On Barry Cooper's latest avoid-getting-busted video release

Former Texas police officer Barry Cooper is at it again. Granted instant media notoriety when he switched sides and released a 2006 video, "Never Get Busted Again," Cooper provided tips and advice to people about how to travel with marijuana and avoid getting nailed. (Our colleagues at Flex Your Rights have criticized some of Cooper's advice, but that's not what this post is about.) Today, Cooper begins shipping his latest effort, "Never Get Raided," a primer on how to possess, grow, and sell pot without getting busted. Cooper is not well liked in the drug reform community. He got off on the wrong foot by falsely affiliating himself with Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, as noted above, his advice has been criticized, and his personal behavior has been called into question as well. He has also been accused of being a mercenary (for not giving away his videos). I'm sure a lot of those criticisms are well-founded, but that's not what this post is about, either. I haven't seen Cooper's latest effort. I don't know if it delivers the goods, and I'm not here to say you should go out and buy it. But I certainly support any effort to blunt the ability of the cops to bust people for pot offenses. What roused me from my dogmatic slumber on this was LEAP executive director Jack Cole's quote in a Dallas Morning News article about Cooper and the new video. What Cooper is doing is wrong, Cole said: "We don't agree philosophically at all on these issues," said Cole. "He thinks he should be able to school people on how to break the law, we believe in changing the law." Sorry, Jack, I'm with Barry Cooper on this one. There is no moral, ethical, or philosophical justification whatsoever for terrorizing, arresting, prosecuting, and jailing people for marijuana offenses. Anyone who can teach the nation's millions of pot smokers have to avoid the cops deserves kudos, not criticism. It's not like he's teaching people how to be better killers or robbers. We are talking about a non-violent activity that does no harm to anyone except, arguably, the pot smoker himself. As old-school American dissident Henry David Thoreau once noted, ""Unjust laws exist. Shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them and obey them until we succeed, or shall we transgress them at once?" Or shall we, like Mr. Cooper, tell people how to successfully transgress them? Hell, yeah. I understand where Jack Cole is coming from. LEAP needs to be viewed as responsible law enforcement opposition to the drug war, not as a bunch of drug crime facilitators. But I don't carry that particular burden, so I say good on Barry Cooper (provided, of course, that his advice is good). Yes, of course, we need to change the drugs laws. But in the meantime, as 800,000 people get arrested each year on pot charges, we need to reduce the harm, and helping people avoid arrest and prosecution for marijuana offenses is doing precisely that. The pot laws need to be subverted, and if Barry Cooper's videos help do that, more power to him.