DRUG WAR MYTH 5: IT ONLY IMPACTS BLACKS, HISPANICS

I mentioned drug war Myths 1 and 2 in this space on March 9; Myths 3
and 4 on March 23. Here is another. Drug War Myth 5: Only blacks and
other minorities who do drugs are affected by it.

Wrong! The drug war has been, is being and will continue to be
something that harms everyone, even its profiteers. Although the drug
war has been waged in a grossly selective manner against blacks and
Hispanics, there are far too many white casualties also, and their
numbers will inevitably increase.

Then there are taxes, for the most part paid by wealthy white people.
Being the world's largest penal colony (more than 2 million in the
U.S., 25 percent of the world total) is expensive; each prisoner costs
an average of $30,000 per year for incarceration alone and more than
$60 billion total. All told, the drug war is costing well over $200
billion annually, more than enough to fund that $1.3-$1.6 trillion tax
cut over 10 years we've been hearing about. In most states, higher
education budgets have been declining while corrections has been
rising; in many, the corrections budget is now the higher.

Not to mention the massive corruption it has created throughout our
entire society.

But the drug war impacts each of us in a far more profound way: It has
virtually eliminated due process (and other rights) in drug cases and
- - increasingly - in other areas. For when we allow the civil rights of
others to be violated, everyone else's turn will inevitably follow -
including wealthy white people. It has already started.

Amendment V of the Bill of Rights reads: "No person shall be held to
answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a
presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in
the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in
time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the
same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall he
be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor
be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;
nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just
compensation."

It seems clear enough: A person may not be deprived of life, liberty
or property without due process, and the government may not take
private property for public use without compensation. Yet the asset
forfeiture laws - ratified by the Supreme Court - allow private
property to be seized, without a court order, on the mere possibility
of it being used in a crime; in most cases criminal charges are never
filed. But charged or not, the owner must still sue the government to
get it back, and to be successful must prove that the property could
not have been used in a crime.

Due process? The Alice in Wonderland rationale is that property cannot
have civil rights, and the forfeiture is a civil action against the
property, not the owner. Most of us - including myself - cheered those
and other drug laws initially, because we were told, and we believed,
that they would make drug dealing more expensive and riskier and our
children safer.

But the forfeiture laws have had virtually no impact on drug dealing
or use. They have been abused, though. Big time. When governments have
the power to rob with impunity, they will. And they have.

On the federal, state and local levels boats have been seized because
a Coast Guard boarding party detected a trace of marijuana on a
passenger, with no evidence of the owner being aware of it. Homes of
elderly couples have been seized because a grandchild had a pot
smoking party in the basement, unknown to the owners. Cash has been
seized when drug-sniffing dogs detected a trace of cocaine on it, even
though most cash in circulation carries such trace amounts.

Some law enforcement units have been entirely self-supported from
proceeds of the assets seized, and other units have been set up
precisely to generate revenue that way.

Although the blacks and Hispanics of the inner cities have been
providing most of the warm bodies for all those new prison beds of the
prison-industrial complex, by and large they don't have much in assets
worth seizing. Wealthier people are needed for that. And that's who
the primary targets of the legal hijackers have been: the mostly white
middle and upper income classes. And not only for drug cases.

Case in point: New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has been using
those laws to seize the cars of people arrested for drunk driving;
even if acquitted they have to sue the city to get them back. And the
drunk driver stakeouts are not in Harlem or the South Bronx; they are
in the mostly white wealthy districts, because that's where the luxury
cars are.

The forfeiture abuses were so bad that the wealthy people impacted -
who also have political influence - prevailed upon Congress to reform
those laws. But similar laws still apply in most states. And in many
cases federal agencies now call in the locals to seize the property,
and the federal agencies receive a cut.

But far worse is the loss of due process in criminal matters, drug and
non-drug alike.

As mentioned in Drug Myth 1, most of those dreadfully long-term
drug-related prison sentences (10 years and longer) are for violation
of the conspiracy laws, not actual drug use or dealing. There is no
exception for conspiracy in the Bill of Rights, yet under the
conspiracy laws a defendant is presumed guilty, and must prove
impossibility of conspiring; mere possibility is enough to convict.
And judges, in direct violation of the Constitution, have been
routinely stacking the deck against defendants and then adding many
more years on top of those horribly long mandatory minimum sentences,
to send a message to other defendants.

From the drug warriors' point of view, the civil rights violations are
an absolute necessity; the massive volume of drug arrests was
threatening to collapse our judicial system when the courts had been
required to observe technicalities such as due process. But the
prisons were being built and needed filling.

The solution? Dismantle the Bill of Rights for drug cases. Jury trials
for them are virtually nonexistent now; with the laws and court rules
stacked to assure prosecutors a 99-percent success rate, few are
willing to risk conviction and the certainty of a 10-year plus
sentence. The courts have become a mere way station on the route from
drug bust to prison, judges simply rubber-stamping what the
prosecutors have already decided.

But the four-fold increase in prisoners since the mid-1970s is not
solely due to drug cases. The violations of civil rights have
inevitably spread to other areas, areas that significantly impact
white people also.

Historically, the prosecution success rate has been about 60-70
percent; now, thanks to use of the drug war tactics, it is better than
90 percent in non-drug-related cases and climbing. Prosecutors can now
afford to try more of their borderline cases and be more hard-nosed in
their plea bargain offers. Police can also be less careful about
obtaining evidence or other technicalities. Anyone arrested now -
guilty or innocent - has far less chance of being acquitted and is far
more likely to receive a prison sentence, for a much longer period.

You're white and don't do drugs, so the drug war doesn't impact you?
Think again. Long and hard.