Pubdate: Sun, 03 Dec 2000
Source: Daily Camera (CO)
Copyright: 2000 The Daily Camera.
Contact:  Open Forum, Daily Camera, P.O. Box 591, Boulder, CO 80306
Fax: 303-449-9358
Website: http://www.bouldernews.com/
Author: Ethan A. Nadelmann, Los Angeles Times
Note: Ethan A. Nadelmann is executive director of the Lindesmith 
Center-Drug Policy Foundation (www.drugpolicy.org), a drug policy reform 
organization.

VOTERS DISSENT FROM THE WAR ON DRUGS

Election Day 2000 was a big day for drug policy reform.

In California, voters overwhelmingly endorsed Proposition 36, the 
"treatment instead of incarceration" ballot initiative that should result 
in tens of thousands of nonviolent drug-possession offenders being diverted 
from jail and prison into programs that may help them get their lives together.

The new law may do more to reverse the unnecessary incarceration of 
nonviolent citizens than any other law enacted anywhere in the country in 
decades.

It wasn't just California that opted for drug reform.

Voters in Nevada and Colorado approved medical-marijuana ballot 
initiatives, following in the footsteps of California, Oregon, Alaska, 
Washington state, Maine and Washington, D.C. In Oregon and Utah, voters 
overwhelmingly approved ballot initiatives requiring police and prosecutors 
to meet a reasonable burden of proof before seizing money and other 
property from people they suspect of criminal activity -- and also 
mandating that the proceeds of legal forfeitures be handed over not to the 
police and prosecuting agencies that had seized the property but rather to 
funds for public education or drug treatment.

These were not the only victories for drug policy reform at the ballot in 
recent years.

California's Proposition 36 was modeled in part on Arizona's Proposition 
200. In Oregon, the first of 11 states to decriminalize marijuana during 
the 1970s, voters in 1998 rejected an effort by the state Legislature to 
recriminalize marijuana.

And in Mendocino County, Calif., voters this year approved a local 
initiative to decriminalize personal cultivation of modest amounts of 
marijuana.

Clearly, more and more citizens realize that the drug war has failed and 
are looking for new approaches. The votes also suggest that there are 
limits to what people will accept in the name of the war on drugs. Parents 
don't want their teen-agers to use marijuana, but they also want sick 
people who could benefit from marijuana to have it. People don't want drug 
dealers profiting from their illicit activities, but neither do they want 
police empowered to take what they want from anyone they merely suspect of 
criminal activity.

Americans don't approve of people using heroin or cocaine, but neither do 
they want them locked up without first offering them opportunities to get 
their lives together outside prison walls.

So what do drug policy reformers do next? In the case of medical marijuana, 
three things: enact medical marijuana laws in other states through the 
legislative process; work to ensure that medical marijuana laws are 
effectively implemented; and try to induce the federal government to stop 
undermining good-faith efforts by state officials to establish regulated 
distribution systems.

The strategy post-Proposition 36 is somewhat similar.

The struggle over implementation of the initiative in California has 
already begun, with many of its opponents trying either to grab their share 
of the pie or to tie the process up in knots.

Powerful vested interests in the criminal justice business, accustomed to 
getting their way, did not look kindly on the challenges the proposition 
posed to the status quo. If California's new law is implemented in good 
faith, with minimal corruption of its intentions, the benefits could be 
extraordinary, saving taxpayers up to $1.5 billion in prison costs over the 
next five years while making good drug treatment available to hundreds of 
thousands.

Proposition 36 also provides a model -- both for initiatives in other 
states where public opinion favors reform but the legislature and/or the 
governor are unable or unwilling to comply, and in states such as New York, 
where no ballot initiative process exists to repeal draconian and archaic 
laws. The initiative victories demonstrated once again that the public is 
ahead of the politicians when it comes to embracing pragmatic drug policy 
reforms.

Yet there was also growing evidence this year that even some politicians 
are beginning to get it. Three states -- North Dakota, Minnesota and Hawaii 
- -- legalized the cultivation of hemp (to the extent permitted by federal 
law). Hawaii enacted a medical marijuana law this year, with the support of 
Gov. Ben Cayetano. And, most significant in terms of potential lives saved, 
three states -- New York, New Hampshire and Rhode Island -- each enacted 
laws making it easier to purchase sterile syringes in pharmacies.

New Mexico doesn't have the initiative process, but it does have a 
Republican governor, Gary Johnson, committed to far-reaching drug policy 
reform.

Many state Democratic leaders are critical of the war on drugs but wary of 
the governor.

The question is whether bipartisan support for sensible drug reforms can 
transcend generic partisan hostilities. The drug policy reformers' job is 
to help make that happen.

Perhaps it's too early to claim that all this adds up to a national vote of 
no confidence in the war on drugs.

But the pendulum does seem to be reversing direction.

Call it a new anti-war movement.

Call it a nascent movement for political and social justice.

Or simply call it a rising chorus of dissent from the war on drugs.

The election results have made it clear that drug policy reform is gaining 
momentum -- in California and across the country.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom