisoners to make airline reservations.

In Nevada, prisoners make waterbeds for Vinyl Products, Inc. Another company, Labor to Industry (Formerly Lockhart Technologies) employs 60 Texas prisoners making electronic circuit boards. The Washington Marketing Group employs prisoners as telemarketers. South Carolina Cap and Gown, Inc. hires prisoners to make graduation gowns.

Fact: From 1954 to 1976 the Federal Bureau of Prisons population went from 20,000 people to 24,000. By 1986 the federal Bureau of prisons were incarcerating 36,000 inmates. 20 years later the Federal Bureau of prisons is housing over 190,000 inmates. More than half of the population is made up of drug offenders, most of whom are serving sentences created in the weeks after Len Bias.

There is much more to this story. IBM, Motorola, Compaq, Dell, Texas Instrument, Honeywell, and Microsoft benefit from prison labor. Are you wondering why you don’t have a job or why are you getting laid off from your jobs? I will tell you the reason why. Inmates are taking your jobs and you, the America people who haven’t committed any crimes, are getting the short end of the stick. Before I end this blog, I want you to know that the Federal Bureau of Prisons is using inmates as operators for 411 information. You know what I mean, “city and state please.” Those are inmates you are talking to. The Federal Correctional Institution in Tallahassee, Florida and the Federal Correctional Institution at Butner, North Carolina are using inmates as phone operators. The Federal Correctional Institution at Memphis, Tennessee is using inmates to make sensors that go on our bombs. Have you wondered why those bombs are not hitting those targets?

Before you complain that a non-violent offender should stay in prison for life, think about the jobs they are taking from the public. I agree we should have prisons, and there are people who should spend a long time in prison. But the prisons are filling up with mostly non-violent offenders who serve 15 years to life. There are violent offenders in prisons for rape, child molestation, murder, and spousal abuse that will get out of prisons before a non-violent offender.

Garry L. Jones
Advocate4justice
Advocate4justice2004@yahoo.com
www.advocate4justice.org

I have my own organization call advocate4justice.org but I'm a member of an organization call L.E.A.P Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, no, this is not a misprint Leap is a 5,000 member organization created to (1.) give voice to law enforces who know the U.S. War on Drugs is a failed policy and (2) support Legalized Regulation of drugs as an alternative that will lower the incidence of death, disease, crime and addiction while saving tax dollars. We are made up of retired and current law enforcements agents such as lawyers, Chief of Police, Judges, Assistant Attorney Generals, D.E.A and etc; when I go out on the road and speak for one of LEAP's many functions. I usually ask the public five questions.

1. Do you think we are winning the War on Drugs?  95 percent of the answers I received is no.
2. Do you think we are going to win the War on Drugs?  98 percent of the people say no.
3. Do you think the War on Drugs was meant to be won? 90 percent of the public say no.
4. Do you think we should legalized drugs?  65 percent of the public say yes. After I get through giving them facts that that they weren't aware of and the reasons why I think drugs should be legalized, that 35 percent of the people who said 'no, drugs shouldn't be legalized' turns into 90 percent 'yes, we should legalize drugs'.
5. If drugs were legalized, what would be your drug of choice?  90 percent of the people say 'I don't use drugs' and my statement to them is i'f you don't use drugs now, what makes you think that you will use drugs if they are legalized?'

Most young people think the War on Drugs started when Len Bias, a star basketball player from the University of Maryland and was a first round draft pick of the Boston Celtics died of a drug overdose cocaine, not crack cocaine. The truth of the matter is, we have been fighting the War on Drugs since 1969 under President Nixon. Did you know that the United States spends 69 billion dollars a year on a Drug war that wasn't meant to be won?

As law Enforcements agents we were excited when we first got hired because we said we are going to make a difference, sad to say a lot of our officers died fighting this war, a lot of officers became corrupt. Example: If you are going t pay me $25,000.00 per year to be an agent and I stopped someone who has $500,000.00 and a half of million dollars worth of cocaine and if you bribe me to accept $300,000.00 to let you go. What would you do? If you think that we don't have drugs in prison, you need to think again, I have seen more drugs in prison than I have seen in my own neighborhood. Some Correctional Officers falls prey to some inmates bribing them to bring in contraband such as drug and the officers get paid big money dong this illegal activity. This is not what I heard, this is what I have witness. Drugs are everywhere, in our schools, churches, neighborhoods, and on our streets. I believe our government elected officials are using drugs as well as having their campaign funded indirectly from drug money. Please be advised the statement I just made about our government officials is not a point of view from LEAP's organization. The statement is Garry Jones point of view as a private citizen. Gangs usually fight for drug turf in the neighborhoods, meaning you don't have the authority to come from across down to sell your drugs in our neighborhood. We already have our people selling over in this hood.

Let me turn you on to a secret, The United States government give funding to Mexico and South America, guess what? This is where most of the drugs are coming from. Let me turn you on to another secret, if the government is really trying to stop the War on Drugs, why are they cutting back on staff. The majority of Law Enforcements Agencies are under funded and under staffed. Where is that 69 billion dollars a year on the War on Drugs going?

In conclusion, if we allow the government to legalized drugs and regulated it I think eighty percent of the killing would go down because who are the people going to kill now since the drugs are legal? How will our children be corrupted? They have to show I.D. to purchase cigarettes and but alcohol but they can go in the hood and don't show any I.D. to purchase drugs. People are dying from alcohol and cigarettes and theses are legal drugs. This is a fact. I never known anyone to overdose off marijuana but I know a lot of people that die every year from drinking and driving. Our children don't have the incentive to go get an education or a job because they feel like they can make more money in a night than they can make in a week selling drugs than working an honest job. We need to put the Drug Kingpins out of business by legalizing drugs. We need to start building more colleges and Drug Treatment Centers than prisons, we need to put that 69 billion a year for the war on drugs into social security, Medicaid, Medicare, and rebuild the neighborhoods that the drug warriors have torn down. Does it take 37 years to realized that we need to change our strategy on the War on Drugs?. If it is not working, fix it.

Garry L. Jones

www.advocate4justice.org

When I think of a “War”, I think of a battle between two forces; technically this is the gist of how a war is defined, but in this particular case (War on Drugs)…it’s not.

 In all “Wars” someone loses the battle and someone wins. Again in this particular case, “no one is winning. The people that began this “war” aren’t winning this supposed war on “drugs”, but what they are winning is a war on defenseless people. According to the title of the war, it’s supposed to be on “drugs”, meaning the target is the drug itself…stopping the opposite force…drugs.

 Which brings forth the truth…the target is “not” drugs, the target of this war is “people” Jack Cole, one of LEAP’s founding members, has been saying it for a long time. To quote  Jack A. Cole, State Police Undercover Officer: "This is Not a War on Drugs - it's a War on  People."

 For 16 years, I have floated from one state or federal institution to another throughout the United States, and taken note of many factors of this topic. One of the main things that sticks out is the fact that the target of this war is a group of people that do not stand a chance in this ugly web…and those people are known as African Americans. This is the reason I created the organization www.advocate4justice.org: for people to learn that this is not a war on drugs.   

 The next thing that is a very clear and open fact is, this war that has been supposedly fought on drugs, has not put a dent in the drug activity in our society, as a matter of fact it has done none but than the opposite. This brings me back to the quote I made when I first joined L.E.A.P. and I still stand by my quote “I firmly believe that the war on drugs was not meant to be won, and if you continue to think we are winning the war on drugs, you need to think again. The United States allows drugs to come into this country to destroy our families by way of subjecting them to draconian drug sentencing laws. If you sell drugs, then you go straight to jail and earn pennies making products that the United States Government sells to private companies for millions of dollars.”

 This is a ”war” that has been going on for almost 4 decades, and absolutely nothing has come out of this except hundreds of thousands of people(mothers, fathers, sisters, ) are being destroyed, while drug activity continues at a steady pace if not an even steadier pace.

In one of his many eloquent lectures, Dr. King admonished the African American family in this wise way, “This soft-minded acquiescence is the way of the coward. My friends, we cannot win the respect of the white people of the South or the peoples of the world if we are willing to sell the future of our children for our personal and immediate safety and comfort. Moreover, we must learn that the passive acceptance of an unjust system is to cooperate with that system, and thereby become a participant in its evil. Non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good." 

Although those words were an articulate admonition to us nearly 50 years or more ago, they still possess the power to convince those of us whose conscience has not yet been seared by hard-hearted indifference and apathy.  Too often we invoke Dr. King’s honorable name and great social work without willingness to make sacrifices to carry on his commendable legacy. 

Case in point: Over the last several years there have been numerous reports published by reputable think tanks and social justice organizations illuminating the fact that African Americans are still being disproportionately discriminated against based solely upon the color of their skin.  In 1995, the Sentencing Commission, comprised mostly of legal professionals appointed by Congress to act as an oversight committee for the judicial system to assure it is administered fairly, concluded that African Americans were being unfairly sentenced in the judicial system.  Although the Sentencing Committee made a recommendation to Congress to rectify the unfair sentencing practice, Congress rejected the Sentencing Committee’s recommendation. What's so disturbing about this fact is that this was the first time in the history of the Sentencing Commission that Congress had refused to accept its recommendation. Clearly, the incident was loaded with racially discriminatory overtones.

Thereafter, there would be an array of similar instances where African Americans would be discriminated against.  For example, in 2003, the racial discrimination had become so blatant and pervasive that Anthony Kennedy, a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, was impelled to implore the American Bar Association to use its influence to stop the madness.  Although the ABA complied with Justice Kennedy’s plea by conducting a year long study of the judicial system and publishing its findings which ultimate declared that the system is rife with injustice against blacks in particular, after the hoopla, things resorted back to business as usual.  That is, the system resumed its perpetuation of evil.

Then, the Sentencing Committee conducted a study which declared primarily the same things the Justice Kennedy Commission had declared, i.e., that blacks are severely abused by the system.  To corroborate their findings the Supreme Court made several rulings declaring that they have been illegally sentencing many blacks for the last 17 years. Nevertheless, after the hoopla, they always go back to business as usual.  Frankly, I am not as concerned about their abuses as I am about the apathetic and indifferent attitude displayed by our people, particular those whom we elect from our communities to represent us in Congress.  Despite the overwhelming evidence that our children are the targets of the abusive system, we still sit idly by and watch the perpetuation of the evil, contrary to Dr. King’s admonition. 

This compels me to pose the question “What does it really mean to carry on the legacy of Dr. King?”  Although the measure introduced by Danny Davis to reinstate federal parole would only provide a modicum of justice to rectify the extensive history of injustice inflicted upon blacks in the judicial system, he has not been able to garner substantial support from the members of his own Caucus not to mention from the Democratic party.  If Dr. King was alive today, would he mobilize our people in support of Danny Davis’ effort to bring justice to our suffering and abused people?  In my heart-of-hearts, I hold the strongest conviction that he would.  Regardless of how politically incorrect the position may be perceived as, I am sure that Dr. King would support Danny Davis’ bill for the reinstatement of federal parole because of the voluminous amount of evidence indicating the infliction of injustice upon our people.

So, now that the Democratic Party has assumed control of the Congress, can we get the members of the Black Caucus and their Democratic colleagues to support a measure that will provide a modicum of justice and alleviate the suffering of their constituents who so faithfully vote for their installment to Congressional seats?

After all, to support such a measure is what it really means to carry on the legacy of Dr. King.