Pubdate: Fri, 24 Oct 2008
Source: DrugSense Weekly (DSW)
Section: Feature Article
Website: http://www.drugsense.org
Author: Eric Sterling
Note: Eric E.  Sterling, president of the non-profit Criminal Justice 
Policy Foundation in Silver Spring, MD, was counsel to the U.S. House 
Judiciary Committee, principally responsible for anti-drug 
legislation, from 1979 to 1989.  This piece first appeared at Huffington Post.

TAKE HANDCUFFS OFF THE ECONOMIC RECOVERY

A month ago, who would have thought that the Bush Administration 
would order the partial nationalization of the nation's banks to fix 
credit markets and support the economy? Maybe other innovative, even 
"radical," ideas are in order. Unless we come up with new ideas to 
sell cars and durable goods to fire up the economy, collapsing 
domestic auto sales threaten tens of thousands of jobs.

In addition, the recession will cause shrinking government revenue at 
every level.  Even last spring 18 states were predicting reduced 
budgets in FY 2009. Unless new revenues are found, we will soon see 
the furloughs and wholesale firing of teachers, nurses, and emergency 
first responders; closed schools, libraries and hospitals; crumbling 
roads unfixed; and broken bridges closed to traffic.

Cliches about the auto industry's problems blame workers' and 
retirees' health care costs and management for making the wrong kinds 
of cars.  But to sell cars we need to abandon cliches, old myths, and 
the blame game.

Consider these facts.  Last year we had 2.3 million Americans in 
prison and jail.  How many American cars did these men and women buy 
last year? That's right, none. That 2.3 million is about ten times 
greater than the 250,000 prisoners in America during the auto 
industry's glory days of the 1960s and 1970s. There are another 8 
million Americans who got a felony conviction for possessing or 
selling drugs in the last twenty years.  With their convictions, 
these people rarely have jobs.  They don't have a legal income and 
they don't have credit.

The economic effect of more than ten million American adults who 
can't buy cars, houses, furniture, appliances, or other durable goods 
is like 9-11, Katrina, and every other hurricane combined. Even with 
a job, many are without a credit card and are shut out of the 
marketplace.  From Ticketmaster to Amazon.com to the local shore 
store, American businesses are losing sales.  Economically, our 
criminal justice policies are cutting our throat.

Aside from the economic cost, is imprisonment of all of these 2.3 
million Americans good anti-crime policy? Not according to the 
research.  Effective crime fighting uses smart police strategies, 
adequate mental health care, good schools, recreation for youth, jobs 
and focused rehabilitation.  The criminological consensus is that 
imprisonment has been responsible for about one-quarter of the crime 
decline in the past 15 years.  Most of those in prison are there for 
non-violent offenses like drugs or theft, or because they violated 
probation by committing a "technical" violation like drinking or 
using drugs.  Most of those in prison are there much longer than they 
need to deter crime, to justly punish them, or to protect society 
from future crime.

We certainly need to imprison dangerous offenders - to protect us and 
to punish them.  But we need to get a lot smarter about why we 
imprison and who we imprison. Remarkably, in the last thirty years, 
the largest increase in imprisonment has been due to prohibition drug policy.

Even though drug enforcement leaders have warned for more than twenty 
years that "we can't arrest our way out of the drug problem," every 
year we arrest more people for drug offenses than the year 
before.  Last year we arrested over 1.8 million Americans, more than 
three times the number arrested for all violent crimes combined. Now 
about one-quarter of those in prison are serving drug sentences. As 
the centerpiece of our anti-drug strategy, arrests and imprisonment 
have failed: high school seniors report that drugs are easier for 
them to get now than in the 1970s and 1980s.

Scientists and drug treatment specialists - even police chiefs, 
judges and prosecutors - agree that drug addiction is a disease. But 
in almost every city it is hard for people to get good treatment for 
their addictions.  Waiting lists - often very long ones - to enter 
programs are the rule.  According to the White House, about 20 
million Americans need substance abuse treatment but don't get it. 
Why put drug addicts in prison for using drugs when what they need, 
and deserve, is good drug treatment? Why do we tolerate the police 
arresting drug addicts for using drugs? Isn't the definition of the 
disease of addiction that you can't stop using drugs? When you think 
about it, isn't it wrong to prosecute a person because of their disease?

But in fact, most drug users are not addicts, they are adult 
marijuana smokers. Why do we arrest them? To tell them that marijuana 
is harmful? To "send a message" to children that they should not use 
drugs or that drugs are dangerous? Isn't that the job of parents, 
schools, and public health authorities?

