Pubdate: Sat, 17 Oct 2009 Source: Trentonian, The (NJ) Copyright: 2009 The Trentonian Contact: http://www.trentonian.com Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1006 Author: Daniel J. Meara Note: Daniel J. Meara is public information officer for the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence of New Jersey. Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?159 (Drug Courts) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?199 (Mandatory Minimum Sentencing) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment) TIME TO RETHINK FAILED 'DRUG WAR' It hardly comes as a revelation that the drug war, with its imprisonment of countless thousands of nonviolent offenders, has been a fiasco. Nearly everyone, from the head of the Office of National Drug Control Police on down, has pronounced the drug war an utterly misguided and wrong-headed policy. Chris Christie recently said that New Jersey is in the Dark Ages for the way it imprisons nonviolent addicts rather than getting them treatment that would restore their lives and produce huge savings for the state. It is encouraging to hear such forceful language on the subject from a candidate for governor of New Jersey -- the state with the distinction of having the nation's highest proportion of inmates serving terms for nonviolent crimes. New Jersey is one of nine sties nationally participating in the Close the Addiction Treatment Gap initiative (CATG), one area of concern for which is a shift toward treatment rather than incarceration of nonviolent drug offenders. New CATG polling in the state shows a solid majority of residents (78 percent) agree that addiction is a disease. It follows that treatment is a far better course than prison for individuals who break the law because of an addiction. The success of the state's drug courts makes a compelling argument for moving further in this direction. Drug courts and intensive treatment cost less than half of imprisonment and have a far better chance of avoiding recidivism than imprisonment. Drug courts have a 3 percent reconviction rate vs. 40 percent for releases from prison. A great many of nonviolent offenders are sentenced under the state's mandatory minimums laws intended to keep drugs away from school children, a goal no one would argue with. The state's Sentencing Reform Review Commission called for shrinking drug-free school zones to within 200 feet of schools, down from 1,000 feet. The 1,000-foot zones mean that in cities there are few places that do not fall within the zones. The commission demonstrated that if you exclude the airport, virtually the entire city of Newark is a drug-free zone. The evidence conclusively shows that most arrests in drug-free zones were not dealing drugs to school children but were ensnared in a double trap of drug use and an ill-conceived if well-intentioned law. The time has come for New Jersey to cast aside the drug-war policies that envelope many addicted individuals in darkness of prison and the bleak future that comes with it. New Jersey needs to allocate resources so that enlightened responses to addiction -- and incidentally, ones that make better fiscal sense -- are allowed to flourish. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake