Since stepping down as a sworn law enforcement officer some fifteen years ago after brief stints as a street cop in the cities of Los Angeles and Redmond (WA), I have not devoted much professional attention to the matter of illicit drugs. I pursued and obtained advanced degrees in the social sciences, joined the faculty of a large state university, pursued my research agenda, secured tenure, and, recently, took another academic job at another large university. While teaching, my dealings with drugs have always been tangential a few lectures about drug abuse in a course on the sociology of deviance, a week devoted to the drug/crime nexus in a criminology course. The subject of illicit drugs has played an even smaller role in the service component of my academic life. In the training I provide for domestic violence counselors, the lectures I offer to police officers, and the interviews I give to the press, for example, the drug issue nearly always stays far in the background. Over the years, the drug issue has played an equally small role in my research, the major focus of which is sorting out how various factors affect the actions of street police officers during their interactions with citizens. A recent shift in my research gaze, however, has led me to direct more academic attention to the topic of illicit drugs.

For reasons that have nothing to do with drug enforcement, I became increasingly interested in the organization and operations of police special weapons and tactics (SWAT) teams. Given that SWAT teams in many places around our nation are deeply involved in enforcing drug laws (primarily by serving warrants authorizing police officers to search specific locations for illegal drugs) and that their actions in some cases have drawn criticism, many colleagues, students, officers I know and help train, and members of the fourth estate have sought my opinion about various aspects of current drug policy. Such inquiries have led me to articulate my positions on a number of issues, some which I have held for years, and others that have formed in the recent past as I was compelled to consider them for the first time. The single issue that I am questioned about most often is our country’s current overall strategy of pursuing a "war on drugs" through the legal system to wash the bane of illicit intoxicants from our nation’s heartland and shores. After several times trying to give nuanced answers by addressing several specific sub-issues that I see when I look at question of strategy, and seeing that I was typically boring my listeners, I changed the approach that I took to addressing the question and began to say simply, "I think we should legalize ‘em." Because most people seem not to expect to hear such words from an ex-street cop who spends considerable time with SWAT teams, this usually leads to quizzical looks that are followed by an engaging discussion wherein I can touch on some of the sub-issues dear to my heart as I focus on my opinions about why we should call off the hounds.

Because the good people at CATO asked me to address the big picture, I will follow a similar tack in this essay. In the pages that follow, I devote the lion’s share of space to sketching why I believe that the use of currently forbidden drugs should be legalized and what we should do instead of pursuing a policy of prohibition. I then allot a bit of space to the one sub-issue currently in play in the debate regarding drug policy that, given my status as ex-cop who currently studies and works with SWAT teams and officers, I believe I should mention.

Contemplating Drugs

When I joined the LAPD in late 1980, I was a strong supporter of the notion that those various drugs that were illegal at the time should be illegal, and that the enforcement of drug laws should be a top priority for all police officers and agencies. I had gone to high school in an area of Southern California noted for, among other things, its association with illegal drugs. Much of the marijuana and other drugs coming out of Mexico in the mid-1970s was off-loaded there from various border-crossing conveyances and prepared for distribution throughout the nation. Moreover, many of my classmates were known to ingest copious quantities drug such as pot, speed, and Quaaludes. Indeed, during my daily stroll to school I often smelled the sweet stench of marijuana smoke as it wafted from the reefer that some of the bolder students smoked while standing just outside the fence that bounded the southern edge of campus. During my high school years, I repeatedly saw firsthand the havoc that such behavior caused in the lives of those who partook, as well as the disruption it caused in my community, and figured that busting anyone and everyone associated with illegal drugs -- including the users (who were, after all, driving the drug problem) -- would make things better.

My belief that thorough enforcement of tough drug laws was the way to go grew during my college years as I contemplated and then prepared for a career in police work, but it diminished rapidly after I graduated from the LAPD academy and hit the streets. Assigned to the rugged 77^th Street Division in the heart of South-Central LA, I saw a surfeit of illegal drugs and the attendant social problems that one would expect to find in any community awash in the trafficking and use of marijuana, cocaine, heroin, PCP, and the various and sundry other controlled substances that were widely available in many parts of our nation in the early 1980s. At some point in my first several months on patrol, after handling hundreds of calls that somehow involved drugs, and arresting scores of people for possessing some amount of some sort of illegal stuff, I began to have doubts about what my peers and I were doing. I saw violent criminals, who had no business sharing the blessings of liberty with good people, walking the streets because the jail space they so rightfully deserved was occupied by non-violent drug offenders. When we carted small-time drug dealers off to the hoosegow, I saw other sellers quickly step up and fill the void. And I started to see most of the many people I dealt with who had some association with drugs as either broken souls who had made poor choices or harmless people who enjoyed indulging their appetites in moderation, not as crooks who needed to be punished. Moreover, except for the odd encounter with whacked-out individuals who had ingested more of some mind-bending drug, such as PCP, than their systems could handle, and the occasional call about someone who had overdosed on cocaine or some other equally disruptive dope, I found more misery associated with alcohol than I did with forbidden pharmaceuticals.

As I contemplated what I saw and experienced, I tried to reconcile it with the stance I held about the need to firmly enforce the drug laws. At first I was able to stand fast by listening to the arguments of politicians, policy wonks, and my peers who asserted that even harsher laws and firmer enforcement of them would turn back the tide of illegal drugs washing over our land and thereby bring relief to our beleaguered nation. By the time I left L.A. for Washington State, however, I had turned the first corner in my trip from drug law supporter to legalization advocate. At some point near the end of my tenure with the LAPD I came to believe that marijuana – a drug that I had never seen anyone overdose on or influence anyone to do anything more violent than attack a bag of potato chips in the wake of ingestion – should be legalized. I had dealt with a few folks who had smoked some pot, jumped behind the wheel of a car, and drove recklessly, but I figured that driving under the influence of THC was not really any different from driving under the influence of alcohol. Both actions involved the use of a drug in an irresponsible manner that the criminal law could, and should, threaten with severe sanctions, because both behaviors directly posed a substantial threat to people other than the reprobates who engaged in it.

The same logic did not apply to many other illegal substances, such as cocaine, heroin, PCP, and the various so-called "designer drugs" that were readily available from Southern California to the suburbs of Seattle. These drugs were clearly causing major problems in two populations; users and the rest of us. Among users, the primary problems were the lives of ruin lived by those who could not control their appetites and the lives ruined or ended by overdose. As for the rest of us, the primary problems included violent acts committed by people who were out of control while under the influence of such drugs, property crimes committed by regular users to support their habits, and violence committed by those battling it out for control of illegal drug markets. Many a citizen took some lumps (or worse) from some whacked-out idiot high on some dangerous drug and many a cop got in many a knock-down, drag-out fight with many such people. Many citizens lost cash or other valuable possessions to drug users who felt their desire to indulge their illegal appetite was more important than their fellow man’s right to possess property. And many a person was crippled or killed by bullets fired by drug dealers whose desire for market share motivated them to spray bullets about the streets of our cities.

Completing the Turn

I held my bifurcated stance towards illicit drugs – legalize pot but keep and strictly enforce the laws against the rest of the stuff – throughout my tenure with the Redmond (WA) Police Department and into my graduate studies. As the years passed, however, I began to realize some things. I saw our nation fighting harder and harder, devoting more and more money, and jailing more and more citizens who used and/or dealt drugs, while falling farther and farther behind in the war on drugs. The price of various drugs didn’t rise in the face of increased interdiction efforts; the rate of usage wasn’t falling; and the number of lives damaged and destroyed by chronic use, overdose, and the associated criminal activities mounted. This led me a point where I decided that we had to make some sort of a major change in how we dealt with illicit drugs.

Many times individuals and nations come to points in their lives when they have to decide what to do about a problem as it becomes evident what half-way measures are not working. These are retrench or retreat, fish or cut bait times; and, as I saw it, our nation was at just such a point. We had declared a "war on drugs," but were unwilling to prosecute it in a way that presented a reasonable chance of victory. We just kept throwing resources at the problem, but we were still suffering horribly with no hope of relief in sight. Consequently, I came to believe that it was time to truly fight a real war on drugs or give up the ghost. We needed to either to turn the rhetorical "war on drugs" into a real war, take the fight to the sources of the dangerous drugs and lay waste to the people and places producing and distributing the stuff, or call it quits and legalize illicit drugs.

After thinking it over for some time, I dismissed the all-out war option for several reasons. Chief among them, as I contemplated the reality of sending troops abroad, I thought about what would happen to them once they got there. One of the things that would happen is that some of them would be killed. That’s what happens in real wars: Some of the warriors die. In my mind, there are only a few things worth dying for and as I thought about it, I found that none of these small number of things obtained in a real war on drugs. As I looked at the bottom line of why America was awash in drugs, I saw that the problem lay not the places supplying the stuff – the Columbias, Thailands, and Afghanistans of the world – but here in our nation where the desires of millions of Americans created an incredible demand for the stuff. To me, it made no sense to send American kids to die on foreign soil because some of their fellow citizens wanted to smoke, snort, and inject substances grown over there.

Second, I thought about what our troops would be doing overseas one they got there – blowing things up and killing people, which is what militaries do in real wars – and who and what they would be doing it to. Most of the people they’d be killing would likely be peasants involved in the drug trade because they could make a somewhat better living than the one they could otherwise eke out in the third-world nations where they lived. And much of what they’d be blowing up would be things that these poor people and their families and communities needed for survival. As is the case with being killed, in my mind, one should kill or otherwise destroy the lives of fellow human beings for very few reasons. I do not count supplying my neighbor with something he wants as one of them. Consequently, in light of my conclusion that the real source of the U.S. drug problem lay within our borders, the notion of sending U.S. troops to search out and destroy drug producers and suppliers did not rest well with my soul.

The third major thing I reflected on as I contemplated the "real war" option was what would happen to our nation if we were to undertake such an effort. Despite the fact that most Americans held an anti-drug stance and supported the war on drugs rhetoric, a real war against drugs would not be a popular one. It would not be short, for the scope of the problem and the nature of the terrain where the stuff was produced would necessitate a protracted military effort. It would be expensive, for large-scale overseas deployments always are. It would bring increased tension between our nation and many others, for invading other countries would anger many of our allies, and give our enemies a fresh topic about which to condemn us. And as the 19- year-old volunteers started to come home in body bags, a sober nation would reflect on whether fighting a war to stop drugs was worth its many costs. They likely would conclude that it was not and pull their support from the effort, which would seal the fate of a doomed military adventure and further erode our ability to engage in legitimate operations overseas.

Thus, I came to reject the military option. But even as I did, I could not bring myself to simply accept the only other option I had given myself -- legalizing illicit drugs -- because the idea resonated very poorly with the street cop still inside me. So I went back to the drawing board to see if perhaps I was wrong about the basic premise that the firm enforcement of tough drug laws – which, after all, is what had led me to the "fish or cut bait" framework in the first place – was fatally flawed.

First, I went back over the ground I’d previously covered, but found I’d missed nothing that might lead me to change my conclusion that tough laws and enforcement were doomed to fail; we kept enforcing the laws and people kept breaking them. I then set out to examine fresh territory. Not only did I find nothing to change my mind about the futility of drug prohibition there, but I encountered many pieces of evidence that our drug policy was actually counter-productive in terms of making our nation a better place to live. For one thing, I came to realize that most of the many social problems associated with the use of illegal drugs are either caused by or exacerbated by the fact that they are illegal.

Many of the life-threatening and life-taking overdoses occur because users inadvertently take too much of whatever drug they wanted to take; the purity of illegal drugs can fluctuate wildly from dose to dose. Similarly, most injuries from tainted drugs occur because users can not know that the drug they are about to take contains dangerous impurities. If drugs that are currently illegal were regulated in the same manner as legal substances, the problems of unintentional overdose and injury from impurities would diminish considerably. The prohibition of drugs also increases rates of predatory crime. Because the price of illegal drugs is far higher than it would be if they were not forbidden by law, people who resort to crime to support their drug habits commit more crimes for a given amount of drugs than they would if drugs were legally produced, distributed, and sold. A similar phenomenon was at work in the illegal drug market violence that drove up the homicide rates in many of our major cities during the late 1980s. Murders that occurred as individuals and gangs fought it out for control of the illegal drug trade simply would not have occurred had there been no market to squabble over. These unintended consequences of the failed prohibition policy had me teetering.

The shove that pushed me over the edge came when I reflected on what prohibition was doing to our legal system. The first thing I noted was that it was spawning law enforcement corruption scandals in place after place. Cops and other public officials who violate their oath by taking bribes and engaging in similar corrupt practices should be severely punished, for they have no one to blame but themselves for dishonoring their profession and weakening the fragile bond of trust between government and the governed that holds our republic together. At the same time, however, corruption occurs in specific social contexts, and thrives best when the prospective payoff is high and the risk of sanction is small, a combination that fits the drug picture to a tee. Because the illegal drug trade produces billions and billions of dollars in profits, there is plenty of money to tempt officers who are inclined to do the wrong thing with incredible paydays for looking the other way, ripping off dealers, dealing drugs themselves, and similar unsavory actions. On the flip side of the coin, because admitting involvement with illegal drugs can have substantial legal repercussions, the victims, associates, and accomplices of corrupt cops are unlikely to turn them in; hence, the repeated drug scandals that rocked police agency after police agency in the 1980s and 90s, from New York to Miami and all points west. With each scandal that hit, the trust that the citizenry places in the officers and agencies that police them took another hit. In some places the situation got (and is) so bad that many citizens simply assume that their cops are on the take from drug dealers, in cahoots with them, or both. Our great nation is substantially weakened by such cynicism and may have already suffered crippling harm from the corrosive effects of drug-related corruption (I know it made my job harder when I was a cop). Because police officers are human and humans are tempted by the prospect of big payoffs in the presence of a small probability for a downside, only a policy change that would radically alter the high-gain/low-risk environment in which drug enforcement is conducted poses a realistic prospect for reducing corruption and restoring cynical citizens’ faith in their police.

The second major negative consequence of drug policy I saw for our legal system was the subversion of a basic tenet about when and how the government may move against its citizens. Perhaps first among the bedrock principles upon which our nation sits -- one that was drummed into me from my first civics course in elementary school to my last police academy class -- is the notion that the state may sanction only those citizens whose guilt of a criminal offense it can establish beyond a reasonable doubt. When I joined the LAPD, I had never heard of the term "asset forfeiture." By the time I left law enforcement, it was a familiar term and I had become quite familiar with how it was used in police work. In short, asset forfeiture in police circles refers to the laws that allow and the practice of seizing property that is (in specific ways) associated with the use of illegal drugs.

My initial reaction upon first hearing about the asset forfeiture concept was that it was a good idea. I thought to myself, "Sounds good to me; drug dealers shouldn’t be able to keep stuff that they obtain illegally or use to further their illegal activities." As I learned about the specifics, however, I fast became a skeptic. Two things about asset forfeiture caused me great concern. The first was that the agency that seized the property got to keep at least some, and ofttimes, all of it. This struck me as an invitation for corruption wherein police agencies, realizing that they could reap profits that could fund operations, would be tempted to cut corners in order to bring home some bacon. The second thing that stuck in my craw, and the one that caused the larger part of my discomfort, was that the burden of proof for seizing property under the asset forfeiture laws was unnervingly low: mere probable cause. Some well-intentioned folk decided that the threat posed by illegal drugs was so great that we needed to dispense with the nicety of proving beyond reasonable doubt that someone was breaking the law before we took their property and (under specific circumstances) simply take some of it because we had probable cause to believe that they were involved (in certain ways) with drugs.

