Letters to the editor

Uncontrolled substance

Complacency is so rampant, you can't just say go

Editor, The Times:

After having lived across the street from a drug house for 15 years and having worked as an RN in both a detox center and a psychiatric unit, I find former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper's drug theories dangerous and deplorable ["Legalize drugs — all of them," Times guest commentary, Dec. 4].

If drug users would be responsible in any way for the problems they cause, to themselves and to anyone unlucky enough to be part of their lives, Stamper's theory might make some sense. Their drug use does not have a positive effect on anyone. I don't remember taking the history of a single drug user that didn't indicate it all started with marijuana use.

Drug use may be illegal but if you lived with a drug house in your neighborhood, you would doubt the police were aware of this law. Our neighborhood put up with all that goes with drug houses — dangerous traffic and noise at all hours, loose pit bulls, fights, garbage strewn all over, syringes and condoms in your yard, etc., etc. We had neighborhood meetings with our local police commander and anti-drug individuals.

Until I used the word "sue" — since we were not getting the protection our taxes were supposed to provide us — we were treated with less respect than the drug users [receive]. The word "sue" caused a SWAT team raid and the end of the problems with the unsavory characters.

From my observations, drug use is a choice, not an illness that taxpayers need to repeatedly have their money used for "cures" — unless the drug user honestly wants to stop their drug use.

— Bernice Malone, Mukilteo

Drug reactions

We can choose rehabilitated outlook over wasted lives

As a retired 29-year police veteran, I risk provoking the ire of many of my former peers by asking readers to very carefully contemplate the reasoning Norm Stamper uses in his argument.

No doubt we spend billions fighting a losing drug war. History tells us that prohibition of alcohol only made gangsters and bootleggers rich.

No one could argue that if street drugs were legalized and produced under government control, the danger of deaths resulting from contaminated ingredients would be significantly reduced. Money could be available for education and rehabilitation of our young citizens, rather than wasting it on incarcerating them for most of their lives.

I wish I had kept records of the number of drug-related death investigations I screened while I served as a police supervisor. The only time such deaths were reported by the media was when the victims were famous persons.

Please do not hate me — just think about it!

— Howard A. Monta (retired Seattle Police Department sergeant), Seattle

Tracks everywhere

It is not the casual drug users who are causing the overcrowding in our prison system. It is the criminal acts that are directly related to the trafficking and procurement of drugs; not to mention the numerous offenses that are committed by persons under the influence of drugs. That number will not be reduced by Norm Stamper's program even if he plans on providing these drugs free of charge.

The compulsive need for drugs is the driving force behind the street crimes, such as mugging or purse theft. Any burglary/robbery detective in America can connect the dots between those crimes and drug use.

[Stamper's idea] is a dishonor to our brothers and sisters in law enforcement who put their lives on the line every day for the war on drugs. Too many good men and women on both sides of the border have given their lives to allow something like this to even be considered.

We have not yet won the battle only because we lack the resolve and aggressiveness to win.

— Eric Kormondy, Seattle

Holding a contravention

Norm Stamper suggests that we "police the industry much as alcohol-beverage-control agencies keep a watch on bars and liquor stores at the state level." Having been chief of police in Seattle, Stamper could well have been thinking of the Washington State Liquor Control Board, which is charged with both regulating and promoting liquor and tobacco (and the tax revenues we get from them).

This joint mission, of both promoting and regulating potentially dangerous substances, is in obvious conflict with our country's general governmental philosophy of checks and balances, and is a fundamentally flawed mechanism to regulate such enterprises.

Obviously, the provision of two governmental agencies, with perhaps opposing missions, will be more costly and cumbersome than the present system, but it is a model that generally works well.

I fear we'll never legalize all drugs, but if we do so, let's make sure that we don't finish up with the fox guarding the hen house yet again.

— Andrew Taylor, Seattle

The gateway plug

I agree completely with Norm Stamper's view that we should legalize all drugs. We have more people in prison than any other nation on this planet except Russia (a recent development); 58 percent of those in prison are in on drug or drug-related charges. We spend more money on prisons than schools.

Does this sound like America? Do we want to think of ourselves as outdoing Russia and China at prison populations? Is this a cost we wish to bear?

If we legalize all drugs, what will happen? If we categorize alcohol as a drug, then there will not be any additional drug use. Here's why:

We can divide the population into three segments: those who use drugs currently, those who use alcohol currently and those who use neither. If drugs become legal, clearly those who use drugs already will continue. Those who drink alcohol may switch to drugs — this doesn't represent additional drug use. Those who don't use drugs or drink alcohol currently (for religious or health reasons), will not start just because drugs become legal.

— Thomas Tobiason, Seattle

Back to reality

Our prisons are filled to overflowing with drug addicts. Young girls become prostitutes to support their drug habits. Crimes are committed to afford the high cost of illegal drugs. Mothers are incarcerated, sometimes for being involved with a drug-dealing man, and children are deprived of parents.

Meantime, movies and celebrities glamorize drug usage. Even our political leaders have admitted to, or have been reported, using drugs.

Using mind-altering drugs is nothing new. In this country, cocaine, heroin and morphine were legal until around the 1930s.

Of course, much thought and planning will have to be done to make the transition from our present failed drug laws to a more-sensible approach, but the time to end the war on drugs is past due.

— Ellen Hansen, Auburn

Up against the weal

Never in the history of this nation has any policy been as detrimental to our professed love of liberty and our democratic process as the War On (some) Drugs. From corruption of our nation's community police agencies to the death of innocents (not just from gang-warfare crossfire, but in wrong-address drug raids), the cost of continued prohibition will prove fatal to our freedoms and the Constitution protecting them.

When the U.S. has gone from a global champion of freedom to the most imprisoned nation on Earth, it is heartening to see law-enforcement officials joining the voices of opposition to the drug war.

Hopefully, our newspapers will soon join the clamor against a policy that has become, truthfully and sadly, the front line of creeping fascism in the former land of the free.

— Allan Erickson, Drug Policy Forum of Oregon, Eugene, Ore.

The white knight is talking forward

Leave it to an ex-Seattle cop to advance the notion that imprisoning tens of thousands of otherwise decent and law abiding citizens for illegal drugs is not an effective policy for combating the evils of drug abuse.

I can hear it now: The next things Norm Stamper will be championing will be affordable treatment on demand, a redistribution of funds from incarceration to drug-abuse prevention education, and perhaps even allowing young Americans educational assistance despite a drug conviction.

Whose side are these people on, anyway?

— Vivian McPeak, Seattle

Unsafe at any speed

Like so many people with liberal persuasions, Norm Stamper refuses to recognize that it is the drugs that are the problem, not the drug laws or prison overcrowding, civil rights, social injustices, police misconduct, ad nauseam.

I would recommend Stamper spend some time reading "What's best for Baby M?" [special report, page one, Dec. 4]. This well-prepared, five-page article details the travails of Seattle residents Liz Campo and Mike Testa, who lost their home, jobs and their "Baby M" to Washington Child Protective Services due primarily to drug use, particularly methamphetamine.

Drug use caused Testa to nearly lose everything, including his sanity, and to drop completely out of the programs provided by and demanded of him by state and local rehabilitative services. His drug addiction resulted in several episodes of domestic abuse and the attempted murder and maiming of Campo and other uninvolved citizens.

The couple ultimately lost their child to foster care and adoption. Testa ended up in state prison for 12 years for his violent acts.

This prisoner hardly [equates to] the sympathetic person painted by Stamper as a "nonviolent drug offender" who in his opinion should be released from jail and be allowed to obtain and use methamphetamine and other drugs legally because that is his constitutional right.

I do not know how any person with an extensive law-enforcement background can advocate drug legalization, yet [say] "... Get loaded, commit a crime, do the time." You can't have it both ways.

— William Coonce (Drug Enforcement Administration, ret.), Snohomish

Mangled tradition

Most of this myth past

The debate over whether to celebrate Christmas is getting quite tiresome. I'm surprised Christians don't boycott the whole thing altogether, since Yule is actually a pagan holiday going back long before the Catholic Church co-opted it and added the Nativity legend.

Yule trees, Santa Claus, giving of gifts, etc., are all pagan and cultural traditions and have nothing to do with any monotheistic religion.

It's up to the churchgoers if they want to attach some meaning of their own to the holiday, but the rest of us should have the opportunity to celebrate "the meaning of the season" without having to drag the mythical birth of Jesus into it.

— James Freudiger, Seattle

View of the tear-stained Red's nose

To everyone who believes Seattle is a center of communism for standing under a statue of Vladimir Lenin, I invite you to Fremont this holiday season. The father of communism in Russia and totalitarian predecessor to Joseph Stalin is nicely decorated in red lights, which cover him like a Christmas tree, complete with a star on top of his head. He looks wonderful dressed up as a festive religious symbol.

And if you look really closely, you may see a tear of irony drip from his nose.

— Michael Blake, Fremont