Pubdate: Sun, 03 Aug 2014
Source: Daily Home, The (Talladega,  AL)
Copyright: 2014 Consolidated Publishing
Contact:  http://www.dailyhome.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1632
Note:  also listed as contact
Author: Evan Halper, McClatchy-Tribune
Page: 2A

DRUG COURTS, MEANT TO AID ADDICTS, OF POT POLITICS

WASHINGTON - Attorney David West can't pinpoint precisely when he 
started to sour on the rapid expansion of drug courts - but the 
karate episode stands out.

West, a criminal defense lawyer in the Atlanta area, was representing 
a client busted in a town north of the city for possession of pot. 
Faced with the prospect of losing his driver's license and being 
haunted by a criminal record, the client opted for treatment.

The intensive, costly therapy was more appropriate for a heroin 
addict, West said. What he found particularly absurd was the 
requirement that his client enroll in and pay for three months of 
martial-arts training.

"It is ridiculous," said West, who has since had other clients 
ordered to take karate. "What does that have to do with marijuana?"

Both the White House and prominent Republicans have pushed to expand 
drug courts - programs that allow drug offenders to choose 
court-supervised treatment over punishment.

And there is little doubt that such programs can sometimes have 
dramatically positive effects. West and many experts credit them with 
transforming the lives of addicts.

But many longtime supporters of the program have become dismayed by 
the extent to which the courts now reach into the lives of people 
whose only infraction was to light up a joint.

More Americans are arrested for pot possession than any other drug 
offense, with more than 650,000 such arrests in 2012. In many areas, 
those charged with marijuana possession are the single largest group 
of offenders sent to drug-court treatment programs.

Though drug courts have been pitched as a way to divert hard-core 
addicts from prison and into treatment, strict eligibility rules in 
many jurisdictions bar chronic abusers of hard drugs.

"For serious drug offenders it has been a far better alternative than 
prison," said John Roman, a senior analyst at the Urban Institute who 
began studying drug courts 17 years ago, when only a handful existed. 
"The problem is very few people who have those serious problems get 
into one of these drug courts. Instead, we take all kinds of people 
into drug court who don't have serious problems."

As a result, the courts, which are controlled locally and now number 
more than 2,700, have become a battleground of marijuana politics. 
For example, while Colorado makes pot available for purchase to any 
adult who will pay the sales tax, some counties in neighboring Kansas 
send even casual users to treatment for drug abuse.

Some pot users who might have simply faced a fine in the regular 
court system are instead getting moved into the drug-court system for 
months on end, Roman said. They are often required to pay for 
expensive treatment programs and risk jail time if they break program 
rules along the way.

"Once you get that deep into the criminal justice system, it can be 
really hard to get out," Roman said.
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