‘Marijuana never killed anyone’

Jack A. Cole thinks marijuana should be legalized.

In fact, Mr Cole thinks all drugs should be legalized.

The retired American police officer has been in Bermuda advocating significant reform to drug laws. Mr Cole, the co-founder and board chairman of the Massachusetts-based Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), says the so-called War on Drugs is a misguided policy rooted in racism that corrupts police and causes much more harm than good.

He brought that message to multiple Bermudian organizations, including the Cannabis Reform Collaborative, which is charged with making recommendations to the government concerning prospective marijuana reform on the island.

“Prohibition doesn’t work,” Mr. Cole told us. “Prohibition makes everything worse.

“If we legalize it we take it out of the hands of the criminals and we end this violence, which is a lot of violence.”

Ideally, he said, Bermuda should legalize marijuana. But there is a problem.

“The problem is called the United States of America,” he said. “We are the big bully on the block.”

No one is quite sure how the US would react to other jurisdictions liberalizing their drug laws, he said.

“We don’t have a track record for legalizing any drug in the world.”

Coincidentally, Mr Cole visited Bermuda last week — at the same time as Dr Andrea Barthwell, a drug addiction specialist and a former deputy drug czar under US President George W. Bush. Dr Barthwell says the medical benefits of marijuana are overblown and that the current drug laws are important in the reduction of illicit drug abuse.

Mr Cole disagrees with Dr Barthwell’s take. He says the current laws are inefficient.

Huge drug seizures have no effect on drug use in the US, he said. Drug users will still find their fix. Purity levels have risen since the so-called War on Drugs was implemented. He added that marijuana is a substance “that has not killed a single person in recorded history”.

Racist drug laws

Additionally, there is an inherent racism in the institutions that enforce American drug laws, said Mr Cole.

The statistics come streaming out of Mr. Cole: in the States, African Americans comprise only 13 per cent of those who use or sell drugs. Studies show that blacks in the US are slightly less likely to use illicit drugs than whites.“But now, who gets arrested?” he asked, before quickly answering his own question.

About 37 per cent of those who get arrested for drug violations are black, whereas 60 per cent of those incarcerated in state prisons for drug violations are black, he said. 

On the federal level, the number is even higher, as more than 80 per cent of those imprisoned for drug violations are black. In some instances, says Mr Cole, blacks are now serving six years for exactly the same drug crimes for which whites are serving four years.