Marchers Urge Legalizing of Drugs : About 60 Libertarians Protest Government Enforcement

Scarcely a week after the largest cocaine bust in history, outspoken Libertarians called Saturday for another tack in the drug war--the legalization of all banned substances.

Hoisting hand-painted picket signs declaring, “Let Them Smoke Pot,” “My Urine Is Mine” and “Say No to Drugs AND to Big Brother,” about 60 members of the anti-government political party demonstrated Saturday for more than an hour outside the Federal Building in Westwood.

The message was simple and forceful: Legalize marijuana, make drugs such as cocaine, heroin and PCP available by prescription or through the open market, and in that way, end the monopoly now held by cocaine traffickers and organized crime.

Argument in a Bag

One speaker make a humorous reference to the Sept. 29 drug raid in Sylmar, in which federal agents seized a record 19 tons of cocaine. Another raid was held on a warehouse in Washington, Libertarian activist Chris Hofland said jokingly, holding up a plastic bag of horse manure.

“There’s an epidemic,” he said. “The people are being overcome.”

Neal Donner, who organized the demonstration for the Libertarian Party’s Southern California branch, said it was aimed at federal drug czar William Bennett and the Bush Administration’s escalating battle to crack down on illegal drug sales and drug abuse. The Libertarians liken drug abuse to premarital sex, gambling and “a whole slew of victimless crimes” that should not be regulated, Donner said.

“I wish there would be less drug abuse, but it’s not up to me or the government to control people’s decisions,” he said. “If PCP is dangerous, I advise people not to take it . . . (but) it is a plank of the Libertarian platform to allow individual control over what people put in their own bodies.”

Not everyone in attendance was so sure that legalizing all drugs is a good idea.

Jerry Rubin, 45, who settled in Venice about the time a more famous Jerry Rubin was gaining notoriety for Vietnam anti-war protests, recalled years when he bounced in and out of hospitals because of addictions to amphetamines and heroin. About 15 years ago, he said, he watched one of his best friends--a guest in his home--overdose from heroin and die on his living room rug, Rubin said.

The Result Is Death

A few weeks later, another of his best friends also overdosed on heroin and died.

“I’m very lucky to be alive,” Rubin said. “I’ll do anything I can to speak out against drug addiction. I don’t know what the answer is.”

But Libertarians--who number about a million voters nationwide, including 50,000 in California--believe today’s drug laws have done little more than drive up the price of contraband and make millionaires out of drug traffickers, said John Vernon, chairman of the 18-year-old Libertarian Party of California.

“If cocaine were legalized tomorrow, the economy of Colombia would probably collapse,” he said.

With widespread legalization would come a decrease in drug-related armed robberies and other crimes, Vernon predicted.

Protest organizer Donner conceded that more individuals, including children, might use harmful drugs if they were legal, but he said: “Parents are responsible for minors’ behavior. I deplore the fact that government has taken over many of the parenting responsibilities in our society.”

Chris Conrad of the pro-marijuana American Hemp Council touted the practical values of hemp, which can be used to make everything from shoelaces to motor oil.

“We’re recommending that people go to the store, ask for hemp, look for hemp--buy hemp!” he shouted to the crowd.