PROP. 36 HELPS CHANGE DUMB DRUG POLICIES

Just as swallows annually flit home to San Juan Capistrano, and Mr. Jack
Frost comes a-nippin' during fall, I practically froth at the mouth every
year during Red Ribbon Week.

This year, though, I did not burst into my annual rant about the failed and
illiberal War on Drugs. This year we have Proposition 36. Wise Prop. 36 --
treatment not jail for minor, first-time drug offenders -- has been my
calming Prozac.

It's likely victory (a recent L.A. Times poll shows 58 percent of
Californians supporting it, 28 percent no, the rest undecided) means we can
look forward to at least one drug policy that actually works. A drug policy
that does not hemorrhage tax money, expand the ominous California gulag or
apply the state jackboot to our sacred civil liberties.

No thanks to government, of course. No, the grim generals are busy plotting
to invade Colombia, while the increasingly tyrannical feds fight the killer
bunny of voter-approved medical marijuana in the courts.

Yet change is coming. Finally.

Spine grower

Arizonans passed a version of Proposition 36 in 1996; preliminary studies
say more than half the druggies who complete treatment stay drug-free.

Because treatment works, Proposition 36 may rehabilitate not only
California's druggies but its spineless politicians. They know the war on
drugs has failed. They merely consider saying so a political taboo.

When they see that voters support smart alternative drug policies, they no
longer will need to ape the call for tougher laws, tougher punishments, no
matter what the cost.

Proposition 36 is part of something bigger: a national campaign to undo the
worst excesses of the War on Drugs. A measure similar to 36 is on the
Massachusetts ballot. Measures in Oregon and Utah seek to overhaul the
unAmerican asset-seizure laws.

Under these illiberal laws, police can seize your money, home and other
assets because they suspect you're a drug crook. You, poor sap, are guilty
until proven innocent.

The Oregon law restores due process, requiring conviction before asset
forfeiture. In Utah, the proposed law will give seized assets to schools,
not police.

Those funny feds

Sanity, at last. Naturally the feds will fight it.

Loopy from squandering $19.2 billion a year on its stunningly ineffective
drug war, the federal government is fighting California's 1996 decision to
give suffering patients needed marijuana all the way to the Supreme Court.
If they're going to the wall to stop AIDS sufferers from eating marijuana
brownies, God help Colombia.

Yet this appallingly anti-democratic campaign has a silver lining. When the
feds threatened California's doctors over medical marijuana, doctors fought
back, winning the right to recommend marijuana to needy patients.
Consequently, so did doctors in all states. Rulings in federal court become
the law of the land.

So those honest enough to admit the need for change in the War on Drugs
need not schlepp to every state to drive a stake through bad drug policy.
And columnists in all 50 states need not degenerate into bitter harangues
every Red Ribbon Week as I do. A few Proposition 36s here and there and we
might just turn this crazy thing around.

Fitzgerald's column runs Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Mail: P.O. Box 900,
Stockton, CA 95201. Phone: 546-8270. Fax: 547-8186. E-mail:
michaelf@recordnet.com