Pubdate: Sun, 17 Apr 2005
Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)
Copyright: 2005 Chicago Tribune Company
Contact:  http://www.chicagotribune.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/82
Author: Steve Chapman

A KINDER, GENTLER, CHEAPER WAY OF DEALING WITH DRUG OFFENDERS

For some time, critics have been saying that the war hasn't been going
well, has forced us to overextend ourselves and is gobbling up far too
many tax dollars. But many of them were skeptical about this effort
from the start. The surprise is that President Bush now seems to be
moving their way on the war.

Not the war in Iraq--the war on drugs.

Early on, the Bush administration took a consistently hard line
against recreational substances and those who use them--vigorously
opposing state medical marijuana initiatives, objecting when Canada
considered decriminalizing marijuana and accusing potheads of
subsidizing terrorism. But lately, it has changed its tone.

In a House committee hearing in February, Bush drug czar John Walters
stressed the need to focus on major drug traffickers instead of
individual users. He lamented the consequences of "taking generation
after generation of young men, especially poor, minority young men in
our cities, and putting them in jail. And I think citizens rightly
say, `Can't we stop this?'"

Republicans have not exactly gotten soft-hearted toward heroin
addicts. But they have begun to grasp the conflict between fighting
the same old drug war and getting control of federal spending. In
fact, the president's budget for next year proposes to cut about $1
billion out of various federal anti-drug programs, including measures
that fund law-enforcement efforts. Groups like the American
Conservative Union, Citizens Against Government Waste, Americans for
Tax Reform and the National Taxpayers Union have endorsed the cuts.

The president is coming to grips with something that many states have
had to face in recent years: The drug war, as it has been fought up to
now, costs too much and accomplishes too little. Several states,
caught in a budget vise, have backed away from mass lockups in favor
of kinder, gentler and cheaper options.

The biggest shift came in California in 2000, when voters approved
Proposition 36, which mandated that non-violent, low-level drug
offenders get probation and treatment instead of incarceration. Since
then, up to 100,000 offenders have been diverted from prison, and the
state's savings are estimated at $1.5 billion over five years.

"Proposition 36 is the single biggest piece of sentencing reform in
the United States since the repeal of Prohibition," says Ethan
Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. Last year,
the Maryland General Assembly embraced the same reform.

Bush may not pay much attention to what goes on in blue states like
those, but red states like Arizona and Kansas have followed suit. And
the president can hardly fail to notice when the trend spreads to his
home ground.

Between 1991 and 1996, Texas tripled the size of its prison system to
make room for all the criminals it wanted to lock away. But two years
ago, a state budget crisis forced the legislature to reconsider.

At that point, state Rep. Ray Allen, a conservative Republican and
chairman of the House Corrections Committee, says he discovered that
Texas prisons had some 4,000 inmates charged with minor drug felonies.
Considering the state was spending $2 a day to supervise people on
probation, compared with $40 a day to keep them in prison, he
introduced a bill mandating probation and treatment for first-time
offenders caught with small amounts of illicit substances.

"I thought we'd catch hell for it," he said in a phone interview the
other day. But one former prosecutor in the House, also a Republican,
said, "I've sent 1,000 people to prison for these types of offenses,
and I don't feel too good about it." To Allen's surprise, the bill
passed both houses without dissent and was signed by Republican Gov.
Rick Perry.

"What broke the logjam," says Allen, "was when Republicans who had
been tough on crime looked at the fiscal impact and saw that policies
that felt good were fiscally unsustainable." By diverting some drug
offenders from prison, he says, Texas has saved $51 million, and the
savings will grow.

He doesn't see the shift as going soft on crime by any means--just the
opposite. Considering the 4,000 prison beds that were then occupied by
minor drug offenders, Allen explains, "we as a legislature decided we
wanted rapists, robbers and murderers to occupy those beds."

When governments are awash in money, as many were in the 1990s, they
don't have to choose between policies that are wasteful and those that
are worth their cost. But those days are gone, which means the drug
war's days may be numbered.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin