Profile: Howard Wooldridge

RIDING AGAINST PROHIBITION

            As a retired law enforcement officer who advocates the legalization of drugs, he gets attention. But he gets even more attention riding coast to coast on horseback to publicize his cause. Howard Wooldridge, ’76, a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society, just finished a 3,300-mile trek on horseback from Huntington Beach, CA, to New York City’s Battery Park, becoming the second person ever to ride coast to coast both ways (two years ago he rode 3,100 miles from Tybee Island, GA, to Newport, OR).

            “Horses are a wonderful vehicle to get publicity,” explains Wooldrige, who helped found Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (www.leap.cc) in 2002 in Dallas, TX. “Since we began the war on drugs, we’ve spent one half trillion dollars at the federal, state and local levels,” he explains. “And what did it get us? A world where drugs are cheaper, stronger, and readily available to teenagers.”

            He and fellow members of LEAP believe the solution is legalization. “Give them a clean, legal product and you cut out the Pablo Escovars of the world, just as ending Prohibition cut out the Al Capones,” he says. “Meth labs are the moonshine stills of the 21st century.”

            The son of a marine, Howard grew up “everywhere” but found a home at MSU, where he volunteered to ride with a police officer in a “Ride Along” program. “The eight hours I spent with Officer Paul Scofield in 1974 changed my life,” he recalls. “I thought, ‘Holy Smoke, this is cool!’” He became a police officer in DeWitt and Bath Townships. “75 percent of the felony cases I investigated were related to drug prohibition,” he says. “If drugs were legal, there would not be such profits, some of which funds terrorism. Heroin would cost as much as soy beans.”

            Howard admits that his publicity stunt has given him a sore behind. “But my knees and back are fine,” he chuckles.