from the London Daily Mail, March 10, 1998

As a former drugs squad chief, I've seen too many youngsters die. I'm determined my children don't get hooked -- which is why I want all drugs legalized.

Seven years of my life was spent in Scotland Yard's anti-drugs squad, four as its head. I saw the misery that drug abuse can cause. I saw first-hand the squalor, the wrecked lives, the deaths.

And I saw, and arrested when I could, the people who do so well out of drugs; the dealers, the importers, the organizers. I saw the immense profits they were making out of human misery, the money laundering, the crime syndicates they financed.

We have attempted prohibition. All that happened was that courts became clogged with thousands of cases and small, individual users, and a generation of young people came to think of the police as their enemies. There were no resources left to fight other crime.

I say legalize drugs because I want to see less drug abuse, not more. And I say legalize drugs because I want to see the criminals put out of business.