Former Cincinnati Police Captain Howard Rahtz, who spoke in Toledo on April 10 about legalizing drugs, has seen two sides of the war on drugs — what he called the country’s largest failed policy.

“I do have an unusual background. I mean I’ve basically had two careers: one career in the addictions field and then at age 42, I became a Cincinnati cop,” Rahtz said in an interview with Toledo Free Press.

Rahtz, also a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) spoke at the University of Toledo’s Law Center’s McQuade Auditorium as part of the school’s first annual Prison Awareness Week. Prison Awareness Week, April 8-13, is part of an effort by Toledoans for Prison Awareness, a coalition of groups like the Lucas County Libertarian Party, Move to Amend, American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio Northwest Chapter and the UT Community for Prison Awareness.

Kenneth Sharp of the Lucas County Libertarian Party said he spoke to one of the co-founders of LEAP at a function and decided to try to bring a speaker to the area.

Sharp, also a UT student and columnist for Toledo Free Press, said he believes it’s good for people to see law enforcement officials asserting that the war on drugs has failed.

“We are probably the most credible voice on drug policy reform that exists,” Rahtz said of LEAP.

Rahtz, who worked as a supervisor for a city-run methadone program, said that many violent crimes nationally and internationally are fueled by the drug trade.

“In every city in this country, Toledo, Cincinnati, everywhere, most of the violence that occurs is related to drugs,” Rahtz said.

“If you’re in the drug-dealing business, you’re in there because violence maintains it. If you’re not a violent person if you’re not willing to use violence, you’re not a survivor in that business because you’ll be ripped off.”

Rahtz called for reform of the United States’ drug policy.

“We spend more money, we incarcerate more people and we have less to show for it than any other country in the world. If you look at addiction rates, if you look at use rates, they’re among the top of the world so the current war on drugs by all indications seems to be a complete failure. And the frustrating thing is there seems to be so little recognition of that and so little interest in doing something different,” he said.

It costs about $25,000 per year to incarcerate a federal prisoner and the United States houses about 25 percent of the world’s prisoners, according to LEAP’s website.

The retired captain said he’s 100 percent for marijuana legalization. Marijuana accounts for 60 percent of drug cartels’ business, he added.

“So if we were to legalize marijuana, move those billions of dollars from the illegal market and into the legal economy in one fell swoop, we’d take 60 percent of the revenue away from [cartels]. How many operations, business or otherwise, could withstand the loss of 60 percent of their revenue?” Rahtz said.

Many of the remaining customers would be addicts of hard drugs, Rahtz said, adding that he advocates getting addicts into treatment. He pointed to Portugal’s reform of its drug policy a little more than 10 years ago when the country moved many addicts into treatment and also decriminalized drugs.

Rahtz said that just 10 percent of drug addicts in the United States receive treatment.

“If we could double that, triple that, quadruple that, what would happen to the drug trade?” Rahtz asked, adding that he supports decriminalizing possession for all drugs.

Rahtz has authored three books, including “Drugs, Crime and Violence: From Trafficking to Treatment,” which was released by Hamilton Press in August 2012. He also served as a SWAT negotiations team coordinator and captain of the Cincinnati Police Department’s Central Vice Control Section. In addition, he worked in a program that helped get prostitutes off the street.

Sharp said UT’s Prison Awareness Week has been a success so far.

“All the events have been well-attended I think and the reception has been good,” he said, adding that many students have approached the group’s booth at UT’s Student Union and said they know someone who is incarcerated.

Sharp said the goal of Toledoans for Prison Awareness is to bring different groups together.

“We’re trying to raise the awareness, pull people in. It’s really the beginning. We don’t expect to solve everything at once,” he said. To learn more, visit howardrahtz.com and toledoprisonawarenessgroup.org.

Tags: Howard Rahtz, Ken Sharp

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 10th, 2013 at 1:54 pm and is filed under Law Enforcement.
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Each presidential election we are supposed to reflect upon the past term and decide if we are better off than we were in order to decide our future course. Without debating how much power a president is supposed to have in the course of our lives, there are really just two issues to look at — financial well-being and security from external threats.

The actions of Congress, Democrats and Republicans, and many executive branch agencies had put our nation’s economy at risk by the time Obama was elected.  The first of the bailouts (crony capitalism) and quantitative easing (QE) were already under way. It was and is bipartisan. They didn’t work. So they went for a second helping, this time under President Obama’s sole leadership. It didn’t work; now we are at QE3.

Essentially, we are printing money in an effort to add liquidity to the market and stimulate lending and spending.

When each dollar printed is not supported by a good or service provided by the marketplace, it dilutes the dollars that are. In other words, our dollars are worth less. Prices then rise on the uncertainty of what the actual value of each dollar is. If you or I attempted to add value without backing it by a good or service, it would be criminal (think counterfeiting). Government is allowed to do this very thing. How it affects the market is the same whether it is legal or illegal. Over the four years we have all had to pay more for our food and energy, the things we can’t avoid.

With Obama we have more czars, unelected bureaucratic heads under the sole direction of the president. These powerful and largely unaccountable persons have added reams of regulations and costs to businesses. These people are one of the largest reasons for lobbyists. Congress could be a check, except congresspersons generally benefit from the lobbyists. These regulators do not affect just large corporations. For example, they have raided small farms for selling raw milk and other products. We are all hurt at all levels of commerce. Our options and liberties have shrunk.

I can’t explain the insanity behind excitement at 7.8 percent unemployment numbers better than Gary Rathbun did last week in this paper (“7.8% — Really?” Oct. 14), so I won’t. Please read it.

Under the current administration we have reaped the results of the expansion of an operation, begun under Bush, at our southern border. It is known as “Fast and Furious,” where we supplied guns to drug cartels. It has left numerous dead, including at least one American. Attorney General Eric Holder, the man in charge, has not been forthcoming, nor has it made us safer. The president claimed no direct knowledge.

In Libya, we had four Americans slain in a coordinated attack. Requests for additional security amid escalating violence and threats were denied by the State Department.

Again it is claimed the president had no direct knowledge.

Even if it is reasonable that he had no direct knowledge, his choices as to who is in charge are certainly suspect. Our president is not responsible just for the actions he is directly involved in but also for those where he has delegated the responsibility.

The Transportation Security Administration has repeatedly made news for alleged mistreatment of passengers at airports and its highly questionable hiring practices. In the name of security we are to put up with egregious violations of our bodies and liberties. This will likely infuriate many, but we need to look at this correctly. The enemy, and yes there is one, does not act erratically. They see themselves as rational and moral under their tenets. Their targets are intentional and strategic. Their means are calculated. It is sad and horrific that, to them, a strategic target could be a 14-year-old girl in Pakistan. Their means cannot be condoned or tolerated. But, if they wanted to simply inflict casualties they could do that easily in a number of open-access areas in the U.S. They used planes as missiles. That won’t happen again. They will not gain access to the cockpit. Enhanced searches of children and leukemia patients and hiring sexual predators to do

pat-downs will not make us safer.

The expansion of the National Defense Authorization Act that allows for the indefinite detention and assassination of American citizens, and the use of drones that have killed civilians abroad while targeting terrorists, will not make us safer. It is a small minority in the Muslim world that threatens us; we must not enlarge their power while weakening the very values we seek to protect.

Our borders, our money and our values are not safer or sounder. Obama and Romney agree on all the above topics. Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson does not.

Email Kenneth Sharp at letters@toledofreepress.com.

Tags: Ken Sharp, The Libertarian Perspective

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 18th, 2012 at 3:07 pm and is filed under Libertarian Perspective, Opinion.
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