THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Ray does it!

Ray Welles said, "It is easier to write ten sermons than to live one."  And who better than he to know?

VISITING ROTARIANS

Head Herder Debbie

Debbie Roessler - Moraga, and Asst. DG herding

cats in this part of our district (quick quiz: What's the number of our district? If you don't know answer by next meeting, be prepared to dig into your jeans for quick "recognition").

John Sherry - Lafayette

GUESTS OF OTHER PERSUASIONS

Nancy Baglietto

Tom Belkin

Barbara Miller - Steve Ware's mother-in-law, all the way from Louisville, the one in Kentucky

BIRTHDAYS, ANNIVERSARIES AND OTHER CELEBRATIONS

Buddy Burke had a birthday and an anniversary last week, and spent them both in the Olympic National Park with Holly, which entitled His Thomaship to remove $20 from Buddy's wallet.

John Linneman had a Club anniversary.  Coincidentally, he left $20 behind, too.

Ernie & Barb cycle Napa

Barbara Pelletreau had a birthday, and hubby Ernie Furtado, romantic that he is, took her on a 60-mile bike ride through Napa Valley to raise money to fight ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) .  Ernie also kicked in $39 (Barb's age, with a nod to Jack Benny) and $100 for the Endowment Fund.

Cal and Agatha Sue Lee celebrated their anniversary at Metro.  Either Cal got off easy (not likely) or I zoned out and missed President Peeks imposing sentence (much more likely). 

Ron & Sara Cruise Panama Canal.

Ron Brown cheerfully kicked in $55 in honor of his and Sara's anniversary (take a wild guess which one), which was spent on a cruise several months ago.  No, this reporter doesn't understand the logic, either, but if it works for them . . . .

STEVE WARE HAS LAMORINDA SUNRISE SHIRTS.  LOTS OF THEM

This just in from the Bureau of Repetition and Redundancy Department - Steve Ware has Lamorinda Sunrise

You don't want the shirt off his back!

logo polo shirts.  Lots of them.  So if you don't have one, call or go see Steve, and he'll give you the shirt off his back ... or out of a box. Said shirts are de rigueur for being recognized as one of the Kool Kids at Lamorinda Sunrise hands-on activities, such as HOME Team work days or building stuff for Las Trampas or whatever.

ARIANNE IN ACTION

Arianne gave a polished and poised presentation today despite Mike Edwards's and Dave Isenberg's somewhat-less-than-grand

All hail Bolivia!

entrance with a huge Bolivian flag.  She spent last weekend with the Johnsons, including helping celebrate Tamra's birthday.  On Sunday, Don Reichert took her (Arianne, not Tamra) to the San Francisco Opera where they saw a production the name of which this uncultured reporter had never heard.  Her first Interact meeting at Acalanes HS and another birthday celebration (this one for Laurie Ware's mother, Barbara Miller) followed later in the week.

This was merely Arianne's warmup.  She then showed a number of photos of her classmates, her parents, her grandmother, her brother, her cousin, other exchange students from her school, her dogs, and several random strangers who were at the airport when she left to come here.  (Okay, that last one is not strictly accurate, but the rest is.)  Arianne also brought a banner from her sponsoring Rotary Club.

Secretary Yeager, banner man.

On a related note, Secretary Chuck Yeager arrived today with a box that was rumored to be filled with Lamorinda Sunrise banners, so we can travel to other Clubs again without looking like boorish louts.  We may still act and sound like boorish louts, but at least we won't look like them.  One such owed banner was recently put in the mail to the Central Rotary Club of Grand Cayman Island, which vacationing

Black in Caymen

Tom Black visited in April ... sans LSR banner, of course. He returned with one of theirs, however. All-time, undisputed champion banner

Dandy Don, banner King

collector is Don Reichert. He brings us so many from his worldwide travels, we'd swear he makes them himself in his garage.

STUFF THAT WILL ALREADY HAVE HAPPENED BY THE TIME YOU READ THIS

John Sherry, who seems to take almost as much delight in trying to separate us from our money as does Comrade Peeks, was here hawking raffle tickets for the Rotary Golf tournament the Lafayette Club sponsors each year (and which we win each year).  Both events will have transpired by the time you read this, so we take precious space telling what the prizes were. Well, OK, if you insist. The biggie was use of a BMW and a Tahoe Condo for a weekend.  

Can Captain Brad prevail again?

Speaking of said golf tournament, Brad Davis rose to exhort his troops and rally support from the rest of us.  Of course, in light of Lamorinda Sunrise's success in years past, this is really a no-win proposition, sort of like when De La Salle High had won something like 735 football games in a row - if you win, it's a yawner because it's expected, and you don't want to be the one holding the bag if the string finally runs out.  Given those parameters, who better than Brad to be team captain?

PAUL HARRIS MEETS SANTA'S HELPER

Chuck Kenney came west from his new digs in Atlanta, sporting his usual smile and glorious white beard.  When he left, he was

Here comes Santa Claus

sporting something else -- a Paul Harris pin with two sapphires or emeralds or rubies or whatever the heck stone they use to signify multiple Paul Harris awards.  Cal Lee, Grand Imperial Poobah of all things Foundation, made the presentation, noting that the PH+2 awarded to Chuck represents a significant contribution to the Rotary Foundation (this in addition to 27 years of seemingly non-stop hands-on Rotary work Chuck has done), which in turn means a significant contribution to things like Polio Plus, Ambassadorial Scholars, Matching Grants, and the myriad other ways that the Rotary Foundation helps turn a Rotary dream into a reality.  Many thanks for all you have done and continue to do, Chuck.

PROGRAM

Russ Jones in charge

Russ Jones has an extensive law enforcement background.  It started with a stint with the San Jose Police Department, including several years as an undercover narcotics detective.  His career saw him working on Drug Enforcement Agency task forces.  He was invited to tour both China and the then-Soviet Union to learn about their drug enforcement strategies, including going along on a bust of a Moscow meth lab.  He spent several years in Central America observing first-hand how the illicit drug trade spawns violence and corruption up to the highest levels of government - our own included.  His experience is not limited to the street as he also spent a number of years studying drug law enforcement in graduate school. 

Bottom-line, boots-on-ground assessment by Mr. Jones:  Our War on Drugs, so christened by President Nixon, has been a costly and colossal failure.

Mr. Jones is a member of LEAP, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a group of law enforcement professionals of all kinds (police, judges, DEA agents, and prosecutors, some active, some retired) along with other citizens (among them former Secretary of State George Schultz, former San Jose Police Chief Joseph McNamara, and the late William F. Buckley) who think the prohibition on recreational drugs has resulted in increased crime, increased violence, increased incarceration and increased disease.

Mr. Jones and his LEAP compatriots are most decidedly not pro-drug.  They have not come to their positions because of some sort of "soft on crime" or "soft on drugs" mind set. They very much want to reduce drug use and the myriad miseries it causes, both to the individual and to society as a whole.  What they do favor is recognizing that treating drug use and addiction as a law enforcement problem does not work, and that treating it as a public health problem will accomplish far more and cost far less.

What led Mr. Jones to the conclusion that prohibition has not worked?  Here are a few of the statistics he presented.  In 1970, the average dose of an illegal drug cost $6.00 and was 1.5% pure.  By 1999, the numbers, adjusted for inflation, were $0.80 for a 38.2% pure product.  These are numbers from the DEA, by the way.  In 1970, there were 415,000 drug arrests nationally.  In 2005, there were nearly five fold as many - 1.9 million.  Put another way, annually - repeat, annually -- we are bringing drug charges against the equivalent of the entire population of the State of New Mexico.  Although the USA has only 4% of the world's population, we have 22.5% of the world's prisoners, and Mr. Jones' research indicates that something like 80% of those are in prison for drug-related offenses, and the majority of those in for non-violent, possession crimes.  These people have to be housed somewhere, and the result has been the explosion in the number of prisons and the number of people the public has to hire to guard them.  That is a very expensive way to deal with the problem. (Reporter aside: Today, in the State of California, more taxpayer dollars go to support the prison system than to public education.)

So has it worked?  You be the judge: In 1970, 1.3% of the American public were addicts. Rate of addiction now:  1.3%. Not real progress.

There have been other effects as well.  In 1970, when Mr. Jones started his law enforcement career - the same year the War on Drugs was launched -- we did not have drive-by shootings.  Suppliers of illegal drugs tended to be local in scope.  In 1972, the DEA had 2,775 employees. As the War on Drugs was implemented, he saw local dealers supplanted by organized crime.  In San Jose, the Nuestra Familia was the first organized gang to muscle in.  Mr. Jones observed that when he arrested a robber or a rapist, he felt he had made the city safer.  But when he arrested a drug dealer, all he did was create a job opening, one that increasingly was filled by the most violent and least civilized candidates.  And by 2005, the DEA had grown to 10,894 employees and a $30 billion budget.  That budget is now $70 billion per year. You read that correctly: billion!

Remember the aforementioned meth-lab bust in Moscow?  This

Mr. Jones epiphany

marked something of an epiphany for Mr. Jones.  It led him to think that, if a police state such as the USSR could not control drug use through War on Drugs-style tactics, what chance did the USA have of succeeding using such tactics?

So what does he suggest we do instead?  Mr. Jones believes that the answer is to remove the profit motive for pushers by legalizing drugs and regulating them as we do with tobacco and alcohol.  Put simply, make it so a heroin or crack addict goes to a clinic or primary-care physician to get his or her fix instead of some back-alley pusher. 

Will it work?  It has elsewhere.  Mr. Jones cited the example of Switzerland, where heroin addition is treated with ... heroin. The initial Swiss efforts were less than satisfactory - there were knowing nods in the audience at the mention of "Needle Park." But after some growing pains, the Swiss program of legalization and regulation has attained notable success. Such as a dramatic decrease in overdose deaths.  Such as a 60% decrease in crime.  Such as an 82% drop in the rate of addiction.  Not to mention a significant decrease in new AIDS and hepatitis cases.

Mr. Jones also pointed to what has happened in the U.S. with tobacco use.  The tobacco use rate used to be 42% of adults.  Today it is 17%.  This has been accomplished through regulation and education, not prohibition. 

Mr. Jones argues that the "legalize and regulate" scheme also has the potential to dramatically curtail our children's exposure to that first hit.  Virtually any high-school student now can obtain illegal drugs more easily than either tobacco or alcohol.  Why?  Because the pusher hangs out in the same places as they do -- and they don't ask for ID as proof of age. 

There is also another potent example of how legalization can reduce the social costs of substance abuse, to wit: alcohol.  The 18^th Amendment, the Volstead Act and Prohibition led to the Mafia and dramatically increased the availability of booze to the the underaged. It also increased death and disease from uncontrolled production of drink that was, in more than a few cases, proved lethal to ingest.  We still have some of the residual problems of Prohibition. Although the Mafia is not as strong as it was in days of yore, we don't have any more St. Valentine's Day massacres over rum-running.  As Mr. Jones asked, when was the last time you heard of the minions of Anheuser-Busch staging a drive-by shooting of Coors employees?

One thing Mr. Jones stressed is that neither he nor the other members of LEAP are in favor of recreational drug use.  They have seen too many destroyed lives to go down that deadly path.  What they want, realistically, is a marked reduction in drug use .  They have taken a hard look at four decades' worth of the War on Drugs and see huge costs, both financial and societal, but no progress whatsoever in curtailment. That, and not any "softness," is what drives their efforts to drastically alter how we handle our national drug problem ... and it is very much national - indeed, international -- in scope.

As Albert Einstein once observed, "One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."  In Mr. Jones's view, it is time to stop the insanity.

Thank you, Mr. Jones, for the thought-provoking talk.  You rattled our collective brain, and we say this as a compliment.

KOSICH FAMILY TGITLFOTM

On the First Saturday of October, Ken and Patti Kosich proved that the First  Saturday's can be even better than the Last Friday when it comes to great hosting of ravenous and thirsty LSR members. Especially when it took place at their 8-acre vineyard. A robust turnout enjoyed a great epicurean spread, plenty of Mike Edwards Wine  and a marvelous view of Sonoma and surroundings. The weather was perfection and we got to see grape production close up and personal. Invited to partake in the process, Yolanda Peeks and others

Yolanda harvests

edwards crushes

Inviting entrance

demonstrated a deft touch with the shears in clipping amazingly delicious bunches of Chardonay Grapes. Mike Edwards followed with a demonstration, using one of his crushers, to move the grapes into the next

Wonderful hosts, Ken & Patti

processing level. Folks came from as far away as Australia to partake in this lovely event (thanks to wine importer Gillett Johnson and the welcoming hospitality of Ken and Patti).

There was no tennis court, but there was a horseshoe court. This challenged the  athletic ability of some of our stalwarts. The real rules say there are 2 points for a ringer and 1 point for being within a horseshoe's width. Defense ruled the day, as no score was made. The rules were then bent to provide that 2 points would be given for even being close to the stake. Still no scoring. Finally a point was simply given to the horseshoe which was closest to the stake, even if it was 10 yards away. If this amendment had not been made, the game would still be going on.

Ken and Patti absolutely went beyond the call of duty on this event, and it will be a part of LSR historic lore.

CALENDAR

10/8     Thomas McCormick, Orinda Mayor

10/9     Westival, 3:00-7:00

10/12   Board meeting, 7:00 a.m.

10/15   Josh Cooley, Pixar

10/22   District Governor

10/28   Pumpking Carving, Garden Park Apartments 5 p.m.

10/29   Expose yourself, TBA

11/4-7   District Conference, Old Town Sacramento

11/5      Steve Falk, Lafayette City Manager

11/9      Board meeting

11/19   Candy Pierce, Rotary Foundation