Pubdate: 11 Aug 1999 Source: New Haven Advocate (CT) Copyright: 1999 New Mass Media, Inc. Contact: http://www.newhavenadvocate.com/ Author: David Horowitz Note: This piece appears as a sidebar to "Who Runs This Joint?", same edition http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99.n829.a05.html FULL-COURT PRESS A New Haven Lawyer Finds A New Tool For Drug Reform: The Constitution. For years, drug reformers have lobbied, protested and published to sway policy makers. Graham Boyd recently enlisted with a simpler yet perhaps fiercer blade: the U.S. Constitution. In a movement that has historically pursued policy reform, Boyd -- a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School who lives in New Haven -- has just become the nation's first full-time litigator in the service of drug policy reform.He represents a promising new strategy for the movement. Boyd is the first attorney of the Drug Policy Litigation Project, an inchoate branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, which Boyd himself helped create last year. He has already won a preliminary ruling in a First Amendment suit against U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno and federal drug czar Barry McCaffrey involving doctor recommendation of marijuana. A voting rights suit against the District of Columbia, also a medical marijuana case, is pending in federal court. Boyd also wants to challenge universal drug testing for public school students, government employees and welfare recipients as an invasion of privacy. The ACLU's turn to the courts seems reminiscent of the early black civil rights movement. In hiring Boyd, ACLU President Ira Glasser told him "to identify the aspects of the War on Drugs that are both legally vulnerable and widely objectionable to ordinary people, and to attack those things in a way which will point out the worst injustices of the drug war" -- just as NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall did with Jim Crow laws, Boyd says. Marshall won a string of important court decisions in the late 1940s and early 1950s, culminating in the historic Brown vs. Board of Education school desegregation case in 1954. "My job is to monitor and then confront the excesses of the War on Drugs. It doesn't matter if it's marijuana or heroin if the government wants to violate your rights," Boyd says. He stresses that he is not a criminal lawyer for drug offenders. But by litigating cases that penetrate the core of unjust drug policy, he may ultimately help more people. "I want to affect legal precedent for the future," Boyd says. "I want to have a broad impact." ~~~~~ What is interesting about Boyd is that he was a civil rights lawyer first, his commitment to civil liberties later drawing him to drug reform advocacy. He spent time abroad working for environmental justice and spent several years as a civil rights lawyer in San Francisco before he found his way to drug reform in late 1996. That November, California voters approved Proposition 215, which eliminated criminal penalties for doctors recommending and patients using marijuana in treating serious diseases. Reno and McCaffrey, among other members of the Clinton administration, lashed back. They publicly announced that though patients who use marijuana may be safe from stateprosecution, the federal government would prosecute doctors -- and revoke their licenses -- on the basis of federal law. A drug reform advocacy group, the Lindesmith Center, hired Boyd to file suit. In the suit, Pearson v. McCaffrey,Boyd argued that the administration's threat infringed on the doctors' First Amendment rights and violated federalism, the balance of states' rights with the authority of the central government. "This case got me thinking about the connection between the War on Drugs and issues of racial and economic justice, which is my [main legal] interest," says Boyd. He came to view current drug policy as "the modern version of Jim Crow," denying people welfare benefits, tax credits for higher education and voting rights. "It's how our society takes away freedom, the right to vote, housing, education, jobs and children." And the penalties fall disproportionately on underprivileged minorities. Through the California case, Boyd linked up with the ACLU, which also represented the plaintiffs in that case. The civil liberties union assigned him a second case, in which the ACLU accuses U.S. Rep. Robert Barr of violating the rights of District of Columbia voters. In November 1998, D.C. ran a ballot initiative similar to California's Proposition 215. It would have passed with 70 percent of the vote, according to exit polls, had Barr not intervened. The Georgia Republican sponsored an amendment to the D.C. spending bill, outlawing federal funding for any initiative that would "legalize or otherwise reduce penalties" for marijuana users. He couldn't pass the bill early enough to cancel the vote altogether, but managed it in time to freeze the vote tallying. The U.S. District Court has yet to rule, but Glasser of the ACLU thought the trial run successful enough to hire Boyd permanently, with the possibility of adding a second attorney and paralegal in the future. ~~~~~ Graham Boyd isn't merely a hired suit. (He doesn't even wear one to work.) Since his arrival in the drug reform movement -- and back in New Haven -- he has also become a mover at the grassroots level. In March 1998 Boyd founded the Connecticut Drug Policy Leadership Council, a body of 75 high-profile doctors, lawyers, community leaders and government officials - -- including New Haven Mayor John DeStefano and former Police Chief Nick Pastore. Boyd also joined the Connecticut Harm Reduction Coalition and is "very involved" with A Better Way, both drug education and policy organizations. The Leadership Council has already successfully lobbied the state to increase funding for needle exchange programs and reduce the minimum sentence for non-violent drug offenders, previously on par with violent offenders, says New Haven Alderman Jelani Lawson, who assumed leadership of the council from Boyd last winter. Boyd stays active at the grassroots level, acknowledging that the courts are only one front in a complex war. "I think the role of a lawyer in a political movement is one of support," he says. "I don't think litigation is ever going to become the engine that drives the movement." Boyd favors a multi-pronged approach to any reform movement. He takes exception to the claim that many drug reform advocacy groups with different approaches suggests weakness. You have to chip away at the War on Drugs any way you can, he says, because "you never know which one is going to work." - --- MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart