Make Drugs Legal, U.S. Judge Urges : Crime: Magistrate says the war on narcotics is being lost. His views mirror those of another Orange County jurist.

A second judge in Orange County has concluded that the war on drugs has been “lost in a big way” and is advocating the legalization of drugs for adults.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Ronald W. Rose, who sits on the federal bench in Santa Ana, said that drug laws should be repealed and drugs should be decriminalized.

His position closely mirrors a proposal offered by Orange County Superior Court Judge James P. Gray, who has recommended that marijuana, cocaine and heroin be sold to adults legally at licensed neighborhood pharmacies.

Gray, who has been roundly criticized by law enforcement officials, said that he was “encouraged that another judge has come forward about the problem.”

Rose’s stance was revealed in a column he wrote for the May issue of the Orange County Lawyer magazine. A regular contributor to the journal, Rose said he arrived at his view independent of Gray and that his article was submitted about a month before Gray made his proposal this month.

But like Gray, Rose said his opinions were forged by years of experience as a judge and prosecutor. He said that he used to believe that “ridding society of these (drug) vermin would solve the problem and provide a significant deterrent to others who might follow. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.”

He said the drug situation is getting increasingly worse as courts get overwhelmed and jails get overcrowded. Not only are there more crimes being committed as a result of drugs, the crimes are more violent, he said.

Rose concluded in his article that law enforcement will never effectively battle the problem as long as the drug trade remains so lucrative. Because of that belief, he suggested that drugs be given free “to anyone insane enough to want them.”

“We have to take the profit motive out of this Dante’s Inferno that is killing us like the Chinese ‘death from a thousand cuts,’ ” he wrote. “There is just so much money to be made that the slim chance of being caught is always worth the risk. Believe me, after 20 years as a prosecutor and judge, I can assure you that we only catch the stupid ones.”