It is time for us to be realistic and manage the trade and usage of marijuana instead of simply moralizing about it. The honest facts are that today marijuana is the largest cash crop in California (No. 2 is grapes); with illegal dealers there are no controls whatsoever on quality, quantity, age restrictions, price or place of sale; and most of the big money goes to groups like the Mexican drug cartels, juvenile gangs and other thugs, and they don't pay taxes on any of it.
It is also a fact that the voters are ahead of the politicians on these issues. Yes, most of the vocal politicians and current law enforcement officials have taken a position against Proposition 19, but many retired law enforcement officials, who are much less subject to political considerations, are speaking out in its support.
For example, I belong to Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (http://www.CopsSayLegalizeDrugs.com). My fellow members are people like former Los Angeles Police Department Chief Deputy Steve Downing, former San Jose Police Chief Joe McNamara, former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper, and thousands of other former narcotics officers, prison guards, prosecutors and others, all of whom are stating the obvious that our nation's policy of marijuana prohibition is not working.
Holland's and Portugal's experience will shed light on what will happen when Proposition 19 passes. Holland decriminalized marijuana possession and use for those 16 and older in the early 1970s, and several years ago, the minister of health was quoted as saying that they have only half the marijuana usage, per capita, as we do in our country — both for adults and teenagers! "We have succeeded in making pot boring," he said.
Of course, our country glamorizes marijuana by making it illegal, and also by having such obscene profit motives in getting others to sell it to you, your neighbors and your children. And you will also note that today young adults are not selling Jim Beam bourbon or Marlboro cigarettes to each other on their high school campuses. But they are selling marijuana to each other all the time.
Proposition 19 will reduce those problems, just like it did in Portugal when they decriminalized all drugs in 2001. What were the results? The CATO Institute found that even though the drugs were legal in Portugal, usage of them did not increase. In fact it actually went down about half a percentage point. And problem drug usage was reduced by half! Why? The problem users were no longer afraid of their own government because now if they came forward, they would receive drug treatment instead of being punished.
Those findings make the alarmists in our country who say we would become a "nation of marijuana zombies" look pretty silly. In fact just ask yourself, if Proposition 19 were to pass, would you use marijuana? From my standpoint, you could give it away on street corners and bless it by every religious leader in town, and I am still not going to use marijuana (unless my medical doctor recommends it to me for some illness or disease). And most everyone else feels the same way. In fact as a practical matter, anyone who would use marijuana if Proposition 19 were to pass is probably using it already!
What do the other opponents of Proposition 19 say? Some say that we would still have an illicit market for selling marijuana to young adults if Proposition 19 were to pass, and that would be true. But when alcohol prohibition was repealed, it was no longer moonshine alcohol that was being sold to minors by people like Al Capone, it was alcohol that was mostly bought legally and then illegally transferred. The same would be true with marijuana. So that would still undercut the illegal dealers.
There are basically three other groups of opponents. The first is people who say that the cities would not be able to handle the administrative responsibilities of setting up programs for the sale of marijuana, the second is some employers who are concerned that marijuana users would be able to run rampant over the workplace, and the third is some of those who make money at medical marijuana dispensaries.
Regarding the cities not being able to set up their own systems, that really is a non-issue — they do it all of the time. And besides, one of the beauties of Proposition 19 is that it will still be illegal to sell marijuana within a city's borders (except under Proposition 215 for medical marijuana) unless that particular city expressly opts into the program. In reality what will happen is that the cities will learn from each other. So if one city tries something that is successful, others will tend to use that system, and the opposite is also true.
As to the workplace issues, Proposition 19 expressly states that it would not affect any of the current regulations of the workplace. Employers still can require drug testing as a condition of being hired, and still, just like alcohol, can test employees if they have some cause to believe the employees are impaired in the workplace.
Finally, it is true that people supplying marijuana within Proposition 19 will probably be more organized. That will very likely reduce the price of the marijuana, even after the payment of applicable taxes, which will, in turn, take the market away from both illegal sellers and also some of the medical marijuana dispensaries. That is an understandable reason for people presently operating dispensaries, but it is not a reason for the rest of us to oppose Proposition 19.
On Nov. 2 you can help us repeal the failed policy of marijuana prohibition, and bring our state's largest cash crop back under the law. This is probably one of the most important elections of my lifetime, and I hope you will further look into and support Proposition 19.
JAMES P. GRAY is a retired judge of the Orange County Superior Court, the author of "Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed" (Temple University Press), and can be contacted at JimPGray@sbcglobal.net or http://www.JudgeJimGray.com.
Showing posts with label drug prohibition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label drug prohibition. Show all posts
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Forest fires: another harm of prohibition - by Judge Jim Gray
For the past 17 years, I have, as a sitting judge, been trying to call everyone’s attention to the failures of our nation’s policy of drug prohibition. In fact, the truth is that we are “taking it on the chin” in every way imaginable, such that we literally couldn’t pursue a worse policy if we tried. But even I was not aware of the additional harm that is being caused by this failed and hopeless policy, as represented by the huge forest fire that has been burning east of Santa Maria in Santa Barbara County.
Newspapers report that authorities believe this La Brea fire, which has burned about 90,000 acres, was started by growers of illegal marijuana at a hidden farm in the Los Padres National Forest. The trigger for the fire was a propane-fed outdoor camp stove.
How was this fire caused by our policy of drug prohibition? Well, obviously, fires like this do not occur where companies like Phillip Morris or Ligget and Myers are growing tobacco. First of all, these companies aren’t forced to grow their crops in remote and desolate regions, and secondly, they are much more careful in what they do, because if by chance they do start a fire, they are held responsible for the damage.
On the contrary, illegal growers are forced out into remote areas, and usually onto public lands, because if their operations are discovered, the land can’t be forfeited. In fact, this particular camp is in a steep, overgrown canyon more than a mile from the nearest road. The workers unlawfully diverted streams to use for irrigation, polluted the ground with stacks of propane tanks and melted irrigation tubing, empty fertilizer canisters and large mounds of trash. Of course, even if there hadn’t been a fire, the workers never would have removed any of these items because, being an illegal operation, they are not held responsible for any of the damage they cause.
Once authorities located the camp, they found about 30,000 top-grade marijuana plants that ranged from two to six feet in height.
The workers had gone to the trouble of building terraces for the marijuana plants and installing a drip irrigation system, and probably would have been camping in the area for about four to five months to allow the plants to mature enough for harvesting. But with a street value in the millions of dollars for the marijuana, all of their efforts and inconveniences would have been well compensated.
Authorities also reported that so far this year, they have seized about 225,000 marijuana plants from six different sites in the area, including this one, with a street price of about $675 million.
They further stated that all of the workers they had found so far had been illegal immigrants from Mexico, but that really is a false issue. Why? Because, as any economist will tell you, if the demand for marijuana is here, and there is that much money to be made, someone will supply it. And if it is not illegal Mexican immigrants, it will be people like your next-door neighbor.
Marijuana has been illegal in this country since 1933, yet it is still fully available to anyone who wants it. And that includes our children, who report that it is easier for them to get marijuana than it is alcohol. And if you don’t believe me, ask them yourself.
Today, no one offers a free sample of Jim Beam bourbon or Budweiser beer on a high school campus. Why? Because if they were to get even close to doing that, they would be in a world of trouble. But illegal dealers offer free samples of marijuana and other illicit drugs to students on their campuses every day. Why does this happen? Because, just like with the La Brea fire situation, as soon as we prohibit a substance, we give up all of our ability to regulate or control it. That means that we concede all of the controls about quality, age restrictions, places of sale, price and everything else to the illegal dealers. And they are the ones who want to glamorize the use of all of these drugs and get our children hooked — so they can make more money off them. That is really stupid of us.
There is now pending in Sacramento Assembly Bill 390, which is being sponsored by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano from San Francisco. This measure would treat marijuana like alcohol in California, with the proviso that it would only go into effect 30 days after the federal law would be changed to allow this to occur legally. AB 390 would regulate and control the sale of marijuana for adults — and then tax it! That act alone would, according to the chair of the State Board of Equalization, bring in additional tax revenue to California of about $1.3 billion each year.
Today, marijuana is already the largest cash crop in the state, the seizures of those 225,000 marijuana plants this year notwithstanding, so this measure certainly will not make it more available than it is now.
But passing AB 390 will raise additional revenue for the state, while at the same time reducing the gross revenues of Mexican drug cartels by taking away their market.
And it will also reduce violence and corruption in this country, and, most importantly, make marijuana less available for children than it is today.
So what’s not to like? Accordingly, please call anyone you can vote for in Sacramento and urge them to vote for AB 390. This situation is far too dangerous to leave up to illegal growers and sellers.
JAMES P. GRAY is a retired judge of the Orange County Superior Court, the author of Wearing the Robe – the Art and Responsibilities of Judging in Today’s Courts (Square One Press, 2008), and can be contacted at jimpgray@sbcglobal.net or via his website at www.judgejimgray.com .
Newspapers report that authorities believe this La Brea fire, which has burned about 90,000 acres, was started by growers of illegal marijuana at a hidden farm in the Los Padres National Forest. The trigger for the fire was a propane-fed outdoor camp stove.
How was this fire caused by our policy of drug prohibition? Well, obviously, fires like this do not occur where companies like Phillip Morris or Ligget and Myers are growing tobacco. First of all, these companies aren’t forced to grow their crops in remote and desolate regions, and secondly, they are much more careful in what they do, because if by chance they do start a fire, they are held responsible for the damage.
On the contrary, illegal growers are forced out into remote areas, and usually onto public lands, because if their operations are discovered, the land can’t be forfeited. In fact, this particular camp is in a steep, overgrown canyon more than a mile from the nearest road. The workers unlawfully diverted streams to use for irrigation, polluted the ground with stacks of propane tanks and melted irrigation tubing, empty fertilizer canisters and large mounds of trash. Of course, even if there hadn’t been a fire, the workers never would have removed any of these items because, being an illegal operation, they are not held responsible for any of the damage they cause.
Once authorities located the camp, they found about 30,000 top-grade marijuana plants that ranged from two to six feet in height.
The workers had gone to the trouble of building terraces for the marijuana plants and installing a drip irrigation system, and probably would have been camping in the area for about four to five months to allow the plants to mature enough for harvesting. But with a street value in the millions of dollars for the marijuana, all of their efforts and inconveniences would have been well compensated.
Authorities also reported that so far this year, they have seized about 225,000 marijuana plants from six different sites in the area, including this one, with a street price of about $675 million.
They further stated that all of the workers they had found so far had been illegal immigrants from Mexico, but that really is a false issue. Why? Because, as any economist will tell you, if the demand for marijuana is here, and there is that much money to be made, someone will supply it. And if it is not illegal Mexican immigrants, it will be people like your next-door neighbor.
Marijuana has been illegal in this country since 1933, yet it is still fully available to anyone who wants it. And that includes our children, who report that it is easier for them to get marijuana than it is alcohol. And if you don’t believe me, ask them yourself.
Today, no one offers a free sample of Jim Beam bourbon or Budweiser beer on a high school campus. Why? Because if they were to get even close to doing that, they would be in a world of trouble. But illegal dealers offer free samples of marijuana and other illicit drugs to students on their campuses every day. Why does this happen? Because, just like with the La Brea fire situation, as soon as we prohibit a substance, we give up all of our ability to regulate or control it. That means that we concede all of the controls about quality, age restrictions, places of sale, price and everything else to the illegal dealers. And they are the ones who want to glamorize the use of all of these drugs and get our children hooked — so they can make more money off them. That is really stupid of us.
There is now pending in Sacramento Assembly Bill 390, which is being sponsored by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano from San Francisco. This measure would treat marijuana like alcohol in California, with the proviso that it would only go into effect 30 days after the federal law would be changed to allow this to occur legally. AB 390 would regulate and control the sale of marijuana for adults — and then tax it! That act alone would, according to the chair of the State Board of Equalization, bring in additional tax revenue to California of about $1.3 billion each year.
Today, marijuana is already the largest cash crop in the state, the seizures of those 225,000 marijuana plants this year notwithstanding, so this measure certainly will not make it more available than it is now.
But passing AB 390 will raise additional revenue for the state, while at the same time reducing the gross revenues of Mexican drug cartels by taking away their market.
And it will also reduce violence and corruption in this country, and, most importantly, make marijuana less available for children than it is today.
So what’s not to like? Accordingly, please call anyone you can vote for in Sacramento and urge them to vote for AB 390. This situation is far too dangerous to leave up to illegal growers and sellers.
JAMES P. GRAY is a retired judge of the Orange County Superior Court, the author of Wearing the Robe – the Art and Responsibilities of Judging in Today’s Courts (Square One Press, 2008), and can be contacted at jimpgray@sbcglobal.net or via his website at www.judgejimgray.com .
Saturday, April 11, 2009
WE TRIED A WAR LIKE THIS ONCE BEFORE - Mike Gray
Dear family and friends,
Enclosed is a copy of an op-ed piece written by my friend Mike Gray that will appear tomorrow in the Washington Post. It is as incisive as anything I have seen, and deserves maximum distribution.
Please help us do so. This bus is moving, and Drug Probition's days of inflicting misery upon us and the rest of the world are numbered.
Good luck to us all.
Judge Jim
THE WASHINGTON POST
Sun, 12 Apr 2009
Contact: letters@washpost.com
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/
WE TRIED A WAR LIKE THIS ONCE BEFORE
by Mike Gray
In 1932, Alphonse Capone, an influential businessman then living in Chicago, used to drive through the city in a caravan of armor-plated limos built to his specifications by General Motors.
Submachine-gun-toting associates led the motorcade and brought up the rear.
It is a measure of how thoroughly the mob mentality had permeated everyday life that this was considered normal.
Capone and his boys were agents of misguided policy. Ninety years ago, the United States tried to cure the national thirst for alcohol, and it led to an explosion of violence unlike anything we'd ever seen. Today, it's hard to ignore the echoes of Prohibition in the drug-related mayhem along our southern border. Over the past 15 months, there have been 7,200 drug-war deaths in Mexico alone, as the government there battles an army of killers that would scare the pants off Al Capone.
Now U.S. officials are warning that the vandals may be headed in this direction. Too late: They're already here. And they're in a good position to take over organized crime in this country as well.
After decades of trying to stem the influx of illegal narcotics into the United States, it's clear that the drug war, like Prohibition, has led us into a gruesome blind alley. Drugs are cheaper than ever before and you can buy them anywhere. As Mexico's cash-starved government struggles to keep up the good fight, the drug barons rake in more than enough to buy political protection and military power while still maintaining profit margins beyond imagining. And what's driving this desperate struggle may be the ubiquitous
weed:
Southwestern lawmen say that marijuana accounts for two-thirds of the cartels' income.
At last, the spectacular violence in Mexico has captured everybody's attention, and in an eerie replay of the end of alcohol prohibition, we may at last be witnessing the final act in the war on drugs.
One hint of a shifting wind came in February, when a state legislator from San Francisco introduced a bill to tax, regulate and legalize adult use of cannabis. This sort of grandstanding is always met with derision, and this was no exception. But then something strange
happened: California's chief tax collector said that the measure would bring in $1.3 billion a year and save another $1 billion on enforcement and incarceration. In a state facing an $18 billion deficit, suddenly nobody was laughing.
Four days later Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard, who's no legalizer, said that he, too, thinks we should take another look at marijuana prohibition. "The most effective way to establish a virtual barrier against the criminal activities is to take the profit out of it," he told a U.S.
Senate subcommittee.
The next day, U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced a minor policy shift with enormous implications: The federal government would no longer go after groups that supply medical marijuana in the
13 states where it is legal. The Drug Enforcement Administration had been raiding dispensaries routinely, and dozens of patients and growers are behind bars today despite their legal status in California's eyes. Now that threat has vanished for those who comply with state law. For California, this amounts to de facto legalization.
At his recent cyberspace town hall meeting, President Obama fielded a question about whether legalizing marijuana would improve the economy. "No,"
he replied as the audience giggled. But that answer sheds no light on his actual thinking. Obama has already called the drug war an "utter failure."
And since he himself is an admitted ex-toker, it's hard to believe that he'd cancel some kid's college education over a crime he got away with.
Of course, resistance to marijuana legalization remains rock solid in Washington among those who can't face the failure of prohibition. But that has more to do with politics than science. The Department of Health and Human Services says that there are 32 million drug abusers in the country, but that includes 25 million marijuana smokers. If you strike them from the list, how do you justify spending $60 billion a year in this economy trying to stop 2 percent of the population from being self-destructive? It would be dramatically cheaper to follow the Swiss example: Provide treatment for all who want it, and supply the rest with pure drugs under medical supervision.
When we erected an artificial barrier between alcohol producers and consumers in 1920, we created a bonanza more lucrative than the Gold Rush.
The staggering profits from illegal booze gave mobsters the financial power to take over legitimate businesses and expand into casinos, loan sharking, labor racketeering and extortion. Thus we created the major crime syndicates
-- and the U.S. murder rate jumped tenfold.
Fortunately, the Roaring '20s were interrupted by the Crash of '29, and when the money ran out, the battle against booze was a luxury we could no longer afford. Prohibition was repealed in 1933, and over the next decade the U.S.
murder rate was cut in half.
Today it's back up where it was at the peak of Prohibition -- 10 per 100,000
-- a jump clearly connected to the war on drugs. And anyone who's watching what's going on south of the border can see that we're headed for an era of mayhem that would make Meyer Lansky and Frank Costello weak in the knees.
Profits from the Mexican drug trade are estimated at about $35 billion a year. And since the cartels spend half to two-thirds of their income on bribery, that would be around $20 billion going into the pockets of police officers, army generals, judges, prosecutors and politicians. Last fall, Mexico's attorney general announced that his former top drug enforcer, chief prosecutor Noe Ramirez Mandujano, was getting $450,000 a month under the table from the Sinaloa cartel.
The cartel can of course afford to be generous -- Sinaloa chief Joaquin Guzman recently made the Forbes List of Billionaires.
The depth of Guzman's penetration into the United States was revealed a few weeks ago, when the DEA proudly announced hundreds of arrests all over the country in a major operation against the "dangerously powerful" Sinaloa cartel. One jarring detail was the admission that Mexican cartels are now operating in 230 cities inside the United States.
This disaster has been slowly unfolding since the early 1980s, when Vice President George H.W. Bush shut down the Caribbean cocaine pipeline between Colombia and Miami. The Colombians switched to the land route and began hiring Mexicans to deliver the goods across the U.S. border. But when the Mexicans got a glimpse of the truckloads of cash headed south, they decided that they didn't need the Colombians at all. Today the Mexican cartels are full-service commercial organizations with their own suppliers, refineries and a distribution network that covers all of North America.
As we awaken to the threat spilling over our southern border, the reactions are predictable. In addition to walling off the border, Congress wants to send helicopters, military hardware and unmanned reconnaissance drones into the fray -- and it wants the Pentagon to train Mexican troops in counterinsurgency tactics.
Our anti-drug warriors have apparently learned nothing from the past two decades. A few years ago we trained several units of the Mexican army in counterinsurgency warfare. They studied their lessons, then promptly deserted to form the Zetas, a thoroughly professional narco hit squad for the Gulf cartel, which offered considerably better pay.
Over the past eight years, the Mexican army has had more than 100,000 deserters.
The president of Mexico rightly points out that U.S. policy is at the root of this nightmare. Not only did we invent the war on drugs, but we are the primary consumers.
The obvious solution is cutting the demand for drugs in the United States.
Clearly, it would be the death of the cartels if we could simply dry up the market. Unfortunately, every effort to do this has met with resounding failure. But now that the Roaring '00s have hit the Crash of '09, the money has vanished once again, and we can no longer ignore the collateral damage of Prohibition II.
Writing last month in the Wall Street Journal, three former Latin American presidents -- Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, Cesar Gaviria of Colombia and Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico -- declared the war on drugs a failure.
Responding to a situation they say is "urgent in light of the rising levels of violence and corruption," they are demanding a reexamination of U.S.-inspired drug policies.
Two weeks ago, a conservative former superior court judge in Orange County told the Los Angeles Times that legalization was the only answer, and of 4,400 readers who responded immediately, the Times reported that "a staggering 94 percent" agreed with him.
This is another pivotal moment in U.S. history, strangely resonant with 1933. The war on drugs has been a riveting drama: It has given us great television, filled our prisons and employed hundreds of thousands as guards, police, prosecutors and probation officers. But the party's over.
Here is a glimpse of what lies ahead if we fail to end our second attempt to control the personal habits of private citizens. Listen to Enrique Gomez Hurtado, a former high court judge from Colombia who still has shrapnel in his leg from a bomb sent to kill him by the infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar. In 1993, his country was a free-fire zone not unlike Mexico today, and Gomez issued this chilling -- and prescient -- warning to an international drug policy conference in Baltimore:
"The income of the drug barons is greater than the American defense budget.
With this financial power they can suborn the institutions of the State, and if the State resists . . . they can purchase the firepower to outgun it. We are threatened with a return to the Dark Ages."
Ending prohibition won't solve our drug problem. But it will save us from something far worse. And it will put drug addiction back in the hands of the medical profession, where it was being dealt with successfully -- until we called in the cops.
Enclosed is a copy of an op-ed piece written by my friend Mike Gray that will appear tomorrow in the Washington Post. It is as incisive as anything I have seen, and deserves maximum distribution.
Please help us do so. This bus is moving, and Drug Probition's days of inflicting misery upon us and the rest of the world are numbered.
