Pubdate: Mon, 03 Jan 2005
Source: Sarasota Herald-Tribune (FL)
Page: 11A
Copyright: 2005 Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Contact:  http://www.heraldtribune.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/398
Author: Neal Peirce, Washington Post Writers Group
Cited: Law Enforcement Against Prohibition http://leap.cc/
Cited: ReconsiDer http://www.reconsider.org
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Nicolas+Eyle (Nicolas Eyle)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/hr.htm (Harm Reduction)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)

Drug-Policy Reforms

WHAT LEGALIZATION COULD DELIVER

Can a single city do anything to change drug policies that are
delivering terror to our inner-city streets, diverting police,
clogging our courts, breaking up families, and making a once-proud
America quite literally the incarceration capital of the world?

It's tough because federal and state drug laws, passed by tragically
misguided "law- and-order" politicians, are highly intrusive. But
Syracuse, N.Y., with a detailed analysis of drug law impact by
outgoing City Auditor Minchin Lewis, followed up by recent City
Council hearings, is courageously asking tough questions and searching
for alternatives.

Lewis' audit, inspired by Syracuse drug reformer Nicolas Eyle, focused
on the Syracuse police department. It discovered that 22 percent of
the department's 28,800 arrests in a single year were for drug-related
incidents, more than arrests for assaults, disturbances and larcenies
combined. Close to 2,000 people were charged with possession or sale
of marijuana, a substance many claim is no more if not less dangerous
than alcohol.

Lewis found that drug arrests were focused in six poor, heavily black
inner-city neighborhoods. Police raids in search of evidence were
rendering housing units, many government-owned, uninhabitable, and
forcing many families to split up because of government rules evicting
drug users from public housing.

If Syracuse's drug raid and arrest policy is intended to reduce drug
use, the Lewis audit concluded, "it is not achieving its goal. The
drug activity is continuing with an ever-increasing spiral of violence."

It's true, Lewis concluded, that the city can't change federal or
state drug laws. But it can use its authority over police to reduce
the emphasis on drug-related arrests and focus on "harm reduction and
prevention efforts rather than absolute prohibition."

City Council member Stephanie Miner said she found citizens typically
unconcerned about people using drugs in the confines of their homes,
but deeply alarmed by the violence visited on their neighborhoods by
drug dealing on the street.

"The main effect of prohibition is to drive the market underground,"
Jeffrey Miron, a Boston University economist and drug-trade expert,
told the Syracuse council hearing in October. Like the alcohol trade
in the Roaring Twenties, he said, narcotics rendered illegal by
federal decree soar in price and have created an opportunity for
traffickers and dealers interested in getting a share of the
$65-billion-a-year nationwide market.

Jack Cole, the executive director of Law Enforcement Against
Prohibition who served 12 years as an undercover agent for the New
Jersey State Police, told the hearing: "There is such an obscene
profit motive that an army of police officers will never arrest our
way out of it. ... Every arrest is a job opening."

Eyle, head of Syracuse-based ReconsiDer, meets again with the City
Council this month to discuss such steps as a resolution asking the
federal and state governments to change drug policies that are merely
stimulating black-market activity, crime and violence. Instructions to
divert Syracuse's police to more important tasks, perhaps lowering the
priority of marijuana arrests in the city, will be considered.

"This is a unique opportunity to change the image of the city, from an
undistinguished Rust Belt city to a progressive community actively
working to improve itself," Eyle argues. But it's clear his long-term
goal is much broader: lifting drug prohibition altogether.

What would that mean? Eyle suggests European-style "harm reduction,"
recognizing that a segment of the population will always use illegal
drugs, so that government's role is to reduce the harm to the user and
society. A possible approach: decriminalizing personal possession of
drugs, leaving importation and manufacture and sale of significant
amounts illegal. There would also be voluntary treatment programs for
addicts.

What about total "legalization"? It's a good possibility, says Eyle,
if we revise, hand-in-hand, appropriate regulations. The parallels in
his argument are intriguing: "We currently regulate alcohol to ensure
its purity and to keep it out of the hands of children. We regulate
its points of distribution and hours of sale. We tax it. Do we still
have an alcohol problem? You bet. Can kids obtain alcohol?
Absolutely."

But, Eyle asks, do we have "a large market in every community selling
alcohol to minors? No. Are beer salesmen spraying bullets at each
other to settle arguments over shelf space in the supermarket? No."

Legalization, by this reasoning, is OK, and good for us all, if it can
successfully eliminate the gruesome waves of crime that surround
today's illegal drug market. The "how" could be complex: Does
government do the selling, or does the free market? Is advertising
permitted? How do rules differ for marijuana, cocaine, heroin?

But just think what legalization could deliver: radically reduced
incentive to crime, far safer streets and cities, fewer shattered
families, less-crowded and costly prisons breeding new criminals, more
racial equity. In a society that prizes freedom and innovation, I'd
call this an experiment we owe ourselves. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake