Norm Stamper on Orcas with his faithful companion
Orcas Islander Norm Stamper, best-selling author, occasional actor and former Chief of Police in Seattle has long been a proponent of drug policy reform. Now there is a bill before the Washington State Legislature to legalize marijuana, and Stamper calls it a “good model” for drug policy reform.
Stamper served as a police officer for 34 years. Before retiring in 2000, he served as Chief of the Seattle Police Department for six years. In his 28 years with the San Diego police force, Stamper rose through the ranks and as a deputy chief served in each of the agency’s bureaus. His “street cred” is matched by significant academic accomplishments — after earning advanced degrees in criminal justice administration, he obtained a Ph.D. in leadership and human behavior. He is a graduate of the FBI’s National Executive Institute. Over the past three decades he has conducted organizational effectiveness and leadership training and consulting for both public and private organizations nationwide.
These days, Stamper spends most of his time up at his home on Buck Mountain, finishing his first novel (yet to be titled), but he also devotes time to speak out publicly on the three issues that he feels must be addressed by our society at large: drug policy, domestic violence and the death penalty.
He is an active member of several organizations with that goal in mind: LEAP – Law Enforcement Against Prohibition; NORML, a nonprofit lobbying organization working to legalize marijuana, stop arrests of smokers, provide educational research, and legal information; and the Drug Policy Alliance.
Stamper calls the current drug policy, specifically the criminalization of marijuana use, an “all out war against the young, poor and people of color, who suffer disproportionately for non-violent drug use.”
Stamper writes on his website, www.normstamper.com: ”The half million non-violent drug offenders (disproportionately poor and of color) languish in our prisons, the result of a fatally flawed belief that prohibition works, or can somehow be made to work. Research and the experience of many other nations demonstrate how the regulated legalization of all drugs would make our neighborhoods, and our citizens, safer and healthier.
“The U.S., with less than five percent of the world’s population, is home to 25 percent of its prisoners, a whopping 2.3 million people. Some offenders belong in prison, many do not. We pay dearly for a vindictive system that often serves to make matters worse, much worse.”
Further, Stamper says the current drug policy doesn’t work: it is “a colossal social failure.”
Since the “War on Drugs” began in the 1970s, “marijuana is more available, less expensive and more potent,” Stamper says.
He adds that the policies of federal administrations since Nixon “have produced precisely the opposite results of what it seeks to achieve.” Prohibition does not work, Stamper maintains, and points to the U.S. prohibition of alcohol from 1920-1933 as “an extremely powerful model of what happens.” This policy prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcohol; it was enacted by the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and has been referred to as “The Noble Experiment.”
But Stamper points out that the prohibition of alcohol produced “unprecedented levels of crime and lawlessness associated with illicit commerce.”
“We’ve seen the failure of prohibition as an organizing mechanism for drug use policy; we’ve enforced it to ill effect. It has harmed millions of Americans. The drugs apprehended now amount to only five percent of the all drugs available from all dealers.
“And yet the problems worsen. The use of marijuana is controlled by those intent on expanding its commerce. As long as obscene amounts of money are available, violence and intimidation such as seen in Mexico, for example, will continue.
“Prohibition, as a policy, ensures violence.”
“Unless we’re willing to … examine carefully the comparison between alcohol prohibition and drug prohibition, we’ll never have a successful systemic response to the profoundly failed [drug use] policies.”
And there is the financial aspect of untaxed profits to consider in forming government policy. “The fact that there is a huge sum of money to be made and no tax collected, is a direct effect — not a side effect — of prohibition,” Stamper says. The war on drugs costs the United States more than 69 billion dollars each year, according to LEAP. he alternative to changing drug policy is “to throw more money down the rathole and leave the problem in the hands of the cartels,” Stamper says.
Washington State House Bill 1550 is a good response to this three-fold result of failed drug policy, Stamper says. “The state legislature has created a model for the legalization of marijuana for recreational purposes.”
House Bill 1550 “Regulates the production, distribution, and sale of cannabis. It legalizes the “sale, possession, and delivery of cannabis…for adults over the age of 21 years old.”
The bill, which can be found atleg.wa.gov/billinfo/summary.aspx?bill=1550 provides that the Washington State Liquor Control Board (WSLCB) oversee the sale of marijauna (cannabis) in state liquor stores with a 15 percent tax imposed on each gram of cannabis sold.
“It ‘s a good model,” Stamper says.
Further provisions of the bill state:
- the annual farmer cannabis license fee is $5,000 per year.
- Cities may petition the electorate on whether the sale of cannabis can be permitted within the boundaries of their cities.
- To be eligible to receive its share of cannabis taxes and profits, each
- city and county must devote a minimum of 2 percent of its share of cannabis sales to support approved treatment chemical dependency programs.
Other provisions address the distribution of revenues every three months at the following rates:
- 77 percent to the Department of Health;
- 20 percent to the Division of Alcohol and Substance Abuse under the Department of Social and Health Services for evidence-based substance abuse treatment and prevention programs;
- 2 percent to the Department of Agriculture for administration purposes;
- the remaining 1 percent will be retained by the LCB for administration.
The bill also addresses regulations for equipment, stores and warehouses, determining variaties and pricing, transportation for cannabis to state liquor stores, transporting and accounting.
The bill sets forth penalties for underage purchase and use, from infractions to misdemeanors and states:
“In addition to the penalties, a juvenile found guilty of a cannabis offense would be required to participate in an alcohol and drug information school.
“The criminal and civil penalties do not apply for cannabis given for medicinal purposes or when used for religious purposes.”
“Peace officers are authorized to investigate and prosecute all violations and laws of Washington relating to cannabis.”
Stamper strongly supports protecting children and youth from drug use, including marijuana, saying, “My bias is that cigarettes and alcohol should not be used until age 25, when brain patterns are pretty well established.”
He also calls for vigorous enforcement of the penalty provisions of the bill. But he readily engages in the debate about law enforcement vs. education: “Think about how we could establish a climate for our kids, where they’re ready to learn – in after school programs, recreation, education programs.
“Kids learn a healthy respect for authority if that authority is exercised judiciously with love and compassion, rather than by an authoritarian figure. Authority can be a real hammer that out to be reserved for hard things. If we address crime issues effectively, we reduce all forms of violence.
“But if the actions and vocabulary of violence are part of the everyday vocabulary and kids observe it, they will either be pathologically passive or violent.”
When he was just a kids out of his teens, Stamper was “rootless in terms of career aspirations,” he says. He worked as a veterinary assistant and played baritone sax in a band. He was an unlikely prospect for law enforcement when he accompanied his friend to take the qualifying test. Challenged to take the test himself, Stamper was surprised when offered a spot in the training class. He told himself, “I can be a different kind of cop; I don’t have to be racist or disdainful.”
As a rookie, he was excited and scared – of the bureaucracy, the senior officers, of what could happen.
As Seattle’s Police Chief, Stamper led a process of major organizational restructuring, creating new bureaus of Professional Responsibility, Community Policing, and Family and Youth Protection. Within the first year of his coming to Seattle, the department had formed one of the country’s best responses to domestic violence according to the Law Enforcement Against Prohibition organization.
In addition to serving as police officer and chief, Norm was a member of the National Advisory Counsel on the Violence Against Women Act; Police Executive Research Forum; International Association of Chiefs of Police, and the Major Cities Chiefs.
He came to Orcas from Seattle, looking for a quiet place to live and write. “I liked city life, but realized how loud it was.” He explored living in the northeast Cascades, but that environment was “de-romanticized after two trips there; there were just insufficient amenities.”
Admitting he has a “low need for societal interaction,” Stamper signed on for an acting class to make his writing more “cinematic.” After starring with Melinda Milligan in the Actors Theater production of Brilliant Traces on Orcas Island in 2009, Stamper reprised that role in Seattle last fall. He finds acting “a real challenge, very hard work,” that involves facing deep fears. Yet he says he hopes to do it again.
And although his dramatic talents were not called upon, Stamper has been featured in several films, among them:
- “The Union: The Business Behind Getting High,” selected for 2007 Winnipeg Film Festival, Vancouver, B.C. Film.
- “Private Violence: The Movement Against Battering in America,” Kit Gruelle, Cynthia Hill, Steven Channing, Durham, NC. In production.
- “Damage Done: The Drug War Odyssey”, by Novia Scotia filmmaker Connie Littlefield, to be completed October, 2006, for the National Film Board of Canada
- Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), 12-minute program endorsed by Walter Cronkite (currently available at www.leap.cc), 2006
For now, Stamper spends his days writing. In 2006, he published the best-selling Breaking Rank: A Top Cop’s Exposé of the Dark Side of American Policing.
He is in the final stages of finishing his novel—a cop thriller with “a juicy conflict” that tells a story of a characters growth. The working titles are “Chief of All Police” which is a saying among police, referring to the head chief of all police commanders; Shark in the Tank, another inside reference, used when the Police Chief is out of his office and roaming through police department offices. The third proposed title is The Chief and the Detective.
He also writes online for the Huffington Post (huffingtonpost.com/norm-stamper), pens opinion pieces for other national media (see normstamper.com/other-publications, and travels off-island to speak on the three top policy issues that he is compelled to address: drug policy, domestic violence, and the death penalty.
Good article, Margie!