English is a particularly imprecise language but I will attempt to make my point without resorting to emotionalism. That ploy has been used and abused by too many charlatans.

I am not here to exhort you to "just say no," you have heard that message repeatedly. Your future is in your hands. You are responsible for your own actions. You have been educated, you have seen the failures of those who abuse drugs and I have confidence that you will do the right thing. But I did not come here to applaud you nor to make jingoistic statements to garner your applause. I am not here to debate statistics, to split hairs or determine how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. The data has been collected. Its meaning is clear and the message is blunt.

I have no time for fantasy and I will not abet your dipping into its sweet waters.

I am here to talk about reality.

In 1968, Herbert L. Packer published a book called "The Limits of the Criminal Sanction" in which he questioned the wisdom of applying criminal sanctions against drug users and pointed out the following adverse effects that the national policy of combating drug use with criminal penalties.

1.    Millions of citizens have been punished.
2.    Profitable traffic has developed.
3.    Growth and prosperity of Organized Crime.
4.    Acquisitive crimes, burglary, theft, have increased.
5.    Billions have been expended on enforcement efforts.
6.    A disturbingly large number of undesirable police practices: search and seizure, entrapment and surveillance, have become habitual.
7.    Burden of enforcement is on the lower economic strata.
8.    Research into the causes and effects of drug abuse has been stultified.
9.    The medical profession has been intimidated into abandoning its traditional role of relieving misery.
10.    A well entrenched bureaucracy has developed.
11.    Legislative invocations have been extended and enforced.

He also noted what he called "Differential enforcement." That is, that drug offenses were treated differently in the slums than in the suburbs.

Mr. Parker also pointed out that our "experience since 1939 should make us wary of imposing criminality, yet we rush to invoke the criminal sanction."

Well, here we are 51 years later and the situation is considerably worse than it was in 1939. We have built bigger prisons and filled them. We have revoked social privileges from the user, we have confiscated their property, sentenced them to community service and still the amount of money pouring into the coffers of the Drug Lords grows.

What I am about to say is not popular. It is not easy to take this position and it has already cost me dearly. However, I can no longer condone the continuation of a policy that has demonstrably failed and so I must speak out. Usually, I speak to groups of law enforcement and professional security managers, I am one of them. In those groups, I have found an extraordinary intransigence and a resistance to experimenting with anything but criminal sanctions. I have also uncovered what I believe to be a deep running current of dissatisfaction with the results of our current national policy of prohibition.

We are living in an era of accountability. Yet we allow our policy makers to operate without adherence to the laws that every other business manager must contend with every day.

Consider the situation in which a manager goes to his boss with a budget request for a program in which he is not only failing but which holds no promise of success. Well, that boss will probably cite cost/benefit ratios, return on investment statistics, demographic surveys, market share analysis and then require our manager to develop a success feasibility projection.

Yet our government continues to tell us that with a few more dollars and a few more prisons we can win the "war on drugs"

Ladies and gentlemen, this nation's drug policy has failed. Even worse it has been counterproductive.

Our political leaders can see this. They read the same newspapers that we do, yet there is no dissent among our law enforcement officers and political leaders. They continue to operate as they have for the past 51 years. Ignoring the evidence of failure and continuing with a national policy of intolerance.

Every first year management student learns that the primary motivating factor in change is dissatisfaction with results. Paternalistic socialism is proving itself a failed system, but our leaders continue a program of prohibition enforced by criminal sanction with zero tolerance for deviance. Daily, we are told that we are responsible for our own actions, yet criminal penalties are used to deter citizens from certain activities.

Why this intransigence? One reason is that the law enforcement community depends for a large part of its operating budget on funds allocated to anti-drug operations. Without the "drug menace" to fight, law enforcement might be 50 percent of its current size and consequently, 50 percent of its importance. What I am saying is that between self interest and job security, the law enforcement community has abrogated its duty to speak out and identify a failed policy and an impractical solution.

The use of drugs, no matter how personally abhorrent it may be to us, does not merit being a criminal offense and it is not in our best interest to create criminals. By imposing prohibition we have deliberately suppressed competition and abandoned the recreational drug market to persons who are by fiat, criminal and by the very nature of their trade, violent.

