Pubdate: Sat, 04 Jun 2005
Source: Norwich Bulletin (CT)
Copyright: 2005 Norwich Bulletin
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Website: http://www.norwichbulletin.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2206
Author: Chris Powell
Note: Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester.

'WAR ON DRUGS' NOT MEANT TO BE WON

With remarks to a civic group in Enfield recently, Superior Court Judge 
Howard Scheinblum engaged in what is seldom forgiven in Connecticut's 
public life: candor.

The judge asserted what can neither be denied nor acknowledged -- that 
public policy on drugs doesn't work. Speaking from his 15 years of 
experience on the bench, Scheinblum estimated 90 percent of criminal cases 
in Connecticut are connected in some way to the pursuit of illegal drugs, 
and he asserted that society would be far better off to let users of such 
drugs obtain them by prescription and to be charged for them according to 
their ability to pay.

That is, the judge said, drugs are not the problem, not the cause of 
thievery, robbery, and violence; drug prohibitionis.

If now-illegal drugs were available to addicts by prescription, many 
addicts would waste their lives away, but at least they wouldn't be robbing 
and killing others for money for drugs, and drug dealers would not be 
killing others over drug sales territory. Most violent crime would disappear.

Sensible as this might seem -- after all, despite drug criminalization, 
illegal drugs are more prevalent than ever; the legal drugs, alcohol and 
tobacco, claim so many more lives than illegal drugs; and who really cares 
how people waste their lives as long as they don't hurt others?-- the judge 
said any departure from futile drug policy would be blocked by "vested 
interests." For if drug prohibition crime ended, the judge said, 
Connecticut wouldn't need as many police, courts, prisons, drug programs 
and so forth.

Judge Scheinblum's analysis only seems cynical, but it has been borne out 
by the political action of Connecticut's prison guards union against the 
transfer of inmates to prisons out of state where costs of imprisonment are 
lower. The families of prisoners have protested as well, but the union 
didn't care about prisoner welfare; it cared about losing business.

The judge's analysis also has been borne out by state government's refusal 
to audit drug-criminalization policy. The policy's failure is obvious, but 
politicians are paralyzed by fear of the policy's financial beneficiaries 
and the fear of asking the public to challenge old but faulty assumptions.

As with many other policies in Connecticut that are never evaluated for 
results, the "war on drugs" is not meant to be won; it is meant to be 
waged. Even its racially disproportionate casualties are not enough to 
prompt politicians to engage in candor like Judge Scheinblum's. Indeed, 
Connecticut's politicians are happy to put half the state's young men of 
color in prison if the other half can be hired to guard them. 
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