Despite my severe concerns, I gave my chosen profession the benefit of the doubt and -- while I myself never seized anyone’s property -- pinched together my nostrils as my peers around the country implemented the forfeiture laws. After leaving police work, my concerns about asset forfeiture laws grew as I watched police agencies around the nation use them more and more; I saw agency after agency finance more and more programs with seized assets; and heard more and more horror stories about people losing their homes, cars, and cash to a state that could never have proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the suspects had any involvement in the use of, much less the trade in, illegal drugs. At some point, I could no longer hold my nose in the face of such abuses and decided that the asset forfeiture laws needed to scrapped, that our nation needed to return to the core principle that the state can seize the property of citizens suspected of involvement in criminal activity only when and if it can prove such involvement beyond a reasonable doubt.

In sum, I conducted a concerted search for reasons why we should maintain prohibition, found only evidence against the idea, and reached the conclusion that no matter how much I didn’t like the idea, our nation should change course and legalize illicit drugs.

Will Legalization Work Any Better?

As noted near the beginning of this essay, during the several years since I first reached the conclusion that we should call off the hounds, I have discussed my ideas with people in many walks of life. Interestingly, both my hardiest supporters and my harshest critics come from the same group: my law enforcement associates. Many of them -- from both sides of the debate -- share my views about the futility of the drug war and agree that it brings with it a substantial downside. What generally separates those who agree with me from those who don’t is their take on my answer to some version the following question that they almost invariably put to me: Won’t legalizing drugs lead more people to take them, and thus make things worse?

My answer to their double-barreled question is two-fold. I answer the second part of it first by asserting that even if more people do take drugs in the wake of legalization, we would live in a society where citizens suffers far less from the predatory crimes spawned by the illicit drug trade and would have far less worry that state agents might seize their property with less than compelling evidence of guilt. Where the issue of increased usage goes, I respond by admitting that I do not know whether more people will partake of the drugs that are currently illegal, but that I have good reason to suspect that if we as a nation approach legalization in a particular way and pursue a particular post-legalization strategy, then the drug rolls will not swell, and they may actually decline.

The approach I have in mind consists first of an honest scientific assessment of the dangers that ingesting specific drugs pose to those who take them. What do they do in the short-term to one’s mind, to one’s body? What effects do they have in the long term? How easy is it for one to become dependent on them? And so forth. Our nation could divert some small portion of the billions of dollars we spend each year on the drug war to conduct this assessment. The second aspect in the pre-legalization process would be to disseminate the findings throughout the country via government reports, press releases, public service advertisements, and so on, so that the American people have reliable facts about the dangers of specific substances. The third component would involve the people telling their state and federal governments (through the standard processes of hearings, petitions, and so on) their feelings on the dangers of the various drugs and how hard public officials and government agencies should work (through the same conduits used to disseminate research finding) to inform people that the use of each of the specific drugs that are about to be legalized is -- in plain English -- stupid and, therefore, wrong. The fourth aspect of my plan would involve a concerted effort by community groups, educators, religious and civic leaders, and the public at large to forcefully speak out against the use of those drugs deemed dangerous, to let people know that although using such drugs will soon be legal, it will always be wrong. (Implicit in this framework is the notion that the people may well determine that some of the currently-illegal drugs are not dangerous, that using them is not wrong, and therefore, that they will not be part of the anti-drug campaign). Once legalization formally arrives, the anti-drug campaign would continue and expand. The large-scale efforts to remind people that taking dangerous drugs is wrong would be joined by a parallel effort at the small group and individual level to shun and shame those who – against all the evidence and the measured advice of their fellows – decide to take dangerous drugs.

This framework of education and condemnation rests on the well-established principle that most of the people most of the time will follow the rules of the groups to which they belong when the norms are clearly articulated, the reasons for them apparent, the call to conform clear and constant, and their fellows ostracize them for breaking the rules. Even though we live in a vast heterogenous society that has erected a massive vast latticework of laws to regulate many aspects of conduct, the primary reason most of us behave in ways that conform to the wishes of the groups to which we belong most of the time has little to do with the law and much to do with pleasing those to whom we are attached. In other words, we behave well primarily because we are governed by various systems of informal social control. We seem to have forgotten this in our battle against dangerous drugs. It is time to recover this memory and turn to the informal means of control that have proven to be so effective in so many situations.

But even if most Americans do conform after legalization, no system of informal social control is perfect, so what do we do about those people who surely will indulge their appetite for dangerous drugs? The chief concerns of those I have spoken with over the years are three: What about the damage taking the drugs will do to those who take them? What about folks who use the drugs, get high, and harm others while intoxicated? And what about the kids? I present my response to each concern in turn below.

Where the consequences of taking dangerous drugs for those who indulge goes, the first point I offer is that people have different tolerances to various substances and people will use different amounts of whatever they wish to ingest. Thus, some people who partake in dangerous drugs will experience little or no ill effects, while others will substantially damage themselves, and some will even die. That some will do well is of no concern, for that is not a problem. That some will suffer negative repercussions, on the other hand, is. But in my mind, we cannot protect free adults from the prospect of poor choices and we should not use the force of law to try. If my research and education plan were instituted, we would have spent substantial time and devoted copious resources to telling these poor souls that they shouldn’t have done what they did, but they did it anyway. One price of life in a free society is the negative consequences that sometimes accrue to people who use their freedom to do foolish things. The second point I offer is that the regime of legalization I envision would include control of the drug trade by state governments. All drugs would be produced by the states (or under their license) with strict adherence to purity and dosing standards, and sold to adults in state-run stores similar to those that sell liquor in many states around the nation. Hence, because drugs will be free of adulterating agents and dosed properly, there will be fewer problematic reactions to drug ingestion than is currently the case.

Where the fallout of dangerous drugs for those who don’t indulge goes, we should have strict laws that we strictly enforce against behaviors such as driving while under the influence of drugs. This component of the legalization regime would not be much different from the current state of legal affairs regarding the use of public space while intoxicated. The only change I would argue for is a true zero-tolerance policy for such activity, with long stretches of incarceration for those who get high and endanger others. If the rest of us are going to accede to the desires of those who wish to take dangerous substances, then those who abuse this concession by directly endangering others should be punished severely. In a similar vein, anyone who commits a crime of violence while under the influence would be punished severely. Indeed, no longer would the law view intoxication a mitigating factor, but rather, it would view intoxication as something that would enhance the degree of punishment meted out against those convicted of violent crime.

Where kids are concerned, I argue that those who would supply to juveniles substances deemed dangerous should suffer draconian punishment. The program I propose is predicated on a framework of mature individuals making informed choices and paying the price for making poor ones. Youngsters don’t have the same information assimilation and decision-making capabilities as adults. Consequently, adults who endanger the safety of children by supplying them with dangerous drugs deserve the harshest punishments. In my proposed program they would receive them.

It should be apparent by now that I am not calling for our nation to throw in the towel in the battle against dangerous drugs. Rather, I am calling for a shift in strategy from using the blunt instrument of criminal law as our primary weapon to using the subtle tools of education, national condemnation, community pressure, family shaming, individual rebuke, and the like, as our key means to try to prevent people from indulging in dangerous drugs and to get users to stop. The criminal law would still be a crucial instrument under my proposal, but moved from its place at the center of our fight against dangerous drugs to the periphery where it can be used against those whose behavior harms others. Thus would we call the hounds off the poor fools who choose simply to take drugs and sic them on drug users who choose to take actions that directly endanger people besides themselves.

On the Role of SWAT Teams in our Current Anti-Drug Strategy

At the outset of this essay I noted that I would close it with some commentary about one specific sub-issue that has arisen in the context of the larger debate about drug policy. The issue is the proper role of SWAT teams in our current strategy of prohibition. A few people have expressed concern about the use of SWAT teams to execute warrants signed by judges authorizing police officers to search specific locations for illegal drugs. The core of the argument put forth by those opposed to the use of SWAT teams for serving such warrants (which I shall henceforth call "narcotics warrants") is that SWAT teams – with their "military" equipment, look, organization, training, and tactics – act more like soldiers than police officers when conducting such raids and thus are more likely to use unnecessary force against citizens than would be the case if the warrants were served by non-SWAT officers. This argument betrays a lack of understanding of many things, including how SWAT officers are equipped, how they are organized, what they do when serving narcotics warrants, why they are equipped they way they are, why they are organized the way they are, and why they do what they do. A thorough discussion of precisely how the critics are misinformed and what that means for understanding the role of SWAT in current drug policy would take more space than is appropriate in this forum, so I will simply provide an overview of the actual SWAT role and how it developed, and invite any interested readers to contact me if they wish additional information.

The first thing people need to understand is that serving narcotics warrants is dangerous business. There are no exact figures, but we know that many people in the narcotics trade keep firearms and other dangerous weapons handy in order to protect themselves, their stash, and their cash from competitors, thieves, and the police. Over the years, consequently, many a cop has confronted many a person reaching for and brandishing weapons inside warrant locations, and many a cop has been shot at or shot while serving narcotics warrants. When cops see people pointing guns at them they tend to shoot at the people doing the pointing, and when they get shot at shot at, they tend to shoot back. Over the years, consequently, the business of serving narcotics warrants has included a goodly bit of gunfire between the cops and people at the locations they are searching and, ipso facto, a goodly number of injuries and deaths.

The second thing people need to understand is that primary mission of SWAT teams is to save lives. Thus, the organization of teams, the weapons and other accouterments they wear and carry, the training they do, and the tactics they employ are all designed to reduce the likelihood that anyone – cop, suspect, and innocent citizen alike – will be fatally harmed in any of the various high-risk jobs they are called upon to handle. If push comes to shove, of course, SWAT cops will use deadly force to prevent serious or life-threatening harm to themselves or other innocent parties. But experience has proven time and again that well-armed, well-trained, well-organized, and well-outfitted cops who employ proper tactics can resolve without firing a single shot many situations that might otherwise result in gunplay. Experience also has shown that when cops of this stripe do find themselves in situations where deadly force is necessary, fewer people are injured than when poorly equipped and poorly trained cops handle matters.

As the number of shootings during the service of narcotics warrants grew around the nation during the ‘80s and ‘90s, police departments around the nation entertained the notion that one way to reduce the number of shootings, and thus the number of people injured during narcotic warrants, was to use their best-armed, best-trained, best-organized, best-outfitted and most tactically sound officers – i.e., their SWAT teams – to serve narcotics warrants. Many agencies decided that they would indeed use their SWAT teams to serve at least some of their narcotics warrants. And thus, as a means to reduce the number of police shootings and the resultant injuries, did SWAT teams get involved in serving narcotics warrants in a big way.

My knowledge of and discussions with cops of all sorts around the country tells me that the use of SWAT teams to serve narcotics warrants has accomplished what it was intended to do. From the quick-thinking SWAT officer who threw a noise-flash diversionary device into a bathroom occupied by a drug dealer who’d just taken some shots at him and his partners (thus convincing the suspect to surrender), to another SWAT cop who held his fire when a drug suspect pointed a gun at him because he could tell by the way the suspect was holding it that she did not know how to operate it, I am aware of case after case where the use of SWAT cops to serve narcotics warrants saved the lives of suspects who almost surely would have been shot by lesser officers. Similarly, I am aware of numerous cases where the only reason cops serving narcotics warrants took no casualties is the fact that they were all experienced SWAT officers who were able to call upon their vast experience and resources to save their lives. On the flip side of the coin, I am aware of citizens and officers who have been shot in circumstances where they would not have been injured or killed had a sound SWAT team served the warrant.

Because the evidence I am aware of indicates that the use of SWAT teams to serve narcotics warrants leads to lower levels of violence between citizens and the police, I believe that SWAT teams play an important role within the framework of our current prohibitionist policy toward dangerous drugs because they reduce the damage caused by it. Thus, while I am opposed to the war on drugs, until we call off the hounds, we should count SWAT teams among the tools we use to fight it. We owe it to the citizens who place their lives in danger by choosing to break our unwise laws and, especially, to the cops we send out to risk their lives pursuing our failed policies.

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