These entrepreneur have benefited from the artificial price supports of prohibition. They have created new wealth and that wealth has been centered in the criminal sector and directed toward furthering the aims of the criminal establishment. Their organizations have profited, flourished and diversified. They have attained the status of "institution." They have operated with callous disregard for the welfare of their clients and have contributed nothing to the betterment of society.

Their customers have been declared criminal and being subject to criminal penalties have sunk into criminal enterprise. It is my contention that criminal sanctions have induced criminal behavior in millions of our citizens and created an atmosphere of distrust and contempt for authority.

The message is clear. People want their drugs. They have spoken with their dollars. Despite laws that threaten severe fines, confiscation of property, loss of social privilege and imprisonment, they continue their purchases.

But the real issue in the "war on drugs" is not whether someone gets high or another gets rich. The real issue is violence. The outrages that the news media reports to us day after day. The violence on our streets that has made us prisoners in our homes. The violence that reaches into our neighborhoods and strikes our friends and our families.

Personally, I really don't care if someone blows their brains out with drugs. I do care if that persons desperation for his drugs will drive him to steal my car, burglarize my home and maybe, just for the fun of it, rape, sodomize and murder my family. These things I care very strongly about and the nations policy of prohibition has failed to make my life any more secure.

Just as the criminal organizations that smuggled whiskey during the prohibition era are with us today, we have engendered, by fiat, a criminal institution that will be with us far into the next century. This result of prohibition was predictable. But it seems as if the consequences of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States were disregarded as irrelevant and ignored by our leaders and policy makers.

Year after year, we have enacted progressively harsher laws. We have developed new techniques and tools to fight crime. We have built bigger prisons and put more people in them and still the situation deteriorates. Our court system is choked with drug cases. Our prison system is about to collapse under its own weight. Cynicism and contempt for authority grow.

The penalties we have levied against drug dealers have not created unfilled employment opportunities at any level of the drug production or distribution organizations.

The penalties we have levied against users have not deterred persons from using the prohibited substances.

Interdiction has had the effect of creating a domestic climate conducive to the development of a high-tech drug manufacturing and cultivation industry. We are no longer talking about simple drugs like marijuana, cocaine or heroin. We are now talking about complex chemical compounds. Designer drugs like "Crack," "Ice" and "Moonrock." These are not simple products to manufacture. They require a considerable investment in plant, materials and the trained technicians who know what they are doing.

Ladies and gentlemen the sciences of chemistry, genetic engineering and hydroponics are being used by the drug lords to fill market shortfalls and develop new consumer products. These technologies are also being widely disseminated by PC bulletin boards to create a broad based supply network. Does any one here seriously think that the cocoa plant cannot be cultivated in New Jersey? It can and it will be, using hydroponic techniques, when the market forces make it profitable to do so.

I have in my possession a document that I got from a PC bulletin board which claims that a 4x4x5 foot hydroponic cabinet will yield three crops of four marijuana plants per year. Each plant will yield approximately 10 ounces of high grade weed. Each ounce will wholesale for about $100. It does not take a genius to work out those kinds of economics.

The demand for recreational drugs remains unabated. We do not even know how much drug use is really going on out there. The government tells us that it is 10% of the population. That would appear to be a k-ball guess. You cannot conduct a reliable survey when the consequences of admitting use may be criminal prosecution. I do my own surveys and what I have seen is that the sale of rolling papers in my local neighborhood 7-11 indicates that there is a lot of drug use going on in the bedroom communities of this country.

Huge amounts of capital have been shunted from legitimate business to the criminal enterprise. The Medellin cartel in Colombia is able to challenge the legitimate government of that country because they are well armed, heavily financed and utterly ruthless. Our budget deficit continues to grow and is not beneficiary of legitimate taxation on consumer drugs.

The profit potential is drawing ever more violent persons into the drug trade. In Los Angeles, gang warfare to control sales territory makes Chicago 1928, look like a Boy Scout picnic.

The black inner-city communities have become a war zone. Listen to what they are saying about our law enforcement efforts on radio stations like WBIA. The police are being compared to an invading army. We have not even begun to address the hatred and divisiveness generated by our law enforcement efforts.

Firearms are so pervasive in schools that installing metal detectors has become a serious alternative.

Disease among intravenous drug users is epidemic. AIDS has crossed over into the non-using sector and threatens the high-tech health care infrastructure of our society.

Prohibition has created an atmosphere of deceit and disbelief, in which the honest citizen wonders how many of his elected officials receive campaign funds from drug traffickers. He wonders if the bank that holds his mortgage also launders drug money. He wonders if his stock broker also handles the portfolio of a drug dealer.

The honest citizen wonders if the police are on the take. He wonders how many lawyers and accountants knowingly and deliberately council the drug lords on ways to avoid prosecution and maximize their return on investment. He wonders if the law enforcement efforts of his government are not misdirected. He wonders if his children are using drugs.

The statistic are in. We don't have to debate them. Every year the number of crimes increases. When we sort them to highlight drug use, we see that the primary motivating factor in the vast majority of crime is the need for huge amounts of cash with which to buy drugs.

Yet our leadership continues to build bigger prisons and put more people in them. Today, we have the highest percentage of our population in history, in prison. What happens when you put a person in prison? Do they come out reformed? Our recidivism rate proves they do not. Prison is not the answer. Prison is part of the problem! Prison makes good people bad and bad people worse and I am not even going to address the incidence of drug use in prison.

Under the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, we targeted the casual user with extraordinary penalties and proclaimed zero tolerance. That proposal is patently unworkable. Or is it just a facade to placate the masses. "Tough on Drugs," how many times have our politicians told us that one? And how many times have they failed in what they wanted to do because what they wanted to do was utterly untenable. The situation is not improving.

Management Responsibility

In the workplace, Management has the right and the duty to demand a drug-free environment. That is reasonable and prudent. In most companies, anyone caught using drugs of any kind, on the job, would be subject to enrollment in an Employee Assistance Program, in lieu of being terminated and prosecuted.

The duty of management is to manage. Unfortunately, many managers have abrogated this responsibility in favor of a quick fix drug test. Pre-employment screening may very well keep some drug users from getting a job but I believe that the majority of the casual users are smart enough, to stay clean enough, long enough to get that job.

Plain old good management will identify the underachiever, the problem worker and the drug abuser. This is the job of management. I cannot stress strongly enough that it is in the workplace that we can draw a realistically defensible line. It is here, in the workplace, that society has a choke hold on the individual. The problem in the workplace can be identified and addressed legitimately without recourse to criminal sanctions.

The employees can be held responsible for their productivity and must be forced to make the decision regarding their drug abuse and resulting substandard performance. Quite literally, the choice to be made is "Get help or Get Out."

To date, the only effort in the "War on Drugs" that has shown any tangible results, has been education. But educational messages tainted with "Reefer Madness" style half truth, misinformation and outright lies, only creates cynicism.

The heightened health consciousness across our population does not portend the dire consequences of mass addiction if we legalize drugs. I cannot believe that a person who is concerned with diet, exercise and cholesterol is the kind to be skin popping heroin.

My yuppie friends tell me that God has been replaced by fitness. Well, if that is true, then that is the type of positive trend that we must explore and exploit if we are ever going to attain our goal of a "drug-free society."

Recognizing failure and redirecting effort is another job of management. The law enforcement community and our political leaders have not succeeded with their proposals. Now, I am inviting you, the concerned citizens, frustrated citizens, angry citizens to join me and utilize your expertise in modern management techniques, access control, systems and data processing to develop alternative proposals. I am challenging you to work with me to develop programs that set goals, measure progress toward those goals and allow the approach to be modified to attain those goals.

We must start developing plans, not fantasies, that will:

1. reverse the trend of escalating violence.

2. gain control of the recreational drug cultivation, manufacturing and distribution industries.

3. mitigate the influence of the criminal entrepreneurs.

4. induce a decline in the number of persons using addictive and self-destructive drugs.

As a result of the lectures I have been presenting, I am having some very disturbing thoughts about the Constitutionality of what we are doing. I'm not a lawyer but it seems to me that we have inflicted a disintegration of our rights to personal freedom and privacy on ourselves by continuing this policy of prohibition. I have also seen the death of what I call "fair play."

It was confiscation of property that, in 1215, rallied the nobles and people to resist King John of England and force him to sign the Magna Carta. This document became the very touchstone of our legal system. Yet "confiscation" is the law of the land today. Yes, it is done quite legally, through the court system, as a result of slow erosion of this very basic right. I feel very uneasy about "confiscation of personal property" as a national policy.

Micro-evidence, one of law enforcements finest weapons, is being used as a tool to convict and confiscate the property of American citizens. The example of confiscation and conviction on the basis of a single marijuana seed goes against my philosophy of fair play.

The idea of interning young drug offenders in "reeducation camps" also seems frightening. I do not like the idea of "brain washing." This program has an additional built in detriment. None of us wants to be compared to killers like the Nazis, Stalinists or Khmer Rouge. Yet we say "to the camps."

Our children are being exhorted to turn in a user, even if it is their parents. Several incidents have been reported in which they have turned in their parents. Those children had no idea of the consequences that would befall them when their parents were incarcerated.

But the most disturbing consequence that I have seen is the ease with which law enforcement officials, police agents and security professionals talk about killing drug users and dealers as a solution.

This society is based upon a constitution that ensures the protection of all. Yet among these professionals it is openly asserted that violation of the most basic civil right is an acceptable policy.

Murder may never be proclaimed as a legitimate solution! Too many of our law enforcement and security professional casually engage in talk of mass murder! Do we really believe that it is acceptable to murder even one drug dealer? How far is it from the expressed word to the action? How much of a leap is it from framing a user to finally committing the act of murder?

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the most frightening and destructive consequence of our nations policy of prohibition.

Ladies and gentlemen, I did not come here with a hollow speech and an empty cry for change. I have brought with me an outline of a plan. Some preliminary thoughts on the system configuration and the safeguards that will allow us to gain some control over this condition which is wildly out of control.

I will go over it with you now and I would appreciate your considered remarks, comments, suggestions and recommendations. I will incorporate your contributions into a management plan that will form the core of a realistic and workable program that can be submitted to the citizens of this country.

The drug policy of this country has failed. Therefore, we must do something different. The opposite of current policy would be total legalization. I don't think that is wise. However, a first step must be taken and that step should be with marijuana.

We must remove the criminal penalties from both the sale,and personal use of cannabis.

We must recognize the distinction between "recreational" and "addiction maintenance" use of drugs. To coin a slogan, we must "tolerate use and target abuse."

Second, we must conduct a free market trade war utilizing ruthless advertising and price competition, directed at capturing the marijuana market within three years and to supplanting the criminal element within five years.

Third, we must allow private enterprise to establish "retail stores" to merchandise "drugs and paraphernalia." The "retail" store distribution point must include a "clinic," a "point of sale data collection system" and a "positive ID system." The purpose of these enhancements will be to:

a. monitor purchases and advise the user and other concerned individuals or organizations of overdose and addiction potential.

b. document waivers notifying the user of the dangers of use.

c. waive liability of the vendor.

d. advise the user of their peril if they injure a person while intoxicated.

e. identify, document and refer for treatment, users who have contracted communicable illness and diseases.

f. provide health care and recovery assistance referrals.

g. identify and target the violence prone user.

h. provide a reliable data base to law enforcement, insurance and health service companies.

Fourth, we must allow the pharmaceutical industry to develop safer "recreational drugs."

Fifth, we must further emphasize early drug education programs.

Sixth, establish standards of intoxication for each drug. Standards which can be applied to civil and criminal cases which may result in the revocation of "social privilege" or incarceration of users convicted of violence or bodily injury.

Seventh, encourage the development of non-intrusive, on-the-spot, wide spectrum, intoxication tests.

Eighth, continue to support work place programs that deter "on-the-job use."

The danger to our society is too great to walk lockstep into the future. If we continue to support the failed policy of prohibition then we have failed in our duty as citizens. Even worse, by withholding debate we shall have failed those who shall come after us and the institutions which thrive on the free exchange of ideas.

As distasteful as legalization is, it can no longer be rejected out of hand. We must take the initiative in redirecting national policy. We must be the leaders pointing out the historic failures of prohibition and develop a management strategy for the future.

The lessons of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States are not irrelevant. We ignore them at the risk and peril of our children's health, their freedom and the integrity of the system under which they will live.

Daniel Cashman, CPP, is a loss prevention consultant and private investigator. His address is 740 Fifth St., Lyndhurst, N.J. 07071. (201) 438-5026.