Pubdate: Thu, 18 Sep 2003
Source: AlterNet (US Web)
Copyright: 2003 Independent Media Institute
Contact:  http://www.alternet.org/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1451
Author: Silja J.A. Talvi, AlterNet
Cited: Office of National Drug Control Policy ( www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov )
Cited: Marijuana Policy Project ( www.mpp.org )
Cited: Drug Policy Alliance ( www.drugpolicy.org )
Cited: Sensible Seattle Coalition ( www.sensibleseattle.org )
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/props.htm (Ballot Initiatives)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/walters.htm (Walters, John)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/campaign.htm (ONDCP Media Campaign)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?137 (Needle Exchange)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/racial.htm (Racial Issues)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/prison.htm (Incarceration)
Note: Silja J.A. Talvi is a staff writer for the Seattle-based ColorsNW 
Magazine, a regional monthly focused on ethnic communities. Her articles on 
prison, criminal justice and drug policy issues have appeared in 
publications ranging from The Nation to In These Times.

THE STATE OF DRUG REFORM

The Drug Czar is not a man given to particularly inspiring speeches, but on 
the topic of marijuana, John Walters gets downright fired up. On a 
nationwide tour to promote the Office of National Drug Control Policy's new 
25-Cities Initiative, Director Walters says he's on a mission to combat the 
national disease of addiction.

That disease, as he believes fervently, is bred by non-addictive use of 
drugs. And the carriers of the disease are those peers who spread what 
Walters calls "The Lie": "That drug use is fun, that you can handle it, and 
everybody does it. The friend of those people don't realize what The Lie is 
until is until it's too late."

In Seattle recently to promote the latest effort in the War on Drugs, 
Walters was able to lock onto his target during his September 10th press 
conference. In the multipurpose room of a neighborhood detox center, the 
Drug Czar placed particular emphasis on Seattle City Initiative 75. The 
citizen initiative demands that local police and prosecutors lay off pot 
smokers by making marijuana possession the lowest law enforcement priority. 
Walters alternately called the initiative "a con" and "phony."

"I think Seattle is as responsible and sensible place as any other city, 
and I believe the voters will make the right decision [on I-75] if they 
have the right information."

The Sensible Seattle Coalition -- an ad-hoc group of drug reform advocates 
backed by the ACLU of Washington, the League of Women Voters of Seattle and 
the King County Bar Association -- had thought the exact same thing. In 
this case, it seems the voters had a bit more faith in their homegrown 
initiative than in Walters' dire warnings: With nearly all of the votes 
counted, I-75 passed handily with a 59 to 41 percent majority in the Sept. 
16 elections.

"[This was] a grassroots statement from the people to their employees -- 
the police -- that they're no longer buying the Nixon-era rhetoric that 
marijuana poses an overwhelming threat to public health and safety," 
explained attorney and I-75 supporter Alison Chinn Holcomb, whose clients 
have included many college students facing denial of financial aid for 
marijuana use.

When viewed in context, the success of this carefully worded initiative -- 
which only applies to possession, and not to selling or trafficking -- 
extends far beyond Seattle City limits, and helps to explain why Director 
Walters would spend as much time as he did lambasting this "silly and 
irresponsible" effort.

According to a "State of the States" report released this week by the New 
York-based Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), the vast majority of state 
legislatures passed significant drug policy reforms between 1996-2002.

The report details more than 150 changes in 46 states on a wide range of 
drug-related issues, including medical marijuana, needle exchange and 
possession, alternatives to incarceration, bans on racial profiling, and 
the restoration of benefits and voting rights to ex-offenders. As the 
authors of the report found, reforms were initiated, sponsored and 
supported by progressive to ultraconservative Democrats, Republicans, 
Libertarians, Greens and Independents.

Seattle's passage of I-75, said DPA Director of State Affairs Katherine 
Huffman, is a "continuation of a national trend."

"More and more people want to look at drug issues in terms of health and 
human rights rather than in the [realm] of the criminal justice system," 
said Huffman.

Statewide drug policy reforms have been gaining momentum since Arizona 
voters passed Proposition 200 in 1996, which mandated treatment instead of 
incarceration for first- and second-time offenders. California's 
Proposition 36, passed by 61 percent of voters, followed along similar 
lines. Stark fiscal realities for cash-strapped states seem to have 
contributed to the wave of policy reforms. With costs of incarceration 
reaching an average of $30,000 per year (and more for seriously ill and 
elderly inmates), taxpayers in states ranging from Hawaii to Indiana have 
concluded that spending as little as $4,000 annually on treatment per 
person simply made more sense.

But this shift in drug policy hasn't been entirely focused on the fiscal 
bottom line. The wave of reform-minded bills seem to have also used 
compassion and civil rights as guiding concerns, as evidenced by medical 
marijuana laws passed in Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, 
Nevada, Oregon and Washington. Those laws have withstood concerted federal 
efforts and Drug Enforcement Agency raids intended to disrupt the 
operations of medical marijuana clubs -- and to arrest those who use 
marijuana to alleviate symptoms of chronic illnesses.

President Clinton's 1996 federal welfare reform bill resulted in the 
permanent denial of welfare benefits or food stamps to anyone ever 
convicted of a drug offense. In response, citizens and legislators in 
states including Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Louisiana, Nevada, New 
Mexico, and Washington passed laws that allowed them to partially opt out 
of the ban because it was perceived as being unnecessarily harsh and too 
broadly applied. If people who had raped and murdered could be eligible for 
public benefits, as the logic went, why should drug users be demonized and 
punished to an even greater extent?

According to the DPA, ten states (and the federal government itself) have 
also moved to enact asset forfeiture reforms, usually by putting the burden 
on law enforcement to prove the necessity of property confiscation. And of 
particular significance to the almost 1.4 million disenfranchised African 
American -- 14 percent of the entire Black male population -- states 
including Connecticut and New Mexico (and, most recently, Florida), have 
enacted laws to return voting rights after incarceration.

Of all the states in the union, New Mexico and Washington State have led 
the pack in drug policy reforms, according to DPA's Huffman. With a record 
11 changes or additions to state law, New Mexico saw the start of its 
reform during the tenure of Republican Governor Gary Johnson and his 
Democratically-controlled state legislature, much to the chagrin of his 
conservative allies. Current Democratic Governor Bill Richardson has 
eschewed an aggressive drug policy reform approach, although he has 
expressed support of sentencing reform. Under Richardson, the New Mexico 
state legislature shot down two reform bills -- including a revived medical 
marijuana bill -- earlier this year.

In Washington State, the legislature enacted six drug policy reforms 
between 1996-2002, including a recent law cutting sentences for nonviolent 
drug offenses. The state expects to save an estimated $50 million and plans 
to divert the funding into drug treatment.

Significant national changes on drug and criminal justice policy 
notwithstanding, advocates of reform still have their work cut out for 
them. For one, progressive voters and legislators in California have been 
up against Democratic Governor Gray Davis' record-breaking vetoes of drug 
policy reforms. (Gov. Davis has issued more such vetoes than any other 
governor in U.S. history, including bills on overdose prevention, 
restoration of public benefits, asset forfeiture and racial profiling.)

Nationwide, with 450,000 people in jail or prison for nonviolent drug 
offenses, and a grand total that exceeds 2.1 million, the U.S. continues to 
arrest and incarcerate its residents at a stupendous rate.

Without doubt, thousands of middle-class recreational users and sellers 
have been sucked into the vortex of the Drug War. But none have been more 
impacted than Americans struggling to get by on marginal incomes and low 
education levels.

New analysis from the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) points out that by 
1999, one in 10 European American male high school dropouts -- and fully 
half of African American male dropouts -- had prison records by their early 
thirties. Nearly 70 percent of the nation's prisoners do not have a high 
school diploma.

"If we want to create a more effective response to crime, we should divert 
people from prison into treatment, and provide educational opportunities to 
those currently incarcerated," said JPI Director of Policy and Research 
Jason Ziedenberg. Ziedenberg co-authored the report, "Education and 
Incarceration," with Princeton sociology professor Bruce Western.

Their research also found that African American men in their early 30s are 
now nearly twice as likely to have prison records than undergraduate degrees.

The incarceration phenomenon has gotten to such a point that even Supreme 
Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy recently felt compelled to speak out on 
the issue.

Justice Kennedy, a moderate conservative Reagan-appointee to the Supreme 
Court, used his appearance at the annual American Bar Association 
conference in August to call on the association to lobby Congress for a 
repeal of mandatory minimum sentencing.

"I can accept neither the necessity nor the wisdom of federal mandatory 
minimum sentences," he told the attendees, according to the Associated Press.

"It is no defense if our current system is more the product of neglect than 
of purpose," Justice Kennedy said, noting the fact that roughly 40 percent 
of the prison population is African American.

Gross racial and class disparities in incarceration rates didn't fit into 
the scope of the Drug Czar's pre-election visit to Seattle.

Instead, Walters devoted most of his energy to explaining how "big money" 
had tried to influence Americans into believing that marijuana is a soft, 
harmless drug. Walters also remarked that drug policy reform efforts like 
I-75 represented a thinly veiled effort to legalize marijuana and other drugs.

In his remarks, Walters zeroed in on three well-known philanthropists who 
have backed many of the city and statewide drug reform initiatives in 
recent years: billionaire banker George Soros, University of Arizona owner 
John Sperling, and Peter Lewis, head of Ohio-based Progressive Auto 
Insurance. Lewis helped to fund pro-I-75 outreach efforts along with the 
Washington D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project (MPP).

"A fair debate [should not be] silenced by big money," Walters said.

Bruce Mirken, Director of Communications for MPP, responded that charges of 
undue influence by "big money" in drug policy reform are ludicrous. "ONDCP 
spends more on advertising in one week than the Marijuana Policy Project 
spends on its entire operating budget for a full year," Mirken said. "And 
we're the 'big money' outsiders?"

Walters still strongly criticized the involvement of the three men for 
engaging in "experiments on public policy."

"Children here will be the payers of the price," he charged, in reference 
to the suggestion made by both him and Seattle City Attorney Tom Carr that 
I-75 would eventually result in children accepting and partaking in 
marijuana use.

Walters also publicly challenged the three men to a national debate about 
marijuana and drug use, alleging that he had made such efforts in the past 
and been ignored or turned down.

"When you have truth on your side, speak the truth," Walters declared to 
assembled reporters. He added that journalists had the responsibility to do 
their due diligence to help prevent a phony picture of drug use from 
reaching the people.

In a move that Walters may not have expected, the MPP took him up on the 
challenge this week, sending Walters an invitation to participate in a 
nationally televised debate on drug policy.

There's no word yet on whether Walters will accept.

"We'll soon know if he's serious," said Mirken.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Beth