Good Cop, Bad War

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The trouble is that after this has happened a few times in a few cities, the big time dealers start to get very paranoid about their little street dealers introducing anyone new to them, because their experiences now tell them that the new person could easily be an undercover policeman. I have read enough narco books and educated myself to know that this ‘War on Drugs’ is a total sham. I was touched by the degree to which Woods became fond of a lot of the addicts he worked with (albeit that he was under cover. Neil is a board member of the international organisation Law Enforcement Action Partnership (LEAP) in the USA, and Chair of the organisation in the U.

At some point they will wire up their agent so he can record some transaction, thus implicating the dealers. In Switzerland they created a series of official injection centres in major cities, supplying clean equipment, medical advice and a space where addicts could inject safely. And to the politicians and so on that make these shit policies, you've failed your office, your nation, your people, your family, your god (if you have one), your people. This book is not just about drugs; it is also about lives, the lives of those who are, one way or another, involved in this hideous drama.Essentially, after dedicating his life to putting away drug lords and fighting what he believed was a “good war”, he now believes the only way to make a difference, to really win the war on drugs, is to decriminalise the trade. In addition to being a compelling and coherent argument in favour of decriminalisation, this book also provides numerous incredible stories from Neil Woods' years undercover. My one quibble about this book is that rather than Woods recounting experience after experience as an underground agent, taking up chapter after chapter of the book, I would have just liked a synopsis of what he did, and what he learnt from these experiences. This is a really great book for those of us who do not have much knowledge about the life of an undercover police officer. Woods gives a telling description of the Manchester Police Force, where a special task force of 12 men is set up to investigate drugs (amongst a police force of about 11,000 men), as it cannot be guaranteed that amongst the general force there aren't several policemen or detectives being paid by drug dealers to leak them information.

Neil is the chairman of LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition), a pro-legalisation advocacy group formed exclusively of ex-law enforcement officials, and he also starred on Channel 4’s Drugs Live . The author ultimately leaves the police force and joins organisations like LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition) that think that the only way to win the war is by removing the financial rewards (legalising drugs). It is in fact almost to me like so many jobs in the Police are reliant on the war on drugs, positions are probably engineered along with technology budgets etc, they are not the correct solution to change the war completely, then again can the change be quick like a complete reversal? Against the usual outcry from opposition groups and sections of the security apparatus, Portugal decriminalised drug use, and shifted drug policy from law enforcement to public health.It's a superb book, which has given me more insight into the UK's 'War on Drugs' than anything else I've seen or read. What sets it apart is the author's compassion for the addicts he had to blend in with and his gradual realisation that the 'war' he was involved in was having the opposite affect to what he joined up to. When Neil left the police and pursued a life of changing the course of the fight against drugs, I was riveted and it is pure proven logic. The book is written with sensitivity towards drug users and explores the way the war on drugs results in lots of collateral damage.