Pubdate: Wed, 10 Jan 2001
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 2001 The Washington Post Company
Contact:  1150 15th Street Northwest, Washington, DC 20071
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Author: Judy Mann

SUPPORT GROWS FOR SENSIBLE DRUG POLICIES

There's a dangerous outbreak of common sense occurring, and it is being 
fueled by such incendiary organizations as the Cato Institute and the 
Lindesmith Center.

The target is this nation's lunatic, self-destructive war on drugs, which 
has trampled the Fourth and Sixth amendments to the Constitution and 
imprisoned hundreds of thousands of nonviolent drug offenders. Those 
fortunate enough not to be shot during searches by paramilitary police 
units often have had their property confiscated, even when police and 
prosecutors have no proof that they were involved in illegal drug transactions.

The assault on civil liberties by the anti-drug warriors is finally 
galvanizing serious thinkers and a few enlightened politicians into action. 
Courageous public officials such as Gary E. Johnson, the Republican 
governor of New Mexico, are saying loudly and clearly that the war on drugs 
has failed and that states must take a completely different approach to 
minimizing drug use.

Last May, Johnson appointed a drug policy advisory group, which included 
judges, New Mexico's secretaries of health and of public safety, the mayor 
of Albuquerque and medical experts, to evaluate his state's drug policies. 
The panel released its recommendations last week, and they are the most 
comprehensive and far-reaching reforms proposed by any official agency. 
Citing the "devastating effects" of drugs and alcohol on the people of New 
Mexico, and the expensive failure of current policies, the panel's 
chairman, retired state District Court Judge Woody Smith, called for 
confronting drug abuse primarily as a public health, medical and social 
problem, not a criminal offense.

The panel recommended making treatment for drug addiction available to 
anyone who requests it, as well as sweeping reforms such as the open sale 
of sterile syringes in pharmacies. The panel was particularly troubled by 
the "patently false information about illegal drugs" it came across in its 
research.

The panel sharply rebuked the federal government for spreading falsehoods 
about drug use. It urged amending criminal statutes to reduce first and 
second drug offenses to misdemeanors and to require automatic probation and 
treatment rather than jail for offenders. It also recommended removing all 
criminal penalties for possession of marijuana for personal use and 
abolishing mandatory-minimum sentences for drug offenses, restoring 
discretion to judges.

Johnson is backing all of the recommendations and has called upon the 
legislature to pass eight reform bills this session.

Meanwhile, in New York, where the 1973 Rockefeller drug laws are among the 
most punitive in the nation, Republican Gov. George E. Pataki has called 
for changing some of these laws. "Today," he said in his State of the State 
address, "we can conclude that however well intentioned, key aspects of 
those laws are out of step with both the times and the complexities of drug 
addiction." Tens of thousands of nonviolent drug offenders in New York have 
done hard time as a result of the Rockefeller drug laws, which served as 
the model for some of the harshest federal drug laws.

The Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation, which is funded by financier 
George Soros, is among the leading advocates of abandoning the war on drugs 
in favor of a comprehensive approach based on public health and harm 
reduction. It estimates that the cost of state and federal enforcement of 
current drug policies is well over $40 billion a year.

The Cato Institute, which developed the idea of privatizing part of Social 
Security, has been working closely with the Lindesmith Center to build 
public support for drug reform. Its most recent effort is a collection of 
essays edited by Timothy Lynch, director of Cato's project on criminal justice.

The name of the book is "After Prohibition: An Adult Approach to Drug 
Policies in the 21st Century." The foreword is by Republican economist 
Milton Friedman, and the essays are among the most damning indictments of 
the war on drugs ever assembled in one volume.

These heartening developments are changing the debate more rapidly than 
even the most optimistic drug reformers would have believed possible a year 
ago. When governors as diverse as Johnson, Pataki and Minnesota's Jesse 
Ventura call for drug law reform, others can step forward without the fear 
of being labeled soft on crime.

Until now, we have had hysteria instead of sensible debate about the best 
way to deal with the wreckage brought on families, society and the 
Constitution by illegal drugs and the failed war against them. One of the 
most grievous casualties has been the First Amendment: Few have dared 
question the war on drugs, and even fewer have been willing to raise hell 
about searches and forfeitures of property that would have sent the framers 
of the Constitution into a frenzy.

A fact of American life is that if you get cross-ways with someone and that 
person calls the law and says you are a drug dealer, police can do a 
midnight raid on your house, trash it, confiscate it – and you have no 
recourse whatsoever. As David P. Kopel points out in his essay in "After 
Prohibition," "not even King George III had the temerity to order such 
raids on people's homes."

Bringing common sense to our drug policies will not be easy. The prison and 
law enforcement industries have become powerful lobbies. Thousands of jobs 
are at stake. Drug policy reformers can expect to be vilified as soft on 
crime. But despite the risk of political calumny, drug reform is gaining 
momentum in state after state. Someday we will look back upon this siege of 
drug enforcement hysteria and be appalled. That day may come sooner than we 
think.
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