Drowning is the second-leading cause of unintentional injury-related 
death for children ages 1 to 14 years. The rate of drowning has 
declined, but we not because we jail swimmers, or swimming pool 
contractors and operators, to warn children about the hazards of 
swimming.  Of course, in most parts of the country the government 
hires life guards at beaches and pools to save swimmers in the face 
of the ever-present danger.

In fact, we don't arrest anyone to warn about most dangerous 
behaviors.  To teach the safer use of dangerous behaviors involving 
firearms, alcohol, tobacco, automobiles, motor cycles, private 
airplanes, or ski resorts, we use education, insurance, regulation 
and taxation to reduce injuries and save lives. With most activities, 
we recognize that doing dangerous things is not "wrongful" and does 
not deserve punishment. Why is arresting people a good way to send a 
message about health and public safety when it comes to drug use?

Almost everyone agrees that our "convict-the-users" anti-drug 
strategy is a costly failure. According to the government's studies 
of drug use attitudes and trends, millions of criminal convictions 
have had little to do with the decline in drug use.

Naturally, a compassionate society has "to do something" about drug 
abuse, but a century ago we got misled that drug abuse is a crime 
problem.  As we have seen repeatedly in our history, by adopting the 
prohibition approach we have made it more of a crime problem. Sadly, 
the idea that the danger in drug use is "bad" and "wrongful," and is 
therefore fundamentally different from the sometimes lethal dangers 
of skiing, sky diving, auto racing, hunting or many other activities 
remains a deeply embedded and very expensive myth. Can we justify why 
we punish drug users on any terms other than it is against the law? 
This law is unjustifiable and only survives on the myth that drug use 
is "bad" as opposed to risky.

It is now time to think about the opportunity cost of this myth. Even 
in the smallest town or county, drug arrests generate thousands of 
dollars in police overtime pay. In a big jurisdiction, it costs 
taxpayers hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to arrest drug 
users.  About one-third of the time of prosecutors, judges and court 
personnel is spent handling drug cases. Housing, guarding and feeding 
500,000 drug prisoners pays prison employees and contractors.  These 
folks benefit, but for the rest of us, these millions of drug cases 
mean unemployed workers and lost customers that bleeds our jobs out 
of the economy.

Police need to focus on violent offenders, child molesters, DUI 
cases, and the white collar frauds who steal millions. Prison needs 
to be reserved for the dangerous.

Non-violent drug offenders need to be let out of prison. Those who 
are addicted need treatment, which is much less expensive than 
prison.  Their drug-related criminal records need to be sealed so 
they can get jobs.  Thieves and burglars who are drug addicts need 
abstinence-based supervision to prevent re-offending.

Seventy-five years ago, on Dec. 5, 1933, in the depths of the Great 
Depression, we amended the Constitution to abandon alcohol 
prohibition to generate jobs and to tax alcohol to fund the 
government. It's time to end the marijuana prohibition. 
Non-commercial, home growing of marijuana should be regulated like 
hunting.  Hunters are killed accidentally every year, including 
minors, but licences are easily obtained, not terribly expensive, and 
largely self-enforcing. Non-commercial marijuana growing license 
ought to be sold at garden centers, with prohibitions on commercial 
sale and distribution to minors.  Commercial marijuana growing and 
selling should be licensed and taxed like alcohol, with its panoply 
of local regulatory varieties, and evolving cultural controls.

In 2005, federal, state and local taxes collected on tobacco and 
alcohol totaled $35.1 billion.  America's 20 million marijuana 
smokers paid no taxes on their marijuana. Depending on rates, $5 to 
$15 billion could be raised from marijuana taxes. America's illegal 
marijuana sellers are the beneficiaries of both a government subsidy 
(no taxes) and a government price support mechanism. That's absurd! 
We need to tax the underground marijuana commerce. As we study state 
and local budgets that will fire teachers, police and firefighters, 
reduce care to the ill, the blind, and the handicapped, and shutter 
hospitals, recreation centers and schools, we can ask if we want to 
keep throwing away the potential marijuana taxes.

One way we could sell a million American cars is to get drug users 
out of prison, freed of their crippling criminal records, and back 
into the economy.

How hard are these choices: Lay off school teachers or stop 
subsidizing the illegal marijuana business with a billions of dollars 
in tax breaks? Lay off workers and close factories or let non-violent 
offenders out of prison and provide treatment to drug addicts?
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