by Ariela Martin | Oct 24, 2012 4:12 pm

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Posted to: Health, Legal Writes, The Hill

The war on drugs is crowding prisons, creating crime and violence, and breaking up families, Cliff Thornton said, then added to the list: “with drugs, come guns.” It’s plain and simple.” And most importantly, it has to change”

“It’s plain and simple.” And most importantly, it has to change,” Thornton, Connecticut’s leading drug-legalization advocate (who in 2006 ran for governor on the issue), told people gathered at the Hill neighborhood’s Courtland Wilson Branch Library Tuesday night for a forum sponsored by the Connecticut chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Among the statistics shared by speakers at the forum: 2.5 million children in the U.S. have a parent in prison because of arrests on drug charges; 500,000 are in foster care. Half of those children are African American.

Thornton, co-founder of the drug reform group Efficacy, moderated the discussion. Featured panelists included Assistant Police Chief Thaddeus Reddish, Connecticut ACLU Legal Director Sandra Staub, New Haven state Rep. Gary Holder-Winfield, and Robert Painter, a retired surgeon and former Hartford Councilman. Over 30 people attended the discussion.

The discussion’s thrust: It’s time to declare war on the war on drugs.

The panelists agreed that the only way to solve the drug war is for everyone to come together, through community policing, education, prevention, and treatment.

“If we’re truly going to change the drug war, we all have to be committed,” said Thornton in his brief introduction.

Before the discussion commenced, Thornton left a question for the audience and panelists to think about: “Should these drugs be legalized, ‘medicalized’, or criminalized? Why or why not?”

“I won’t go to war against my own people,” Chief Dean Esserman told the audience in brief remarks at the beginning of the discussion. “We are not the enemy or the outsiders. We’re a part of New Haven.”

In 2010, U.S. law enforcement agencies arrested more than 1.6 million peoplefor drug offenses, 80 percent of those arrests were for simple possession. These provoking statistics, provided by the ACLU, led the ACLU to favor “the decriminalization of the distribution and manufacturing of drugs,” said Staub. “Drug criminalization is imposed mainly on people of color.”

“We can’t afford to do what we’re doing now,” Holder-Winfield remarked. It’s stupid and costs money.”

Assistant Chief Reddish—whose department receives many requests from people living in poor neighborhoods to get drug dealers off the streets—did say that it also makes sense to arrest drug dealers.

“Sometimes, I feel like I’m destroying lives with my arrests,” Reddish said. “But sometimes I feel like I’ve arrested the devil and taken him off the street.”

Ariela Martin, a student a Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School, is an Independent contributing reporter.