FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 24, 2009
CONTACT: Tom Angell – (202) 557-4979 or media@leap.cc

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A group of police, prosecutors, judges and corrections officers who fought on the front lines of the "war on drugs" reiterated their call for legalizing and regulating all drugs after today's release of the United Nations World Drug Report 2009, which begins with an attempted refutation of legalization arguments – on page one of the report.

"The world's 'drug czar,' Antonio Maria Costa, would have you believe that the legalization movement is calling for the abolition of drug control," said Jack Cole, executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) and a retired undercover narcotics detective. "Quite the contrary, we are demanding that governments replace the failed policy of prohibition with a system that actually regulates and controls drugs, including their purity and prices, as well as who produces them and who they can be sold to. You can't have effective control under prohibition, as we should have learned from our failed experiment with alcohol in the U.S. between 1920 and 1933."

The UN report shows the failure of the drug prohibition policy that the U.S. has exported to the rest of the world, admitting that in some cases the policy "wastes scarce resources." It finds that as many as 250 million people (including up to 38 million "problem" users) consumed illicit drugs in 2007 and that "the system of international drug control has produced several unintended consequences" including corruption and violence caused by a "lucrative black market."

"We're asking people to go to http://www.DrugWarDebate.com, where they can send a message to the world 'drug czar' to educate him about the effects of policies he is supposed to be leading on," said Cole. "Now is the time for action. It's clear that prohibitionists are concerned about reformers' rapidly growing political clout when they attack us on page one of their annual report but didn't even mention us in last year's."

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) is a 13,000-member organization of cops, judges, prosecutors, prison wardens and others who now want to legalize and regulate all drugs after witnessing horrors and injustices fighting on the front lines of the "war on drugs."

More info online at http://www.CopsSayLegalizeDrugs.com.