Pubdate: Fri, 20 Oct 2000
Source: LA Weekly (CA)
Copyright: 2000, Los Angeles Weekly, Inc.
Contact:  P.O. Box 4315, L.A., CA 90078
Fax: 323 465-3220
Website: http://www.laweekly.com/
Author: Ben Ehrenreich
Bookmark: For Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act items: 
http://www.mapinc.org/prop36.htm

PASS THE BALLOT, MY FRIEND

PASS THE BALLOT, MY FRIEND

Keep Ordinary Drug Users Out Of The Joint

It is hard to imagine any realm of American culture more riddled with 
hypocrisy than our collective attitude toward drug use. Pushing Ritalin on 
children already enslaved by Pokemon addictions is standard middle-class 
practice, but a teen on acid would be better locked away. Daily infusions 
of Prozac keep the work force humming, but a hit of marijuana before bed 
smacks of degeneracy. Skyy and Chivas compete for yuppie dollars, weekend 
bar-hopping is all in good fun, but renegade pleasure-seekers who prefer 
coke or heroin are troubled and diseased.

This is not to say that drug addiction is not destructive, only to point to 
the absurdity of its singular demonization in a society driven by 
compulsive consumption.

All of this would be just another bizarre American quirk, something for 
Europeans to laugh about, were its consequences not so monstrous.

Two million Americans are now in prison, with hundreds of thousands more in 
county jails, and - a figure that cannot be repeated enough - one out of 
every 20 black men over 18 is right now doing time in a state or federal 
pen, thanks in large part to our war on drugs, as America's quiet race war 
is euphemistically labeled.

Despite a lack of evidence that incarceration prevents drug use - few drugs 
are not available behind bars - the madness continues. California today 
imprisons 25 times more people, disproportionately black and Latino, for 
drug offenses than the state did in 1980, which is more than twice the 
national growth rate for the same crimes. As social services wither and the 
education system founders, the state has built 21 prisons since 1994, 
nearly twice as many as were built over the previous 130 years.

This year, one ballot measure offers some relief.

Modeled after a successful 1996 Arizona initiative, Proposition 36 would 
prevent the courts from incarcerating first- and second-time offenders 
convicted of possession of drugs for personal use. Instead, they would be 
herded into treatment programs. Drug dealers, anyone who used a gun at the 
time of their arrest, and anyone who served time for serious or violent 
felonies within five years of their drug convictions would not be eligible.

The nonpartisan state Legislative Analyst's Office estimates that 
Proposition 36 would put as many as 24,000 drug offenders into treatment 
rather than state prison each year, and divert another 12,000 from terms in 
county jail, thereby saving the state between $100 million and $150 
million, and counties another $40 million annually.

It would also save the state between $450 million and $550 million in 
prison-construction costs, as well as several million dollars annually in 
court fees and an unknown amount "for health care, public assistance and 
law-enforcement programs."

Savings in terms of human costs would be greater still.

Thousands of families would not be torn apart by prison sentences; 
thousands of individuals would not be twisted and hardened by years spent 
behind bars; thousands more would not find themselves rendered unemployable 
by an indelible felony conviction stamped on their records (the initiative 
lets defendants petition to have charges dismissed once they have 
successfully completed treatment). And thousands who otherwise would have 
received no help at all would be lifted, at least temporarily, from 
addiction and be less likely to end up in chains again, be they hardened 
steel shackles or the equally sturdy bonds of stem and syringe.

Proposition 36, of course, has its opponents.

The campaign against the initiative has been heavily funded by San Diego 
Chargers owner Alex Spanos, and has the enthusiastic backing of the 
powerful prison guards' union, the California Correctional Peace Officers 
Association, which has thus far invested $25,000 in the fight.

The arguments presented on the Californians United Against Drug Abuse Web 
site are a sundry mix of misinformation and fear-mongering. There is the 
familiar canard that the initiative "sends the wrong message to our 
children"; the amusing but irrelevant factlet that "workers who use drugs 
are three times more likely to be late for work"; the embarrassing NIMBY 
claim that new treatment programs will end up "housing drug addicts near 
our schools"; the simply untrue assertion that Proposition 36 "eliminates 
prison for people convicted of possessing illegal drugs while armed with 
loaded firearms" (it does not); the notion that the initiative "eliminates 
consequences for failing treatment" (the consequences are one to three 
years in lockup); the hysterical and blatantly false charge that "rapists, 
child molesters and other sex offenders convicted of possessing 'date rape' 
drugs could escape a jail or prison term" (unless they were plotting to 
drug and rape themselves, they would not - the law only applies to those 
charged with possession of a drug for personal use, not for use on others).

Proposition 36's online opponents also proclaim that it "opens the door to 
fraud, abuse, and fly-by-night drug treatment programs run by people 
interested in money, not results." In fact, it would only fund 
state-licensed programs.

Thus, the claim that "the initiative fails to specify who will regulate 
these facilities and fails to set licensing requirements and minimum 
treatment standards" is more than slightly misleading; the state Alcohol 
and Drug Programs Office already sets licensing requirements and treatment 
standards.

The human representative of the No on 36 campaign, Jean Munoz, a hired gun 
from the political consulting firm McNally Temple Associates, is rather 
more rational than the online propaganda. Munoz charges that the problem 
with the initiative is simply that it would provide less effective 
treatment than drug courts provide today. "If the objective is to help 
people overcome their addictions," Munoz says, "then what we need to do is 
expand existing programs that are already working," i.e., drug courts.

Munoz claims the treatment offered by Proposition 36 would be less 
effective than that prescribed by drug courts because it specifically 
prohibits the funding of drug testing and because it precludes the 
possibility of the "coercive treatment" offered in such courts, in which 
judges punish offenders with dirty test results by throwing them in jail 
for a week or two. "Drug addicts don't necessarily want to be in the 
treatment programs," she explains.

After a few rounds of coercive treatment, "They finally come around to 
wanting to get clean."

Proposition 36 campaign manager Dave Fratello says the issue is more than a 
philosophical difference over methods ("Ours puts the money into treatment. 
Theirs puts the focus on monitoring and punishment"). Drug courts do not 
exist in every county, and now reach only about 5 percent of eligible 
defendants. They are, he says, "very reliant on the individual judge," who, 
with a combination of compassion, firmness and detailed attention to each 
individual case, follows offenders throughout their recovery. "The problem 
is that we don't have enough judges like that," Fratello says. "It's just 
not realistic to grow that system."

The provision against funding drug testing, he explains, would not prevent 
judges from mandating testing.

It would just require them to use pre-existing funding sources, preserving 
the money put aside by the initiative for treatment itself.

Proposition 36 will not heal the hypocritical heart of a nation that extols 
the empty pleasures of consumerism while excoriating the unsanctioned 
ecstasies of illegal drugs.

It will not prevent the prohibition-spurred violence that takes thousands 
of lives each year. It will not help the inhabitants of countries whose 
entire economies and political systems have been corrupted by our war on drugs.

It will not cure the massive inequities that drive so many into addiction 
and despair.

But it very well may save tens of thousands of people who have hurt no one 
but themselves (if that) from having their lives destroyed by the cruelties 
of incarceration.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens