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Monday, December 5, 2005

Re: My Pot Epiphany

Posted by on December 5 at 11:36 AM

Josh not only missed the first appearance of Norm Stamper’s op-ed calling for the legalization of all recreational drugs in the LA Times, he also missed Nicole Brodeur’s column slamming Stamper in The Seattles Times. Brodeur slammed Stamper in a gentle way, invoking those sacred kiddies…

But Dan Satterberg, the chief of staff of the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, thinks Stamper is way off. “What he’s proposing is a social experiment from which there would be no return,” he said. “You’d have a whole lot more people using a whole lot more drugs. And what’s the message you send to kids? ‘Don’t do drugs, but go here if you want to buy them.’ “… Stamper disagrees. He has twin granddaughters. “No way in hell would I be advocating legalization if I thought that … would jeopardize their lives.”

Brodeur wraps up the column with the kind of mushy, middle-of-the-road thinking that keeps the War on Drugs roaring along…

[Stamper] needs to think a little harder about how legalized drugs would affect all our lives — and how — legal or not — they would continue to imprison those who use them.

Yeah, Stamper’s Seattle’s former Chief of Police, a cop for more than three decades—but Brodeur concludes that he just hasn’t thought long or hard enough about drugs. Otherwise, Stamper would have come down on the side of the War on Drugs. Why? Well, to save the kiddies—because, you know, if we called off the War on Drugs, suddenly children would be able to get their hands on drugs. As things stand now, children are safe from drugs. Just try to find pot—or acid or meth or shrooms—in a Seattle-area high school! Betcha can’t! They’re illegal, you see, and the illegality ensures that children don’t have access to drugs. See how that works?