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STERLING TALKS ABOUT WAR ON DRUGS

Criminal Justice Policy Foundation President Eric Sterling knows that America is losing its War on Drugs -- with heavy casualties.  His solution? Not tougher drug laws, but smarter ones.

Sterling spoke at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford Monday and took time to sit down with The Era and talk about American anti-drug policy and a remedy to the nation's drug problem.

Sterling, who was counsel to the U.S.  House of Representatives from 1979 to 1989, took part in helping minimum drug sentencing legislation pass at that time.  He also wrote mandatory sentencing guidelines for the Democratic Party.

However, in working closely with these issues, Sterling came to believe that minimum drug sentencing is detrimental and ineffective.  Moreover, he believes that the really dangerous aspects of the illegal drug industry could be muted with the legalization and regulation of the very substances that America is currently at war with.

Sterling said that current anti-drug policy in America is based on coercion and violence.  Both of which are wrong in Sterling's opinion.

This is best illustrated by the way most search warrants are executed in poor neighborhoods or those made up mainly of racial minorities, he said.  Often, armed police officers break into the suspect's home very early in the morning, masked and shouting orders.  This is a deliberate tactic used by the police to disorient the suspect and prevent him from shooting back, Sterling said.

However, he wrote that such "dynamic entries" are an "extraordinary level of violence directed at "suspects" and their families -- persons constitutionally considered innocent."

One of the most powerful forms of coercion is imprisonment, Sterling wrote.  Rape and violence is endemic in American prisons, he said.

More than 1.5 million people have been arrested annually on drug charges every year since 1996.  That figure is more than twice the number of arrests for the major violent crimes committed annually, he said.  And of the 1.5 million drug arrests, some 800,000 were marijuana-related incidents, he added.

Sterling also believes that current anti-drug strategy contributes to violent condition within the drug marketplace.

"Because drugs are illegal, they are phenomenally valuable," he wrote in the magazine article, titled "Friendly Fire: Rethinking the War on Drugs from a Quaker Perspective."

Sterling said that modern drug laws are a "form of alchemy." Government officials have achieved what ancient chemists tried to do for ages, he said.  They have turned some common substance into gold -- except the substances are illegal drugs and they are actually worth way more than gold these days.

An ounce of gold currently sells for about $300 in New York or London, Sterling said, putting it at about $9 or $10 per gram.  Platinum is worth twice as much as gold.  However, a gram of pure cocaine is worth just under $200 per gram, he said.

With drug markets operating with such an enormous cash flow and inventory worth five to 35 times more than gold, thefts and subsequent criminal retaliation in the marketplace between users, dealers or gangs is very common.  These types of conflict cannot be resolved without violence, Sterling wrote.

Not only are prices up, but purity is up as well, Sterling said of illegal drugs in America.  Heroin available on the streets today is five times more pure than it was in 1980, he said.

Though some will try to argue that America is winning the War on Drugs, some statistics suggest otherwise.  Prices are high, but also at all-time lows, relatively speaking.  Purity is up and deaths from overdoses of cocaine, heroin, stimulants, depressants and hallucinogens have doubled in the last 20 years, Sterling said.

Sterling feels that adding insult to injury is the fact that while the government's current policies seem ineffective, the cost of the War on Drugs has escalated -- "meaning we are actually paying to achieve this failure," he wrote.

Another big problem Sterling sees with the current anti-drug policies in America is that drug enforcement is racially discriminatory, he said.

The first anti-drug legislation came in the 1870s with the anti-opium laws, which Sterling said really had more to do with the people using the drug than its inherent negative effects.  Chinese immigrants in California were a target for xenophobia by those of European descent, who were competing with the Chinese for jobs.

In the 1920s and 30s, the government started cracking down on marijuana, and introduced the Marijuana Tax Act in 1937.  Sterling said Monday that this law was a way to discriminate against Mexicans and blacks, who were associated with marijuana use in that time period.

More recently, when Sterling served in the House Judiciary Committee, he said that "the crack-cocaine epidemic had a black face." In fact, the dynamic entries mentioned above almost never happen to a white suspect.  A white-collar criminal can go through his attorney, surrender himself to the court at his own convenience and never be even the slightest bit disheveled by enforcement officers, Sterling said.

Two-thirds of all blacks in federal prisons are serving on drug charges, Sterling said.  Moreover, only a quarter of white criminals jailed are serving on drug charges, he said.  Some 38 percent of people arrested for drugs in a given year are black, he said, and 58 percent of the people convicted on drug charges are black.  This is what Sterling refers to as a "pattern or practice of discrimination" in the anti-drug policies.

All of these factors contribute to America's failure to control illegal drugs, Sterling said.

He went on to say that America has a "genius for regulation," and that there is nothing that society does not regulate -- except illegal drugs, that is.  Prohibition is the opposite of regulation, he said.  Sterling feels that in time, if drugs were legalized, they could be regulated, researched and probably used for productive efforts.

Sterling referred to the Controlled Substances Act as the "oxymoron law," saying there is nothing more out of control in America than illegal drug use.  He also stated that a legal drinking age of 21 years was "stupid drug law number one."

In European countries like Italy, where the legal drinking age outside the home is 16 years and children drink even earlier in the home, there is no binge drinking on college campuses or among high school student, Sterling said.  He feels the American attitude toward alcohol leads to a style of consumption that is a problem on just about every college campus in America.

Sterling is not a drug advocate, he said.  He simply wants to see healthier, safer communities.  "And the current anti-drug policies are not giving us that," he said.  "We don't need tougher drug laws, just smarter ones."