DRUG WAR IS IN FIGHT OF ITS LIFE

LOS ANGELES - Their political operatives call them "the funders," a trio of
enormously wealthy businessmen who are united behind one idea: that the war
on drugs is a failure. And they want to end it.

So with their money, consultants and sophisticated polling, they are
transforming drug policy in America with a steady stream of ballot
initiatives about medical marijuana, incarceration and drug-related
forfeitures. They are winning at the ballot box and in the courts.

The only other issue that has seen as much activity in the states through
the ballot initiative process is campaign finance reform.

Their latest and most ambitious salvo is aimed at California, where voters
are being asked to support a broad ballot initiative that virtually would
bar authorities from sending nonviolent drug users to jail. It is modeled
after a similar measure, the first of its kind, that passed in Arizona.

The most recent polls show the California measure passing - this in a state
that is tough on crime and has the largest prison population per capita in
the world. If successful, the California measure could signal a profound
change in society's approach to drug abusers - as people needing help, not
as criminals to be locked away.

"We know the federal government is totally incapable of reform," said John
Sperling, who founded the for-profit adult education institute known as the
University of Phoenix and is one of three financial backers of the
initiative. "The politicians in Washington, they live in fear of the
right-wing moralists. So we're going around them."

The initiative, Proposition 36, is vigorously opposed by a loose coalition
of prosecutors, narcotics officers, prison guards, politicians and judges
who operate so-called drug courts. They decry the measure as "dangerous and
misleading" and a stealth effort to decriminalize possession of illegal drugs.

Actor Martin Sheen, who plays a president on the television series "The
West Wing" and whose son Charlie was addicted to cocaine, is serving as
honorary chairman of the no-on-Prop 36 group. He said in a statement:
"We're not going to help drug abusers by decriminalizing dangerous and
highly addictive drugs like heroin, crack cocaine, PCP and methamphetamine
- - but that's essentially what this initiative does."

To which Sperling answers: baloney.

The backers purposefully have not supported publicly a ballot initiative in
Alaska that calls for the decriminalization of marijuana for personal use.
They point out, as their opponents do, that simple possession of marijuana
in many states such as California is a misdemeanor, punishable by something
akin to a $100 parking ticket. There is rarely jail time.

Calling elected officials "cowards," Sperling said that after he made his
money, he decided the time was right to confront the drug war, which he
calls "social insanity." He is particularly incensed by the incarceration
of hundreds of thousands of drug abusers around the nation. He says the
prison system is operating like an old Soviet-era "gulag" that
disproportionately puts poor people of color behind bars for their
addictions, while the wealthy and white more easily evade jail and go into
expensive treatment programs.

Sperling and his fellow "funders" paid for extensive polling and focus
groups and found that many citizens agreed with them. And since 1996, they
have been quite successful. His investment of several million dollars "has
paid off handsomely," Sperling said. "Before, there was silence. Now, there
is a public debate."

Under Proposition 36, instead of prison, first- and second-time offenders
convicted of simple possession (of even the hardest drugs, such as heroin
and cocaine) could not be sent to jail on the drug charges - though if they
were driving while high, for example, they could be jailed for the traffic
offense.

Instead, a convicted drug abuser would be placed on probation and sentenced
to mandatory treatment, most likely paid for by the state with some $120
million in new money each year. It would mean that as many as 37,000
addicts and users a year would not see the inside of a jail, but instead be
routed into treatment. If arrested several times, they could be jailed for
30 days.

In addition to Sperling, the financial backers of the California measure,
and seven other anti-drug-war ballot initiatives around the nation this
November, are George Soros of New York, the Hungarian-born Holocaust
survivor, financier and currency speculator who is worth an estimated $5
billion, and Peter Lewis of Cleveland, head of the fifth-largest auto
insurer in the nation, the Progressive Corp. The three have so far put
almost $1 million each into Proposition 36 in California, overwhelming
their organized opponents.

They have also spent millions more to support "medicinal marijuana"
initiatives around the nation. This November, the backers are supporting
two such measures in Colorado and Nevada. In past elections, they have won
approval for medical marijuana initiatives in seven states.

Finally, they are attacking a popular law enforcement tool in the war on
drugs. They have paid to place ballot initiatives before voters in
Massachusetts, Oregon and Utah that would stop police from seizing property
from alleged drug dealers or would forbid police departments to get
proceeds of drug forfeitures. Sperling and his partners consider the
forfeiture laws un-American. "We're trying to break their rice bowl,"
Sperling said of the law enforcement agencies that directly benefit from
the proceeds of the confiscations.

Why are they doing this?

"They have one thing in common," said Ethan Nadelmann, director of the
Lindesmith Center in New York, who brought the three men together. "They
all hate the drug war and they all think it is a travesty, and despite what
our opponents say, none of them support legalization. That's what they have
in common, that and having a lot of money."

Nadelmann's Lindesmith Center and Drug Policy Foundation is supported by
Soros. Soros, Sperling and Lewis have only met face to face a couple of
times. Indeed, Nadelmann does not get much face time himself with Soros,
for whom ending the war on drugs represents about 5 percent of his
philanthropic giving.

The California measure has been criticized by opponents as "misleading and
dangerous." The core of their arguments against the proposition, as
explained by Larry Brown, executive director of the California District
Attorneys Association, is that it allows convicted drug abusers to elude
real responsibility and punishment for their crimes. In essence, there is
only a carrot, Brown and others contend, not a stick. The judges lose their
discretionary powers to throw some addicts in jail.

The opponents argue that without the ability to send recalcitrant drug
abusers to jail, many will make only half-hearted efforts to quit using.
They charge that the measure is an attempt to "decriminalize" drug use,
even for serious substances, that it sends the wrong message to young
people and children, and that it makes it easier for users to continue to
work as doctors, teachers "and even school bus drivers."

California's drug court judges say Proposition 36 undermines a system that,
while underfunded, is working: Drug abusers under drug court supervision
constantly have their urine tested, and judges can order some jail time to
get the abuser's attention.

The proponents of Proposition 36 respond that drug courts only reach about
5 percent of arrested users in California. They say that the measure
requires abusers, while under probation, to pursue treatment. If they
refuse or fail, there are repercussions.

Sam Vagenas, a political consultant on the drug reform initiatives who
works with Sperling, said that the central philosophy behind the measure is
that drug abuse is a physical and mental problem.

Vagenas and other backers of Proposition 36 point out that an independent
report by the California Legislative Analyst office concludes that the
measure will save state taxpayers between $100 to $150 million a year by
keeping abusers out of jail and prison (which can cost $24,000 a year) and
also will mean the state reaps a one-time savings of some $500 million,
because California will not need to build another prison in the short term.

Vagenas said that the three men will keep paying to put similar measures on
state ballots as long as the public supports them. Eventually, he said,
they will press their case in Washington. "By passing these initiatives
across the country," Vagenas said, "we could show politicians in Washington
and in state houses around the nation that drug reform is not the third
rail of politics - that you can touch it without getting electrocuted."