TRIO'S BALLOT MEASURE WOULD RESTRUCTURE WAR ON ILLICIT DRUGS

A major battle in the drug war will be fought this year in Michigan.

The fight will have little impact on the amount of narcotics on state
streets. But it may push Michigan toward a more honest and rational
approach to handling drug crimes and drug users.

Don't dismiss the Michigan Drug Reform Initiative as the work of a
bunch of potheads intent on upending the state's drug laws. It's a
highly organized effort financed by a trio of super-rich
businessmen.

Investor George Soros, University of Phoenix founder John Sperling and
insurance executive Peter Lewis are serious about forcing America to
re-evaluate the war on drugs. They have put their own money behind a
string of ballot measures across the country aimed at overturning
mandatory sentencing and property forfeiture laws, allowing the use of
medical marijuana and requiring treatment rather than jail for first-
time offenders.

They've gone to voters 19 times and won 17 elections.

In Michigan, the trio will commit $2 million to $3 million to a ballot
proposal that would require stiff prison terms for major drug
traffickers, but wipe out most other mandatory minimum sentences for
drug crimes. Drug users would be treated, not jailed. Offenders
currently in jail would be eligible for resentencing under the new
law.

Drug warriors are attacking the measure as a back-door attempt to
legalize marijuana. It's not, although someday Michigan and the rest
of the country will have to confront the hypocrisy of permitting a
vigorous commerce in hard liquor while banishing the no-more
intoxicating or debilitating marijuana to the black market.

This proposal would help shift the focus of the drug war away from
drying up supply and toward addressing demand. It recognizes that the
25-year-old drug war, which continues at a cost of $75 billion a year,
has failed dismally.

To borrow a business analogy, the three executives want to restructure
the drug war. It's a familiar business model -- if one strategy isn't
delivering results, adopt another.

Ideally, reforming drug laws should be a legislative matter, and not a
reason to alter the state constitution through initiative. But backers
are taking their case directly to voters because politicians have
little stomach for surrendering the sacred supply-side battle plan.

The success the campaign has enjoyed in other states suggests the
public is tiring of the ever-escalating drug war. The drug supply is
as healthy as ever, despite our now worldwide effort to wipe it out.

Dave Fratello, political director of the Michigan campaign, argues
state voters understand the futility of locking up drug users in
prisons that are awash in drugs, and the unfairness of treating drug
offenders as a special class of criminal, even more heinous than
murderers and rapists.

He describes the initiative as "middle ground between continuing the
drug war forever and legalization. The practical reality is voters are
willing to take a step in that direction, but they don't want to get
rid of the laws altogether."

The initiative may at least get people thinking about whether drug use
should be treated as a criminal act or as the symptom of a
psychological problem, and how much criminality or availability really
influences the demand for drugs.