DRUGS AND POLITICS

Jeffrey Kaye of KCET, Los Angeles reports on a California referendum
replacing jail time with drug treatment.

JIM LEHRER: Another kind of election issue now, drugs and politics in
California. Jeffrey Kaye of KCET, Los Angeles, reports.

JEFFREY KAYE: Call it the war against the war on drugs. California's
Proposition 36 would effectively end jail terms for possession and personal
use of illegal drugs, including marijuana and heroin. The campaign's
manager is Bill Zimmerman. His political consulting firm has been
coordinating campaign strategy for drug reform initiatives in several states.

BILL ZIMMERMAN: Proposition 36 carves out a population that almost
everybody agrees should be treated rather than incarcerated: People who are
arrested for the first or second time for simple drug possession, people
who have committed no other crimes, have not been dealing drugs, and have
no violent priors. We appropriate $120 million a year to give these people
treatment, and we prevent them from being incarcerated. They must be treated.

JEFFREY KAYE: In the last four years, laws allowing for the medical use of
marijuana have passed in eight states and the District of Columbia. On this
year's November ballot, citizens in Colorado and Nevada will vote on the
medical use of marijuana. Five other state ballots will contain proposals
to reduce criminal penalties for drug convictions. Most of the funding for
the ballot measures has come from three of the richest men in America:
George Soros, an international financier and billionaire philanthropist
based in New York; Peter Lewis of Ohio, head of Progressive Corporation,
the nation's fifth largest auto insurer; and Arizonan John Sperling, an
educational entrepreneur. Since 1996, the three have spent more than $9
million on drug reform initiatives. Sperling is founder of the nation's
largest for-profit university, the University of Phoenix. A former
humanities professor, he sees the drug war as a debacle, a domestic Vietnam
War.

JOHN SPERLING: I got into that because for ten years I had been concerned
with the impact of the drug war on our society. It is racist, it is
expensive, it is ineffective, it is bad for our foreign policy. There is no
redeeming quality to the war on drugs.

JEFFREY KAYE: The first victory for Sperling and his compatriots came in
1996, in his home state of Arizona-- a state known for its conservative law
and order image.

SPOKESPERSON: So vote yes on Prop 200. It's a better way.

JEFFREY KAYE: Arizona's drug reform initiative bankrolled by Sperling,
Lewis, and Soros, passed with a two-thirds majority. Proposition 200
mandates that first and second-time drug offenders go to treatment programs
instead of jail.

SPOKESMAN: Prop 200 won against all odds or all predictions. Everyone
thought we would fail, that it was far too aggressive.

JEFFREY KAYE: The Arizona law Sperling championed raised liquor taxes as a
source of financing. In its first year, Prop 200 provided $2 million to
drug education and treatment programs such as this one in mesa, Arizona.

SPOKESPERSON: Today, I am grateful for Prop 200-- and group. It's a good
feeling. Yes, it's a good feeling to be clean and especially for someone
who has every day done drugs for ten, 15 years.

JEFFREY KAYE: In addition to her counseling sessions-- a condition of
probation-- Collyn Burleson, a 29-year-old recovering methamphetamine
addict was placed in a halfway house. She says after years of drug abuse,
she's now receiving the support she needs.

COLLYN BURLESON: Any time I feel weak, no matter where I am, I can come,
spend the night, do my laundry. It doesn't matter. I can... I have a place
to fall back on. I don't really plan on leaving after the first few months,
though. I think that it's safe, and...

JEFFREY KAYE: And that's what you need-- safety and security.

COLLYN BURLESON: For now, yeah.

JEFFREY KAYE: Supporters of the Arizona law say it's pushed drug users into
treatment and kept them out of jail. But opponents counter it's taken away
an important therapeutic tool, the threat of incarceration. Maricopa County
Attorney Richard Romley, the chief prosecutor in Phoenix, says convicted
drug users need to know they'll go to jail if they don't get treatment.

RICHARD ROMLEY: We're not here to throw them in jail, but we need to have
something holding over their heads, so that if they don't... if they don't
comply with it, they know that there's a potential sanction.

JEFFREY KAYE: Critics of California's Proposition 36 make the same arguments.

JANE PFEIFER: The proponents would have you believe that it's about
incarceration or jailing clients as opposed to treating them. And that is
not it.

JEFFREY KAYE: Jane Pfeifer is with the campaign opposing the initiative.
She is a drug court administrator in northern California.

JANE PFEIFER: We're hearing all the time from clients that is was that
brief time in custody, and then they come back out into treatment, that
allowed them to turn it around. And that was the turning point, not that it
changed everything, but it allowed them to get focused and to get real
about it.

JEFFREY KAYE: But the reality, argue Proposition 36 opponents, is that
California's jails and prisons, like the rest of the nation's, are brimming
with drug offenders, few of whom get little or any treatment.

SPOKESMAN: One out of every four prisoners on planet Earth is an American.
That's a horrifying statistic, and it's driven entirely by the war on
drugs. If Proposition 36 passes, 37,000 people a year-- every year-- will
get treatment instead of incarceration. That's how many people are
incarcerated by this state on a regular basis.

JEFFREY KAYE: In Arizona, they've heard the same arguments. Tales of
small-time or first-time drug users sentenced to prison. Prosecutor Romley
says the statistics have been exaggerated.

ROMLEY: We did a study. Not one first-time user was in prison. They all had
prior felony offenses. They had all had charges pled down from much more
serious offenses to a drug possession offense. There was not one.

JEFFREY KAYE: Romley is on a crusade to defeat drug reform initiatives. He
helped produce a video distributed nationally, claiming that the backers of
the propositions have a hidden agenda.

SPOKESMAN: The pattern seen here is only the beginning, yet presents a
frightening look at the pro-drug lobby's true motive. These legalization
campaigns are increasingly infecting our nation.

SPOKESMAN: These propositions I think are a Trojan horse. The real
objective is legalization. You can see that clearly if you look at the
year-by-year, changing of the propositions over time towards full legalization.

SPOKESMAN: None of us like drugs. What it is, is we don't like the drug
policies that turn an addiction or a psychological problem into a criminal act.

JEFFREY KAYE: Do you want to go beyond what you've done in the states where....

SPOKESMAN: Yes, we want no incarcerations for drugs at all. Period.

JEFFREY KAYE: So would it be fair to say that your ultimate goal is
decriminalization?

SPOKESMAN: No. We use the term medicalization. And if the medical community
decided that decriminalization was the best way to deal with it, then we
would support it.

JEFFREY KAYE: Looking to the future, Sperling and his allies hope that
changes at the state level will influence federal policies, and ultimately
force a cease-fire in America's drug war.