Good luck to us all.
Judge Jim
**************************************
THE WASHINGTON POST
Sun, 12 Apr 2009
Contact: letters@washpost.com
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/
WE TRIED A WAR LIKE THIS ONCE BEFORE
by Mike Gray
In 1932, Alphonse Capone, an influential businessman then living in Chicago, used to drive through the city in a caravan of armor-plated limos built to his specifications by General Motors.
Submachine-gun-toting associates led the motorcade and brought up the rear.
It is a measure of how thoroughly the mob mentality had permeated everyday life that this was considered normal.
Capone and his boys were agents of misguided policy. Ninety years ago, the United States tried to cure the national thirst for alcohol, and it led to an explosion of violence unlike anything we'd ever seen. Today, it's hard to ignore the echoes of Prohibition in the drug-related mayhem along our southern border. Over the past 15 months, there have been 7,200 drug-war deaths in Mexico alone, as the government there battles an army of killers that would scare the pants off Al Capone.
Now U.S. officials are warning that the vandals may be headed in this direction. Too late: They're already here. And they're in a good position to take over organized crime in this country as well.
After decades of trying to stem the influx of illegal narcotics into the United States, it's clear that the drug war, like Prohibition, has led us into a gruesome blind alley. Drugs are cheaper than ever before and you can buy them anywhere. As Mexico's cash-starved government struggles to keep up the good fight, the drug barons rake in more than enough to buy political protection and military power while still maintaining profit margins beyond imagining. And what's driving this desperate struggle may be the ubiquitous
weed:
Southwestern lawmen say that marijuana accounts for two-thirds of the cartels' income.
At last, the spectacular violence in Mexico has captured everybody's attention, and in an eerie replay of the end of alcohol prohibition, we may at last be witnessing the final act in the war on drugs.
One hint of a shifting wind came in February, when a state legislator from San Francisco introduced a bill to tax, regulate and legalize adult use of cannabis. This sort of grandstanding is always met with derision, and this was no exception. But then something strange
happened: California's chief tax collector said that the measure would bring in $1.3 billion a year and save another $1 billion on enforcement and incarceration. In a state facing an $18 billion deficit, suddenly nobody was laughing.
Four days later Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard, who's no legalizer, said that he, too, thinks we should take another look at marijuana prohibition. "The most effective way to establish a virtual barrier against the criminal activities is to take the profit out of it," he told a U.S.
Senate subcommittee.
The next day, U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced a minor policy shift with enormous implications: The federal government would no longer go after groups that supply medical marijuana in the
13 states where it is legal. The Drug Enforcement Administration had been raiding dispensaries routinely, and dozens of patients and growers are behind bars today despite their legal status in California's eyes. Now that threat has vanished for those who comply with state law. For California, this amounts to de facto legalization.
At his recent cyberspace town hall meeting, President Obama fielded a question about whether legalizing marijuana would improve the economy. "No,"
he replied as the audience giggled. But that answer sheds no light on his actual thinking. Obama has already called the drug war an "utter failure."
And since he himself is an admitted ex-toker, it's hard to believe that he'd cancel some kid's college education over a crime he got away with.
Of course, resistance to marijuana legalization remains rock solid in Washington among those who can't face the failure of prohibition. But that has more to do with politics than science. The Department of Health and Human Services says that there are 32 million drug abusers in the country, but that includes 25 million marijuana smokers. If you strike them from the list, how do you justify spending $60 billion a year in this economy trying to stop 2 percent of the population from being self-destructive? It would be dramatically cheaper to follow the Swiss example: Provide treatment for all who want it, and supply the rest with pure drugs under medical supervision.
When we erected an artificial barrier between alcohol producers and consumers in 1920, we created a bonanza more lucrative than the Gold Rush.
The staggering profits from illegal booze gave mobsters the financial power to take over legitimate businesses and expand into casinos, loan sharking, labor racketeering and extortion. Thus we created the major crime syndicates
-- and the U.S. murder rate jumped tenfold.
Fortunately, the Roaring '20s were interrupted by the Crash of '29, and when the money ran out, the battle against booze was a luxury we could no longer afford. Prohibition was repealed in 1933, and over the next decade the U.S.
murder rate was cut in half.
Today it's back up where it was at the peak of Prohibition -- 10 per 100,000
-- a jump clearly connected to the war on drugs. And anyone who's watching what's going on south of the border can see that we're headed for an era of mayhem that would make Meyer Lansky and Frank Costello weak in the knees.
Profits from the Mexican drug trade are estimated at about $35 billion a year. And since the cartels spend half to two-thirds of their income on bribery, that would be around $20 billion going into the pockets of police officers, army generals, judges, prosecutors and politicians. Last fall, Mexico's attorney general announced that his former top drug enforcer, chief prosecutor Noe Ramirez Mandujano, was getting $450,000 a month under the table from the Sinaloa cartel.
The cartel can of course afford to be generous -- Sinaloa chief Joaquin Guzman recently made the Forbes List of Billionaires.
The depth of Guzman's penetration into the United States was revealed a few weeks ago, when the DEA proudly announced hundreds of arrests all over the country in a major operation against the "dangerously powerful" Sinaloa cartel. One jarring detail was the admission that Mexican cartels are now operating in 230 cities inside the United States.
This disaster has been slowly unfolding since the early 1980s, when Vice President George H.W. Bush shut down the Caribbean cocaine pipeline between Colombia and Miami. The Colombians switched to the land route and began hiring Mexicans to deliver the goods across the U.S. border. But when the Mexicans got a glimpse of the truckloads of cash headed south, they decided that they didn't need the Colombians at all. Today the Mexican cartels are full-service commercial organizations with their own suppliers, refineries and a distribution network that covers all of North America.
As we awaken to the threat spilling over our southern border, the reactions are predictable. In addition to walling off the border, Congress wants to send helicopters, military hardware and unmanned reconnaissance drones into the fray -- and it wants the Pentagon to train Mexican troops in counterinsurgency tactics.
Our anti-drug warriors have apparently learned nothing from the past two decades. A few years ago we trained several units of the Mexican army in counterinsurgency warfare. They studied their lessons, then promptly deserted to form the Zetas, a thoroughly professional narco hit squad for the Gulf cartel, which offered considerably better pay.
Over the past eight years, the Mexican army has had more than 100,000 deserters.
The president of Mexico rightly points out that U.S. policy is at the root of this nightmare. Not only did we invent the war on drugs, but we are the primary consumers.
The obvious solution is cutting the demand for drugs in the United States.
Clearly, it would be the death of the cartels if we could simply dry up the market. Unfortunately, every effort to do this has met with resounding failure. But now that the Roaring '00s have hit the Crash of '09, the money has vanished once again, and we can no longer ignore the collateral damage of Prohibition II.
Writing last month in the Wall Street Journal, three former Latin American presidents -- Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, Cesar Gaviria of Colombia and Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico -- declared the war on drugs a failure.
Responding to a situation they say is "urgent in light of the rising levels of violence and corruption," they are demanding a reexamination of U.S.-inspired drug policies.
Two weeks ago, a conservative former superior court judge in Orange County told the Los Angeles Times that legalization was the only answer, and of 4,400 readers who responded immediately, the Times reported that "a staggering 94 percent" agreed with him.
