Pubdate: Mon, 09 Sep 2013
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2013 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: George Skelton

LEGISLATURE COOLS ON DRUG WAR

A Bill Would Give Prosecutors Flexibility on Low-Level Offenses

If you get busted using methamphetamine, the D.A. can charge you with 
a misdemeanor or a felony. His choice. But if you're caught with 
cocaine or heroin, there's no option. It's a felony.

If there's logic in that, it escapes me. They're all addictive and 
destructive to mind and body.

Get high on one hard drug and you might receive a 
get-out-of-jail-free card. But another earns you a lifetime bad-guy tag.

The Legislature, as it rushes toward adjournment of its annual 
session Friday, is moving to correct that puzzling contradiction.

It is retreating a bit from the decades-long war on drugs.

"The war on drugs is a colossal failure," says Assemblyman Tim 
Donnelly (R-Twin Peaks).

Yes, that Tim Donnelly, arguably California's most conservative state 
lawmaker, a self-proclaimed tea party Republican and onetime 
Minuteman vigilante who patrolled the border searching for Mexicans 
entering the U.S. illegally.

Donnelly last week cast a crucial vote that secured Assembly passage 
of a drug-sentencing bill by liberal Sen. Mark Leno (D-San 
Francisco). The measure now awaits Senate approval of Assembly 
amendments, then will be sent to Gov. Jerry Brown. No telling his view.

The bill, SB 649, would provide prosecutors the flexibility to treat 
all low-level drug possession offenses as either a misdemeanor or a 
felony - what's known as a "wobbler."

"We give nonviolent drug offenders long terms, offer them no 
treatment while they're incarcerated and then release them back into 
the community with few job prospects or options to receive an 
education," Leno says.

His bill, he continues, would allow local governments to reduce 
lockup costs and spend their money on drug rehabilitation, mental 
health services and probation, "reserving limited jail space for 
serious criminals."

Simple possession for personal use of meth already is a wobbler. This 
bill would add other hard drugs such as crack cocaine, powder cocaine 
and heroin.

It wouldn't affect sellers or manufacturers of hard drugs. Those 
crimes would remain felonies.

And users who steal or rob to finance their habits still would face felonies.

If it were left to him, Leno would make all drug possession offenses 
a misdemeanor. Thirteen other states have done that, varying widely 
from New York and Massachusetts to Wyoming and Mississippi.

"On average," the senator says, "reducing penalties to misdemeanors 
has resulted in lower drug use, higher rates of drug treatment 
participation and even less property and violent crime."

Leno sponsored a misdemeanor-only bill last year, and it failed 
miserably on the Senate floor.

Some liberals would legalize all drug use. That would be foolish. 
People - especially kids - should not be able to just walk into a 
Safeway and get blotto. Alcohol is bad enough. These are not 
"victimless" crimes. They destroy families.

It's important to remember that Leno is not proposing legalization, 
or even treating hard drugs like marijuana. Smoking pot in 
California, at worst, is considered an infraction, like a traffic 
ticket. No one gets jailed these days for toking weed.

Not many are even locked up in state prison solely for possessing 
hard drugs - only 827 out of 133,000 total inmates, according to the 
state corrections department. All were sentenced before Brown's 2011 
"realignment" that shifted incarceration of most low-level offenders 
to local jails.

Drug users now are sent to state prison only if they've previously 
been convicted of a serious or violent crime.

But Leno's bill could help relieve local jail crowding. Someone can 
be sentenced for up to three years for felony drug possession. But 
he'd serve only a year, at most, for a misdemeanor and probably be 
ordered into drug treatment upon release. Or perhaps he'd only be 
sentenced to treatment and probation, with no jail time.

Felons are branded for life. They can't obtain a college grant and 
are lucky to find a minimum wage job. If only convicted of a 
misdemeanor, however, they've got a much better chance of 
assimilating into the productive workforce.

"I'm deeply conflicted," Donnelly told the Assembly. "I know that's 
probably a shock to many of you."

The San Bernardino County lawmaker recalled leading Bible study and 
teaching life skills in a prison fire camp, indicating he was 
impressed by many inmates. "Do we want to fill our [cells] with 
people who really need to go and get serious treatment?" he asked.

Donnelly announced that he would abstain from voting, then changed 
his mind when the bill fell short of the simple majority needed for passage.

But before voting, the conservative told me, he consulted with an 
ACLU lobbyist - certainly a first.

The bill passed with no votes to spare, 41 to 31. Seven Democrats 
opposed it. One other Republican supported the measure, freshman 
Assemblyman Rocky Chavez of Oceanside.

The GOP consensus was articulated by Assemblyman Donald P. Wagner 
(R-Irvine). The bill "minimizes the consequences of addictive 
behavior," he said. "We need to maintain strong laws."

But outside Sacramento, conservatives are changing their tune on this issue.

A group called Right on Crime, a Texas-based think tank, recently 
declared that "it makes sense to use shorter terms and provide 
meaningful treatment" for low-level drug possession offenders.

"Nearly all of us know someone who has struggled with addiction" but 
has no other criminal record, the group said. "And it would be 
difficult to imagine that individual ... being incarcerated next to 
violent criminals."

The group's website includes supportive quotes from Texas Gov. Rick 
Perry, former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, anti-tax crusader 
Grover Norquist and former U.S. Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese, a onetime 
California prosecutor.

Leno's bill provides two new weapons in the war on drugs: compassion 
and common sense.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom