• Listen to this segment

• Listen to the entire program

Earlier this week, Alternet.org broke the news that supporters in California had collected more than enough signatures to qualify a ballot measure on marijuana legalization next year. The group “Tax Cannabis 2010” needed only two months to gather nearly 700,000 signatures in an effort to have the state be the first in the nation to vote on decriminalizing the prohibited drug. If passed in the November elections in 2010, the Regulate, Control and Tax Marijuana Act would allow for the growing, selling and taxation of cannabis. Persons over the age of twenty-one could legally possess an ounce of marijuana and grow up to twenty-five square feet of the plant for personal use. A poll taken earlier this April shows broad support for ending the prohibition of the drug with 56% of voters in California and 60% in Los Angeles County respectively approving of the move. While political analysts expect law enforcement agencies statewide to oppose the effort, one former police chief, who has broken rank before, has spoken out in favor of not just legalizing marijuana, but all illicit drugs and not just in California, but nationwide. Norm Stamper, who served as Seattle’s Chief of Police, notes that ending prohibition would reduce much of the violence in the black market for drugs while at the same time end many of the failures of the so-called War on Drugs.

GUEST: Norm Stamper, member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, 34-year police veteran and served as Seattle’s chief of police from 1994-2000. He is the author of “Breaking Rank: A Top Cop’s Expose of the Dark Side of American Policing”

For more information, visit www.leap.cc.