Pubdate: Sun, 18 Aug 2013
Source: Dallas Morning News (TX)
Copyright: 2013 The Dallas Morning News, Inc.
Contact: http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/send-a-letter/
Website: http://www.dallasnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/117

THE DRUG GULAG

New Tack on Low-Level Offenses Is the Right Approach

Attorney General Eric Holder's overhaul of federal drug prosecutions 
concedes a fact that the public grasped long ago: The nation's 
42-year-old "war on drugs" has devolved into an overwrought, 
unaffordable policy jumble that helped turn America's prison system 
into a vast human warehouse.

The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world -- 
about seven times that of Western European nations   and nearly half 
of all federal prisoners are doing time for drug-related offenses. 
With just 5 percent of the global population, the U.S. incarcerates 
about a quarter of its prisoners.

Something has to give, and Holder's decision to back off of long 
minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenders with no ties to 
organized crime is a logical place for him to start.

"The course we are on is far from sustainable," he told the American 
Bar Association, in announcing the policy change this week. Agreed.

Holder pointed out that states have already curtailed their 
prison-building binges, turning instead to treatment and better 
supervision to address drug offenders. It's notable that Holder 
singled out Texas for praise, citing this state's success last year 
in reducing the prison population by 5,000 inmates through treatment 
and parole policies. Taxpayers benefit, and rehabilitated offenders 
stand a better chance of making a contribution to society.

Coalitions of conservative and liberal activists have been clamoring 
for that approach in Texas and elsewhere, and it's good to see the 
nation's top law enforcer giving it currency.

Holder is also throwing his support behind bipartisan efforts in 
Congress to give judges discretion in sentencing low-level drug 
offenders. Sens. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, and Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, 
have a bill to provide a "safety valve" so judges can impose 
sentences below mandatory minimums in appropriate cases. These kinds 
of reforms are headed in the right direction.

Starting with President Richard Nixon's 1971 declaration that illicit 
drugs were "public enemy No. 1," the law enforcement inertia has 
reached breathtaking proportions. Since passage of tough-on-crime 
laws in the 1980s and '90s, state prison populations have quadrupled 
and the federal system has grown by 800 percent.

Today, the federal government must also reckon with the parade of 
states passing medical marijuana laws (20 so far) or legalizing 
personal use of the weed altogether (Colorado and Washington). While 
pot sales have become regulated commerce in some states, marijuana 
remains a dangerous Schedule 1 drug in the federal criminal code, 
creating a lingering policy headache for Holder's Justice Department.

More mainstream voices are calling for careful reconsideration. Doing 
his own analysis of the research, CNN's chief medical correspondent, 
Dr. Sanjay Gupta, declared last week that the public has been 
"terribly and systematically misled for nearly 70 years" about 
marijuana's dangers and potential benefits.

That's not Holder's fight, yet. He is taking on what is within his 
immediate authority by slowing down the flow of convicts into the 
nation's drug gulag.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom