Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP)

After nearly four decades of fueling the U.S. policy of a war on drugs with over a trillion tax dollars and increasingly punitive policies, the population has quadrupled over a 20-year period making building prisons the nation's fastest growing industry. More than 2.2 million of US citizens are currently incarcerated. In the last five years 9 million people were arrested for nonviolent drug offenses--far more per capita than any country in the world. The United States has 4.6 percent of the population of the world but 22.5 percent of the world's prisoners. Every year we choose to continue this war will cost the United States another 69 billion dollars. Despite all the lives destroyed and all the money so ill spent, today illicit drugs are cheaper, more potent, and much easier to get than they were 36 years ago at the beginning of the war on drugs. Meanwhile, people continue dying in our streets while drug barons and terrorists continue to grow richer than ever before.

The stated U.S. drug policy goals of lessening the incidence of crime, drug addiction, and juvenile drug use, while stemming the flow of illegal drugs into this country, have not been achieved. Fighting a war on drugs has magnified problems many fold but the U.S. still insists on continuing the war and pressuring other governments to perpetuate these same unworkable policies. This scenario is the very definition of a failed public policy.

With this in mind, current and former members of law enforcement have created a drug-policy-reform group called LEAP. The membership of LEAP believe that to save lives and lower the rates of disease, crime and addiction, as well as to conserve tax dollars, we must end drug prohibition. LEAP believes a system of regulation and control is far more effective than one of prohibition.

The mission of LEAP is to reduce the multitude of harms resulting from fighting the war on drugs and to lessen the incidence of death, disease, crime, and addiction by ultimately ending drug prohibition.

LEAP's goals are: (1) To educate the public, the media, and policy makers about the failure of current drug policy by presenting a true picture of the history, causes and effects of drug use and the elevated crime rates--more properly related to drug prohibition than to drug pharmacology--and (2) To restore the public's respect for police, which has been greatly diminished by law enforcement's involvement in imposing drug prohibition.

LEAP's main strategy for accomplishing these goals is to create a constantly growing speakers bureau staffed with knowledgeable and articulate former drug-warriors who describe the impact of current drug policies on: police/community relations; the safety of law enforcement officers and suspects; police corruption and misconduct; and the excessive financial and human costs associated with current drug policies.