Pubdate: Mon, 31 Mar 2014
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 2014 The Washington Post Company
Contact: http://mapinc.org/url/mUgeOPdZ
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/491
Author: Jerry Markon

IN DRUG POLICY, A TURN FOR THE PRAGMATIC

'Samaritan' Laws Join Changes on Pot, Prison

Someone was with Salvatore Marchese when he died of a heroin 
overdose, but no one called 911.

So his mother, Patty DiRenzo, a legal aide, began a quest to help 
make sure that others wouldn't be afraid to make that call. She 
created a Facebook page, wrote New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie nearly 
every day and called all 120 members of the state legislature.

The grieving mother accomplished what would have been inconceivable a 
few short years ago, much less back when the nation launched its war 
on drugs: She helped pass a bill, signed by a Republican governor, 
that lets people get away with using drugs for the sake of saving lives.

The state's new "good Samaritan" law, which immunizes from 
prosecution people who call 911 to report an overdose even if they 
are using drugs themselves, is part of an emerging shift in the 
country's approach to illegal drugs.

Four decades after the federal government declared war on narcotics, 
the prevailing tough-on-drugs mentality is giving way to a more 
nuanced view, one that emphasizes treatment and health nearly as much 
as courtrooms and law enforcement, according to addiction specialists 
and other experts.

The changes are both rhetorical and substantive, reflecting fiscal 
problems caused in part by prisons bulging with drug offenders and a 
shifting social ethos that views some drug use as less harmful than 
in the past. States are driving the trend. At least 30 have modified 
drug-crime penalties since 2009, often repealing or reducing tough 
mandatory minimum sentences for lower-level offenses, according to 
the Pew Charitable Trusts, which works with states and tracks the legislation.

One-third of the states now have a good-Samaritan law, with the 
majority enacted since 2012.

That is the same year that Colorado and Washington became the first 
states to legalize recreational use of marijuana. "There is certainly 
more momentum than ever before," said Mason Tvert, spokesman for the 
Marijuana Policy Project, an advocacy group that projects that a 
dozen or more states are likely to legalize the drug within several years.

Change is also afoot at the federal level, where FBI data show drug 
arrests are down 18 percent since 2006, and the Obama administration 
tries to avoid the phrase "war on drugs." The Justice Department is 
strongly supporting changes being considered by the U.S. Sentencing 
Commission that would reduce sentences for most drug offenders, and 
the Senate Judiciary Committee recently passed a bipartisan bill that 
would cut them in half for some drug crimes.

No one is suggesting that the fight against drugs is over. Federal 
agents are still battling traffickers on the southwestern border, and 
the administration has taken aggressive steps against abuse of 
prescription drugs and other illicit substances. Polls show that even 
as a majority of Americans now favor legalizing marijuana, 
overwhelming numbers still oppose that step for cocaine and heroin.

And while many of the drug law changes have drawn bipartisan support, 
some prosecutors are opposing Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.'s 
efforts to eliminate mandatory minimum prison sentences for 
nonviolent drug offenders. The marijuana legalization campaign has 
also faced resistance from former Drug Enforcement Administration 
leaders and other critics.

But after a generation of antidrug messages symbolized by the "Just 
Say No" campaign of the 1980s and enforcement accompanied by martial 
metaphors, experts say a broad consensus is emerging around a crucial 
distinction. Under the new paradigm, they said, traffickers engaged 
in the business of drugs will still face long prison terms, while 
lower-level users will increasingly be viewed as addicts with a 
treatable illness.

"States in particular are starting to make much bigger distinctions 
between personal use and commercial activity," said Adam Gelb, 
director of Pew's Public Safety Performance Project, who pointed out 
that some states have recently toughened penalties for large-scale 
drug sales while relaxing them for drug possession.

Douglas Berman, a law professor at Ohio State University and an 
expert on criminal sentencing, called the new landscape a strategic 
shift rather than a "retreat" from the anti-drug war. "We are 
retrenching," he said, "and coming to the view that if we deploy our 
forces more effectively, that will allow us to win this war and take 
a healthier approach."

Era of tough enforcement

It was June 1971 when President Richard M. Nixon sent a special 
message to Congress and targeted drugs as America's "public enemy number one."

"If we cannot destroy the drug menace in America, then it will surely 
in time destroy us," Nixon said in the message as he called drug 
abuse "a national emergency" and established a White House office to attack it.

It was the start of what came to be known as the war on drugs, which 
emerged as a reaction to fear of crime and the perceived excesses of 
the 1960s. The crackdown escalated in the 1980s under President 
Ronald Reagan as Congress, with bipartisan support, established tough 
mandatory minimum sentences for marijuana and other drugs.

With aggressive enforcement, the number of people jailed nationwide 
for drug offenses exploded from 41,000 in 1980 to 499,000 in 2011, 
according to the Sentencing Project, a think tank that advocates 
criminal-justice changes.

The first stirrings of reform came in a few states in the 1990s, and 
concern grew nationwide about perceived racial disparities in 
enforcement of drug laws.

It was the financial crisis that spiked in 2008, however, that 
accelerated the change, as cashstrapped states tried to reduce prison 
populations in part by modifying drug laws. Fiscal worries helped 
bring support from conservatives, a key development since Republicans 
had long pilloried Democrats as soft on crime.

In a seminal moment, Congress in 2010 passed a law reducing 
disparities in sentencing practices, which were punishing 
crack-cocaine offenses far more severely than those involving powder 
cocaine. The measure also repealed a mandatory minimum sentence - for 
crack possession - for the first time since the Nixon years.

But states and localities have led the way, including in the 
development of good-Samaritan laws. They have emerged, with strong 
bipartisan support, as a reaction to the prescription drugs epidemic, 
along with the surge in heroin use. Advocates say some people 
overdose and die because witnesses, who may be sharing in the drugs, 
are afraid to seek emergency medical assistance.

The laws generally provide limited immunity from prosecution, usually 
for drug possession or other lower-level charges, for witnesses who 
call 911 and for the overdose victims. More serious charges such as 
drug trafficking are generally not covered. The laws are now on the 
books in 17 states plus the District, according to the Trust for 
America's Health, a public health advocacy group.

Much of the impetus has been provided by parents of overdose victims, 
often from suburban areas seeing more drug use who form support 
groups and use the Internet to honor their loved ones. Among them was 
DiRenzo, of Blackwood, N. J., a middle-class community outside Philadelphia.

Her son, Marchese, 26, had struggled with drug addiction since age 
16. In September 2010, police pounded on DiRenzo's door at 2 a.m. 
Marchese had been found behind the wheel of a parked car at an 
apartment complex in Camden, N. J., dead of a heroin overdose. Police 
told his mother that someone had been with him.

"No one called 911. No one tried to save him," said DiRenzo, who 
learned months later of the state's proposed good-Samaritan law and 
began her lobbying campaign. "I thought that if I could save other 
lives because of what happened to my son, then I'm on board."

DiRenzo was "relentless, in a good way," said state Sen. Joe Vitale 
(D), a prime sponsor of the measure, signed in 2013. "This wasn't 
some high-paid lobbyist telling us what he was told to say. This was 
real life, real experience, unfiltered, and it made a difference."

The treatment option

A year after New Mexico in 2007 passed the nation's first 
good-Samaritan law focused on drugs, Ian Goodhew looked out the 
window of the Seattle courthouse where he had been sending drug 
offenders to jail for years. He could see new dealers and buyers 
taking their place on street corners just outside.

"Our prosecutions and policing weren't making a bit of difference," 
said Goodhew, deputy chief of staff for the King County prosecuting 
attorney's office.

So Goodhew teamed up with a police official and defense lawyer to 
develop a novel pilot program. In part of the city, when police 
arrest someone with a nonviolent past for buying or selling small 
amounts of drugs, they now have the option of immediately sending the 
arrestee into drug treatment - and not pursuing the case.

"It's the vanguard, a sea change in how law enforcement thinks about 
drug laws," Goodhew said of the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion 
program, which started in one neighborhood in 2011 and is about to 
expand to others. "This is treating the issue of lowlevel drug sales 
and use as a public health problem."

The program, which has also been adopted by Santa Fe, N.M., is 
considered among the most innovative of a variety of state and local 
changes to drug laws and policies that de-emphasize enforcement or 
combine it with more treatment. Among them is a Hawaii program that 
swiftly punishes drug offenders for probation violations and has been 
shown to reduce recidivism, along with the rapid growth of drug 
courts - special courts that emphasize treatment over incarceration. 
Drug courts started in 1989, and there are now nearly 3,000 nationwide.

Much as the focus on treatment would have been difficult to imagine 
several decades ago, so would the growing success of marijuana 
legalization. The use of medical marijuana, first approved in 
California in 1996, has spread to 20 states plus the District. And 
the historic ballot initiatives that led to recreational use in 
Colorado and Washington is prompting activists to push for similar 
initiatives in at least six other states.

Alaska has agreed to put legalization on the ballot in August.

But the effort is not without obstacles: A number of groups opposing 
marijuana legalization have sprung up.

"The pro-drug movement has the momentum so far because they have the 
money and have been able to confuse people about the damage that 
marijuana really causes," said David Evans, special adviser to Save 
Our Society From Drugs. "This is not 'Woodstock weed' anymore. It's 
very potent, very addictive and highly toxic," said Evans, who vows 
that the battle will be joined even more in the months ahead.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom