Jack Cole knows about the "war on drugs" from several perspectives. He retired as a Detective Lieutenant after a 26-year career with the New Jersey State Police—fourteen in narcotics, mostly as an undercover officer. His investigations spanned cases from street drug users to international "billion-dollar" drug trafficking organizations. Jack ended his undercover career living nearly two years in Boston and New York City, posing as a fugitive drug dealer wanted for murder, while tracking members of a terrorist organization that robbed banks, planted bombs in corporate headquarters, court-houses, police stations, and airplanes and ultimately murdered a New Jersey State Trooper.
Jack is a founding member and for eight years was executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, an organization representing 100,000 cops, judges, prosecutors, prison wardens, and supporters from 120 countries, who know a system of legalized regulation of all drugs will remove the violence which is the result of drug prohibition. He is now their Board Chair.
After retiring, Jack dealt with the emotional residue left from his participation in this failed and destructive war on drugs by working to reform current drug policy. He moved to Boston to continue his education. Jack holds a B.A. in Criminal Justice and a Masters degree in Public Policy. During the seven years he spent in the Public Policy Ph.D. Program at the University of Massachusetts, his major focus was on the issues of race and gender bias, brutality and corruption in law enforcement. Jack believed ending drug prohibition would go a long way toward correcting those problems, so in 2002, when the Marijuana Policy Project offered $50,000 start up money for an organization of police who would call for the decriminalization of one ounce of marijuana, Jack dropped out of his Ph.D. program to found LEAP—and surprised MPP by calling for the legalization and regulation of all drugs.
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