This is another pivotal moment in U.S. history, strangely resonant with 1933. The war on drugs has been a riveting drama: It has given us great television, filled our prisons and employed hundreds of thousands as guards, police, prosecutors and probation officers. But the party's over.
Here is a glimpse of what lies ahead if we fail to end our second attempt to control the personal habits of private citizens. Listen to Enrique Gomez Hurtado, a former high court judge from Colombia who still has shrapnel in his leg from a bomb sent to kill him by the infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar. In 1993, his country was a free-fire zone not unlike Mexico today, and Gomez issued this chilling -- and prescient -- warning to an international drug policy conference in Baltimore:
"The income of the drug barons is greater than the American defense budget.
With this financial power they can suborn the institutions of the State, and if the State resists . . . they can purchase the firepower to outgun it. We are threatened with a return to the Dark Ages."
Ending prohibition won't solve our drug problem. But it will save us from something far worse. And it will put drug addiction back in the hands of the medical profession, where it was being dealt with successfully -- until we called in the cops.
Mike Gray, the chairman of Common Sense for Drug Policy, is the author of "Drug Crazy: How We Got Into This Mess and How We Can Get Out."
Monday, December 1, 2008
DRUG PROBLEMS VS. DRUG MONEY PROBLEMS - by Judge Jim Gray
DRUG PROBLEMS VS. DRUG MONEY PROBLEMS - by Judge Jim Gray 05/04/08
As all sophisticated people know, life is full of distinctions. One of those critical distinctions that we will discuss today is the difference between drug problems, and there certainly are many, as opposed to drug money problems.
There is no doubt that illicit drugs can sometimes be dangerous and addictive and cause harm. Many people’s health and lives have been ruined, and families torn apart emotionally and financially because of the havoc caused by the abuse of and addiction to illicit drugs. So without question this is a big problem.
But there are also big problems that are caused exclusively by drug money. For example, for years we have been hearing and reading about the large-scale violence and corruption that takes place with drug dealers in Colombia, Mexico, Afghanistan and many other countries. And certainly the United States has had its share of this violence and corruption as well. These problems are not caused by the drugs themselves, they are caused by the drug money.
Similarly, it is drug money that is causing drug-addicted people to commit crimes in order to get the money for their drugs. Obviously that includes burglaries, purse-snatchings, check offenses, shop-liftings, and prostitution. As a practical matter, all of the illicit drugs themselves are extremely inexpensive to raise, manufacture and package. In fact they are actually “dirt cheap.” The only reason they are expensive is because they are illegal, and that expense causes many crimes.
For example, marijuana is not called a “weed” for nothing. It will grow virtually anywhere. In fact, for all of our efforts for its eradication, marijuana is presently the largest cash crop in California. (Number two is grapes, if you care.) And even though the DEA has gone to great lengths to convince us that the opium poppy can only be grown in mountainous regions, the National Park Service was actually growing those poppies for years at Thomas Jefferson’s home in Monticello before the DEA found out about it and made them take them out. (They are a beautiful flower.) So if the opium poppies will grow in Virginia, it is pretty obvious that they will grow anywhere.
But now I want to talk to you about another drug money problem that you probably are not aware of. The following scenario would take place in my courtroom about every four or five weeks when I was sitting on a Juvenile Court calendar. There would be, for example, a single mother of two small children who made a bad decision, namely she decided to hook up with the wrong boyfriend. The man would be selling drugs and the mother would generally be aware of it, but that is the way things were.
One fine day the boyfriend would tell the mother that if she would take a package across town and give it to “Charlie,” he would give her $500 for her efforts. She would basically know the package contained drugs, but she was behind on her rent and the $500 would really help. So she would do it. And then she would be arrested and convicted for the offense of transporting drugs, and sentenced to five years in prison. Now to be honest, in today’s world being sentenced to five years in prison for transporting four ounces or so of cocaine is not an unreasonable sentence.
But let me ask you a question: when the mother is put in prison, what happens to her children? Well, that answer is easy. The mother has legally abandoned her children since she is not available to take care of them. As a consequence they would all come to me in Juvenile Court on the Abused and Neglected Children calendar.
So I would have this young mother in my court in a jail jumpsuit and handcuffs and I would tell her the truth, which was that she would not functionally be a part of her children’s lives for the next five years. At that point she would usually become misty-eyed at the realization. (Wouldn’t you?) But then I would tell her the brutal truth, which was that unless she was really lucky and either had a close personal friend or family member that was both willing and able to take custody of her children until she was released, her children would probably be adopted by somebody else by the time she got out of prison. At that point she would usually break down in tears. (Wouldn’t you?)
But if that human tragedy is not enough to break you down, I can probably dissolve you in tears as a taxpayer. Because in the first year, we will be spending upwards of $5,000 per month per child to keep them in a group home until they can be adopted by someone else. That means that in that first year we will be spending about $60,000 per child, times two children, plus an additional $25,000 to keep the mother in prison. As a result we will be spending somewhere around $145,000 in taxpayer money physically to separate a mother from her children!
And who gets to enforce this situation? I do. Of course I do it because I have sworn to uphold the law. But I do not have to do it quietly, and that is why I am passing on this story to you.
So from my experience and perspective, if we would change our drug laws to hold people accountable for their actions instead of what they put into their bodies, we would begin greatly to reduce the drug money crime. And this could be easily done by undercutting the market for the sale of illicit drugs to adults.
As was discussed in an earlier column, we could start by treating marijuana like alcohol. That would result in the savings of huge amounts of taxpayer money that are presently being spent on efforts to eradicate marijuana and to prosecute non-violent marijuana users. In addition, we could generate additional billions of dollars annually simply by taxing the sales of marijuana to adults, just like we do for alcohol. And all of this would have the substantial additional benefit of making marijuana less available for our teenagers than it is today. Why? Because illicit drug dealers don’t ask for i.d.
So what is not to like? We should pattern our conduct after most countries in Europe and start to address these problems as managers instead of moralists. This would reduce the crime, violence and corruption brought about by drug money. And then we could re-focus our efforts upon the actual drug problems themselves, like many countries are doing in Europe.
I think that everyone agrees that the federal government does not have all of the answers in this area, so why don’t we allow each state to decide what is best for its people? This is the concept of federalism upon which our great country was founded. There are viable alternatives to our present failed federal policy of Drug Prohibition, so let’s allow each state to try some alternatives. What do you think?
James P. Gray is a Judge of the Superior Court in California, the author of Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It - A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs (Temple University Press, 2001) and Wearing The Robe - The Art And Responsibilities of Judging In Today's Courts, has a blog at http://judgejamesgray.blogspot.com/. http://www.judgejimgray.com, and can be contacted at www.judgejimgray.com.
WHY ARE WE STILL DOING THIS? by Judge Jim Gray
WHY ARE WE STILL DOING THIS? (11) - by Judge Jim Gray 10/01/07
Let us face facts and let us not mince words: Our nation’s policy of Drug Prohibition is not working. As a matter of fact, this policy is actually causing much more harm than the prohibited drugs themselves would ever be causing on their own – here and everywhere else around the world. And the irony is that we could literally bulldoze the entire country of Colombia, and even take Ecuador and Peru with it, and that would not make the slightest difference whatsoever with our drug problems in our country. Why? Because if the demand is here, the demand will be met. And if the demand is not met by drugs from Colombia, Ecuador or Peru, it will be met by drugs from Afghanistan, Nigeria or Thailand. Or even here in California! Today marijuana is the number one crop in California. (Number two is grapes, if you care.) In other words, we have failed to repeal the Law of Supply and Demand, and amazingly enough continue to express surprise at that result. And what is worse, we do not even let ourselves discuss the subject!
In normal life if something does not work, we recognize that reality, explore our options and try something different. But even though virtually no one will say that our War on Drugs is working, we continue to spend ever more money and other resources on something that has been proven not to work. “If spending lots of money didn’t work, we’ll just have to spend much more” seems to be the philosophy.
The evidence of the failure of the War on Drugs is all around us. Today illicit drugs almost literally could not be made more available if we tried. Look at it this way, people in prison can get all of the drugs they want. It costs more money, but they are fully available. For example, Charles Manson was transferred from Corcoran State Prison in California to a different facility a few years ago because he was found to be selling drugs from his prison cell. And he was in solitary confinement! So if we cannot keep drugs out of our prisons, what makes us think that we can keep them off the streets of any of our towns or cities?
Every day in our nation’s newspapers there are articles about violent deaths being caused not by drugs, but by drug money. With great fanfare we destroyed the Medellin Cartel. But did it make any difference? No, within just a few months the Cali Cartel was up and running. Now we have destroyed the Cali Cartel. Has it made any difference? Again the answer is no. Illicit drugs are just a big and successful a business as ever.
As an example, just a few years ago the head of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration was quoted as saying that at any one time about 200 tons of cocaine are being warehoused in Mexico within three miles of the U.S. border just waiting to be smuggled into our country to any place where there happens to be a shortage. In addition, even though our government has spent about $470 billion on “Plan Colombia” with our military actions and spraying of herbicides in rural areas, the cost of Colombian cocaine in our country today is only about one-third of what is was in the 1980s. Of course, we are also seeing the same results in Afghanistan with heroin. And in case you have not noticed, violence if not actual warfare caused by drug money has broken out in Mexico along our border, and has literally spilled over the border into the Southwest United States.
Even when the police are successful in seizing a large quantity of drugs, that only temporarily reduces the supply, which increases the price of the drugs and in turn increases the incentives for people to sell them. The end result of this economic reality is that the policy of Drug Prohibition is doomed to failure, which means that “victory” increasingly is simply being defined as slowing down the pace of defeat.
When I discuss this issue publicly, the biggest argument I hear in favor of maintaining our policy of Drug Prohibition, “with all of its defects,” is that changing it would “send the wrong message to our children.” So what about our children? Actually our policy of Drug Prohibition is literally putting our children in harm’s way for each of two deeply disturbing reasons. First, it is easier today for children to obtain any illicit drug, if they want to, than it is alcohol. Why? Because illicit drug dealers make money by furnishing it to them. You might say that no one wants your teenage children to become addicted to cocaine, but you would be wrong, because some people make a great deal of money if that happens. As a result, lots of drug dealers offer free samples of illicit drugs to our children, even on their school campuses. Of course, that does not happen with regard to other sometimes dangerous and addicting drugs like alcohol and tobacco. Why? Because when we make drugs illegal, we give up all of our ability to regulate and control them. That means that by default the strength, quantities and purity levels of the drugs that are being sold and the age restrictions for the buyers are exclusively controlled by the illicit drug dealers, and they don’t ask for i.d.!
Secondly, and I saw this happen continually when I was a federal prosecutor, and later when I was presiding over a juvenile court calendar, every day adult drug sellers recruit our children to help them in their scurrilous business. Why? Because for a relatively small amount of money and the threat of violence, adult drug dealers can have all the young people they want to use as “go-fers,” lookouts and couriers, etc. And then just as night follows day, as soon as the reliability of the young people has been established, the adults trust them to sell small amounts of drugs in their communities. They do this, of course, so that the youngsters make more money, and so do the adults. So then ask yourself this question, when teenagers sell drugs in their communities, who do they sell to? Us? No, they will naturally sell to their teenage peers, thus recruiting more and more young people to a lifestyle of drug usage and drug selling. It is not a pretty sight, and it is all directly caused by our failed and hopeless policy of Drug Prohibition.
Yes, once we finally came to our senses and repealed Alcohol Prohibition we were still left with problems of alcohol misuse, abuse and addiction. But at least we were no longer plagued with the Al Capones and their violence and corruption, as well as the medical problems presented by the lack of quality control for the “bathtub gin.”
What should be our plan instead? In my view, we should resume using the Criminal Justice System in the way it was designed: to hold people accountable for what they do, instead of what they put into their bodies. Along those lines, it makes as much sense to me to put that gifted actor Robert Downey, Jr. in jail for his cocaine addiction, and he certainly seems to have one, as it would to have put Betty Ford in jail for her alcohol addiction. It is the same thing; it is a medical problem. But if Robert Downey, Jr., Betty Ford or you or I drive a motor vehicle while under the influence of any of these mind-altering drugs, that will still be an offense. Why is that? Because now those people would by their actions be putting the safety of other people at risk. When we finally are able to make that distinction in our approach, we will begin to make real progress in this area.
So what action should we take now? The first thing to do is for our President to appoint a blue ribbon commission to investigate the possibility of change – as publicly as possible. Then in my view the first substantive action we should take is to treat marijuana like alcohol. What would happen if we were to do that? Three things, and all of them positive. First, we taxpayers in California would literally save about a billion dollars every year that we now spend in a futile effort to eradicate marijuana, and to prosecute and incarcerate non-violent marijuana users. Secondly, we could tax the stuff, and raise about one and a half billion dollars every year for the state coffers. So those two things alone would change the budget deficit in California by about 2 ½ billion dollars every year. And that is money that we should use for drug education and drug treatment, which will result in decreased problem usage of all drugs. Or we could use the money to help finance health care for the uninsured people in our state and country. But the third thing would be more important than the first two combined, because this we would be making marijuana less available for our children than it is today, as we have already discussed. So what is not to like?
Eighteenth-century English jurist William Blackstone said that “The law is the embodiment of the moral sentiment of the people,” and I certainly agree with him. But just because we change our approach to this serious problem does not at all mean we condone drug abuse, and our children will understand that concept. There are better ways of accomplishing our goals of reducing drug abuse and all of the crime, misery and corruption that accompany it. In fact, we will discuss some of the programs that are actually working in other countries around the world in this column next week. So stay tuned.
In the meantime, let us take off our muzzles, and give ourselves permission to discuss the subject of drug policy openly, fully and honestly. We have nowhere to go but forward!
James P. Gray is a Judge of the Superior Court in California, the author of Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It - A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs (Temple University Press, 2001) and Wearing The Robe - The Art And Responsibilities of Judging In Today's Courts, has a blog at http://judgejamesgray.blogspot.com/. http://www.judgejimgray.com, and can be contacted at www.judgejimgray.com.
Let us face facts and let us not mince words: Our nation’s policy of Drug Prohibition is not working. As a matter of fact, this policy is actually causing much more harm than the prohibited drugs themselves would ever be causing on their own – here and everywhere else around the world. And the irony is that we could literally bulldoze the entire country of Colombia, and even take Ecuador and Peru with it, and that would not make the slightest difference whatsoever with our drug problems in our country. Why? Because if the demand is here, the demand will be met. And if the demand is not met by drugs from Colombia, Ecuador or Peru, it will be met by drugs from Afghanistan, Nigeria or Thailand. Or even here in California! Today marijuana is the number one crop in California. (Number two is grapes, if you care.) In other words, we have failed to repeal the Law of Supply and Demand, and amazingly enough continue to express surprise at that result. And what is worse, we do not even let ourselves discuss the subject!
In normal life if something does not work, we recognize that reality, explore our options and try something different. But even though virtually no one will say that our War on Drugs is working, we continue to spend ever more money and other resources on something that has been proven not to work. “If spending lots of money didn’t work, we’ll just have to spend much more” seems to be the philosophy.
The evidence of the failure of the War on Drugs is all around us. Today illicit drugs almost literally could not be made more available if we tried. Look at it this way, people in prison can get all of the drugs they want. It costs more money, but they are fully available. For example, Charles Manson was transferred from Corcoran State Prison in California to a different facility a few years ago because he was found to be selling drugs from his prison cell. And he was in solitary confinement! So if we cannot keep drugs out of our prisons, what makes us think that we can keep them off the streets of any of our towns or cities?
Every day in our nation’s newspapers there are articles about violent deaths being caused not by drugs, but by drug money. With great fanfare we destroyed the Medellin Cartel. But did it make any difference? No, within just a few months the Cali Cartel was up and running. Now we have destroyed the Cali Cartel. Has it made any difference? Again the answer is no. Illicit drugs are just a big and successful a business as ever.
As an example, just a few years ago the head of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration was quoted as saying that at any one time about 200 tons of cocaine are being warehoused in Mexico within three miles of the U.S. border just waiting to be smuggled into our country to any place where there happens to be a shortage. In addition, even though our government has spent about $470 billion on “Plan Colombia” with our military actions and spraying of herbicides in rural areas, the cost of Colombian cocaine in our country today is only about one-third of what is was in the 1980s. Of course, we are also seeing the same results in Afghanistan with heroin. And in case you have not noticed, violence if not actual warfare caused by drug money has broken out in Mexico along our border, and has literally spilled over the border into the Southwest United States.
Even when the police are successful in seizing a large quantity of drugs, that only temporarily reduces the supply, which increases the price of the drugs and in turn increases the incentives for people to sell them. The end result of this economic reality is that the policy of Drug Prohibition is doomed to failure, which means that “victory” increasingly is simply being defined as slowing down the pace of defeat.
When I discuss this issue publicly, the biggest argument I hear in favor of maintaining our policy of Drug Prohibition, “with all of its defects,” is that changing it would “send the wrong message to our children.” So what about our children? Actually our policy of Drug Prohibition is literally putting our children in harm’s way for each of two deeply disturbing reasons. First, it is easier today for children to obtain any illicit drug, if they want to, than it is alcohol. Why? Because illicit drug dealers make money by furnishing it to them. You might say that no one wants your teenage children to become addicted to cocaine, but you would be wrong, because some people make a great deal of money if that happens. As a result, lots of drug dealers offer free samples of illicit drugs to our children, even on their school campuses. Of course, that does not happen with regard to other sometimes dangerous and addicting drugs like alcohol and tobacco. Why? Because when we make drugs illegal, we give up all of our ability to regulate and control them. That means that by default the strength, quantities and purity levels of the drugs that are being sold and the age restrictions for the buyers are exclusively controlled by the illicit drug dealers, and they don’t ask for i.d.!
Secondly, and I saw this happen continually when I was a federal prosecutor, and later when I was presiding over a juvenile court calendar, every day adult drug sellers recruit our children to help them in their scurrilous business. Why? Because for a relatively small amount of money and the threat of violence, adult drug dealers can have all the young people they want to use as “go-fers,” lookouts and couriers, etc. And then just as night follows day, as soon as the reliability of the young people has been established, the adults trust them to sell small amounts of drugs in their communities. They do this, of course, so that the youngsters make more money, and so do the adults. So then ask yourself this question, when teenagers sell drugs in their communities, who do they sell to? Us? No, they will naturally sell to their teenage peers, thus recruiting more and more young people to a lifestyle of drug usage and drug selling. It is not a pretty sight, and it is all directly caused by our failed and hopeless policy of Drug Prohibition.
Yes, once we finally came to our senses and repealed Alcohol Prohibition we were still left with problems of alcohol misuse, abuse and addiction. But at least we were no longer plagued with the Al Capones and their violence and corruption, as well as the medical problems presented by the lack of quality control for the “bathtub gin.”
What should be our plan instead? In my view, we should resume using the Criminal Justice System in the way it was designed: to hold people accountable for what they do, instead of what they put into their bodies. Along those lines, it makes as much sense to me to put that gifted actor Robert Downey, Jr. in jail for his cocaine addiction, and he certainly seems to have one, as it would to have put Betty Ford in jail for her alcohol addiction. It is the same thing; it is a medical problem. But if Robert Downey, Jr., Betty Ford or you or I drive a motor vehicle while under the influence of any of these mind-altering drugs, that will still be an offense. Why is that? Because now those people would by their actions be putting the safety of other people at risk. When we finally are able to make that distinction in our approach, we will begin to make real progress in this area.
So what action should we take now? The first thing to do is for our President to appoint a blue ribbon commission to investigate the possibility of change – as publicly as possible. Then in my view the first substantive action we should take is to treat marijuana like alcohol. What would happen if we were to do that? Three things, and all of them positive. First, we taxpayers in California would literally save about a billion dollars every year that we now spend in a futile effort to eradicate marijuana, and to prosecute and incarcerate non-violent marijuana users. Secondly, we could tax the stuff, and raise about one and a half billion dollars every year for the state coffers. So those two things alone would change the budget deficit in California by about 2 ½ billion dollars every year. And that is money that we should use for drug education and drug treatment, which will result in decreased problem usage of all drugs. Or we could use the money to help finance health care for the uninsured people in our state and country. But the third thing would be more important than the first two combined, because this we would be making marijuana less available for our children than it is today, as we have already discussed. So what is not to like?
Eighteenth-century English jurist William Blackstone said that “The law is the embodiment of the moral sentiment of the people,” and I certainly agree with him. But just because we change our approach to this serious problem does not at all mean we condone drug abuse, and our children will understand that concept. There are better ways of accomplishing our goals of reducing drug abuse and all of the crime, misery and corruption that accompany it. In fact, we will discuss some of the programs that are actually working in other countries around the world in this column next week. So stay tuned.
In the meantime, let us take off our muzzles, and give ourselves permission to discuss the subject of drug policy openly, fully and honestly. We have nowhere to go but forward!
James P. Gray is a Judge of the Superior Court in California, the author of Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It - A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs (Temple University Press, 2001) and Wearing The Robe - The Art And Responsibilities of Judging In Today's Courts, has a blog at http://judgejamesgray.blogspot.com/. http://www.judgejimgray.com, and can be contacted at www.judgejimgray.com.
“Let’s Go With What Works” by Judge Jim Gray
“Let’s Go With What Works” by Judge Jim Gray 10/07/07
In last week’s column we discussed why our policy of Drug Prohibition is not working and why it will never work. That probably was a discouraging column to read for many people. In fact, by discussing the matter in this way it might even appear to some people that we are simply “giving up.” But that is flat out not true. We still have the same goals, which are to reduce drug abuse and all of the crime and misery that accompanies it. Instead we are simply changing our approach to meet those goals. But today’s column will bring you hope, because now we will discuss drug programs that have been working well, both in this country and in other countries around the world.
The first thing to do when focusing upon programs that work is to start by making the same important distinctions that they make, such as the difference between drug crime on the one hand, and drug money crime on the other. Similarly we must make distinctions between someone’s use of drugs, as opposed to their misuse, abuse or addiction to drugs. And we must also focus upon the difference between the government attempting to hold adults accountable for their actions, as opposed to trying to hold them accountable for what they put into their bodies.
So what works? The first thing is full, honest and open education. You show me a problem area in our society, and I will show you how full, honest and open education is a material part of its resolution. The truth is that there actually are some benefits of using mind altering and sometimes addicting drugs, because if there were not, people obviously would not be using them. But there are just as obviously some sizeable risks, so we should focus honestly upon both the risks and the benefits of putting these various substances into our bodies. Education of this kind is working quite well today with regard to the biggest killer drug of all, which is tobacco, and it will work just as effectively with regard to other drugs as well.
Another program that works quite well for people who are addicted to injectable drugs is a Needle Exchange Program. What is that? This program allows a person to exchange a dirty hypodermic needle and syringe for a clean one at a designated location – no money changes hands, and no questions are asked. That’s it. All of the research studies show that programs of this kind do not increase drug usage, and they do not decrease it either. They are neutral in that regard. But they reduce the incidence of the HIV virus that leads to AIDS as well as Hepatitis C and other blood-born diseases by about 50 percent! Regardless of what one thinks about people who inject themselves with illicit drugs, they do not deserve to contract the AIDS virus. And if that humane reason is not enough, consider that it costs us taxpayers about $100,000 for each person in our country that gets AIDS.
Much hope can also be gained from a Heroin Maintenance Program that has been in operation in Switzerland since the middle 1990s. This is a program run by licensed medical doctors that furnishes prescriptions of heroin to people who are addicted to it, and the prescriptions are filled at local pharmacies. To qualify for the program, people must be at least 18 years old, have been addicted to heroin for at least two years, present signs of poor health, had two or more failed attempts at conventional treatment, and must surrender their drivers’ licenses.
By the way, none of these presently illegal drugs are expensive to grow, manufacture or supply. Marijuana is not called a “weed” for nothing; it will grow anywhere. And the National Park Service was growing the opium poppy that is used to make heroin for years at Monticello until the DEA found out about it and ordered them removed. If the poppies will grow in Virginia, they will grow virtually anywhere. The only reason any of these drugs are expensive is because they are illegal. So the cost of the heroin in this program is no more than $10 per day for even the heaviest-using drug-addicted person.
The results of the heroin-maintenance program show a 60 percent drop in felony crimes by the patients, and an 82 percent drop in patients selling heroin. No one has died from a heroin overdose, and new infections of AIDS and Hepatitis have been substantially reduced. In addition, heroin usage in the communities has also been materially reduced for several reasons. One reason is that most new users are introduced to heroin by members of their social groups, and 50 percent of the users sell heroin to support their own habits. But with so many users/sellers in the medical program, non-users have fewer opportunities to be exposed to heroin. In addition, this medicalization program has actually tarnished or de-glamorized the image of heroin and made it unattractive to young people. As a result of this success, Switzerland’s heroin maintenance program is being replicated in Germany, Holland, Belgium, England, Spain and Canada.
Another program that works quite well is treatment. The RAND Corporation published the results of a study back in 1994 that said that taxpayers get fully seven times more value for their tax dollar with drug treatment than they do for incarceration, even for the heaviest-using drug-addicted person. This shows that it is much more effective to provide treatment for a non-violent drug-addicted person, which costs about $3,500 per year, than to incarcerate that same person at the cost to the taxpayers of about $25,000 per year.
For those people who are in prison, drug treatment has also been shown to bring truly positive results. For example, in Donovan State Prison in Northern San Diego County, drug-addicted people who receive treatment as well as a program of aftercare support have a recidivism or re-offender rate of about 18 percent within the first year after being released from prison. But similar groups of drug-addicted people who do not receive the treatment program and an aftercare component have a recidivism rate of about 80 percent within the same period of time! So think of all of the crimes that are not committed; victims who are not victimized; police who do not have to investigate; and prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges and juries who do not have to try criminal cases – as well as the prison space that is freed up – all as a result of the treatment program at Donovan.
But treatment is not simply having people listen to lectures about health and the dangers of drug usage. It also involves anger management training, individualized and group counseling, education and job skills, and a focus upon the merits and benefits of personal responsibility. And the aftercare support groups also assist in procuring employment for the subject, as well as furnishing personal reinforcement and reminders of the benefits of staying off drugs.
Holland has taken its own sophisticated approach that recognizes that even though these drugs can be dangerous and that their presence in their society will cause harm, no matter what the criminal justice system does, the drugs are still here to stay. This realization has led Holland to adopt a national program of “harm reduction.” This approach includes honest education, needle exchange programs and drug treatment on demand, but also includes the de-criminalization of drugs. This means that although it is still illegal in Holland to buy, use or possess these drugs, as long as people adhere to widely known general guidelines about quality, quantity and age restrictions, the police are instructed in writing to look the other way and leave them alone. Of course, if a person drives a motor vehicle under the influence of any of these drugs, etc., that person is prosecuted heavily.
Is this program working? Well, the Minister of Health of Holland held a press conference a few years ago in which he said that marijuana usage in his country was only half of what it is per capita in the United States – both for adults and for teenagers! And then he went on to explain why, by saying that “We have succeeded in making pot boring.”
But what effect will these programs have upon our children? Well, as discussed in our last column, our policy of Drug Prohibition is actually putting our children in harm’s way. But let us take that a step further. I have never in all of my experience heard anyone say that being a heroin addict is a good thing, and I will bet that you have not either. So in my view, we should not hide things like needle exchange and heroin maintenance programs from our children. I say we should actually take them there! What do you think these drug-addicted people will tell our children? “Come and follow my lead and really mess up your life?” No, I think they will tell our young people the truth, such as “Look at me. Do you want to grow up to be like me?” “Do you know how I got started? I thought it was cool, or someone gave me a free sample of heroin and I thought I would just try it,” etc. That will be true, honest and a lasting education, and our children will benefit from being exposed to it.
Finally, my suggested alternative in this and many other areas is to utilize the libertarian concept of Federalism. Our great country was founded upon this principle. That is to say that each state should be allowed to employ a policy and set of programs that it feels will best serve and protect its people. Obviously the federal government does not have all of the answers. Let each of our 50 “crucibles of democracy” grapple with and develop a policy that works best for its people, and then let us all observe the results.
There is no legitimate reason why we cannot learn a lesson from programs that work, and put into effect similar programs in our communities. In the meantime, let us convince our city councils, mayors and chiefs of police to make the arrest and prosecution of non-violent offenders for the possession and use of drugs like marijuana their lowest priority.
James P. Gray is a trial judge in Orange County, California, the composer of the high school musical “Americans All,” and can be reached at JimPGray@sbcglobal.net for further information about the peer court programhttp://www.judgejimgray.com
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