Pubdate: Sun, 03 Jun 2001
Source: Sacramento Bee (CA)
Copyright: 2001 The Sacramento Bee
Contact:  http://www.sacbee.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/376
Author: Peter Schrag

THE FOOD STAMP: WEAPON IN THE WAR ON DRUGS

In little more than a month, California launches a major experiment in the 
management and control of illegal drugs. Under Proposition 36, which goes 
into effect July 1, anyone convicted of simple possession will be allowed 
to choose treatment instead of prison. If the offender successfully 
completes treatment, he or she can petition the court to have the 
conviction dismissed.

But under a punitive last-minute floor amendment written into the 1996 
welfare reform act by Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, anyone convicted of a 
felony drug violation will be denied food stamps and certain other federal 
benefits for life. (Rapists and murderers are subject to no such penalties; 
nor are welfare cheats.) That makes treatment and rehabilitation that much 
tougher, both for the offender and her family.

The law allows individual states to opt out of the ban, something that 28 
have done in whole or in part, but which California has not. Two years ago, 
a bill carried by Republican Sen. Cathie Wright that would have ended the 
prohibition was approved by the Legislature, but vetoed by Gov. Gray Davis 
because, he said, "Convicted felons do not deserve the same treatment as 
law-abiding citizens, especially those that manufacture, transport or 
distribute drugs."

And so thousands of Californians -- among them breast-feeding women, the 
old, the ill, parents of young children, many of them convicted only on 
possession charges and long cured of their addiction -- are denied food 
stamps and federal benefits under TANF, Temporary Aid for Needy Families 
(called CalWORKs in this state). The food stamps cost the state nothing.

The federal law makes no tender distinctions between first offenders and 
career drug dealers, between adolescents and adults. And while children of 
drug offenders can still get their food stamps, when a parent is denied her 
benefits, the children inevitably suffer as well. It's the poor, who need 
the aid, who bear the brunt of the law's effects; big-time dealers don't 
need food stamps.

Now a new bill, AB 767 by Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg, D-Los Angeles, is 
moving through the Legislature. The bill, which narrowly passed the 
Assembly in mid-May, would cover only drug offenders convicted of use or 
possession who have completed a drug treatment program, who are in a 
program or who are willing to participate in such a program. Drug 
traffickers would still be subject to the lifetime ban.

The bill has a good chance in the Senate, but the governor has not yet 
indicated whether he would sign it. Although he's famously averse to 
anything linked to poverty, this is one that would serve the general 
welfare, not just the individuals who would directly benefit from it.

Because AB 767 would eliminate the clumsy contradiction between help and 
punishment, the imminent implementation of Proposition 36, which voters 
approved last fall, makes Goldberg's bill particularly urgent. If offenders 
who otherwise qualify for food stamps were not denied those benefits 
precisely when they most needed them, the odds of successful treatment 
would be considerably enhanced. (The Goldberg bill also would cover people 
serving prison terms and all those convicted since the welfare reform law 
was passed in 1996.)

It's a no-brainer. "The denial of aid," said Casey McKeever of the Western 
Center on Law and Poverty, "can cause serious problems, especially mothers 
of children who are attempting recovery but need economic support in the 
process. Some drug treatment programs depend on public assistance to cover 
[clients'] expenses."

In some cases, residential treatment centers require their patients to give 
them their food stamps -- which in turn decreases the cost to the agencies, 
including taxpayers, that fund those facilities. That makes the drug felony 
law, as Mr. Bumble said, "a ass, a idiot," undermining with one rule the 
treatment and rehabilitation that public policy otherwise so earnestly 
pretends to encourage.

It's not the only such federal law. Another, passed in 1998, denies anyone 
convicted of a drug offense all rights to federal student loans and grants 
for at least a year and often longer. Again, no other category of crime -- 
robbery, murder, rape -- triggers such a penalty.

Until this year, the feds were casual about enforcement -- students who 
failed to answer an application question about drug convictions, as 279,000 
did last year, got their grants anyway. Now the Bush administration will 
deny the loans to anyone who doesn't answer. Not surprisingly, students and 
college financial aid officials are now organizing against it.

Both laws are artifacts of an era, increasingly repudiated by American 
voters, when interdiction and punishment were embraced as the only 
effective instruments of drug control in this country.

But in the case of the food stamp rule, the Legislature and governor have 
an easy alternative: Pass AB 767. If they do, they'll send Washington yet 
another signal that there are fairer and smarter ways to combat drugs.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens