WAR RESISTERS LEAGUE

A Fight We Can't Win, A Useless Battle Plan.

There was a telling moment last week at the "War on Drugs" conference
held by the National Lawyers Guild at Wayne State University.

During a panel discussion that took place on Saturday, Wayne County
Sheriff Robert Ficano - one of the few people at the two-day gathering
who staunchly defended the status quo of criminalized drug use - was
asked by Metro Times why it was necessary to control marijuana by
putting pot smokers in jail. After all, tobacco use has been
drastically reduced in the past 30 years. If you can successfully
attack a terribly addictive drug such as nicotine through education
and treatment - without locking up a single cigarette smoker - why
can't the same approach be taken with marijuana?

Ficano responded by saying he thought perjury charges should have been
brought against the tobacco executives who several years ago testified
before Congress that nicotine isn't addictive. It's a fine sentiment,
but as far as a response to the question posed, a virtual non
sequitur. So he was asked the same thing again. His response the
second time around was that not all pot smokers end up incarcerated.
Certainly true, but it's equally true that literally millions of
people have been arrested because of marijuana-related offenses. A few
of them were in the audience last Saturday, offering horror stories
about paramilitary-style police raids on their homes based on the
suspicion they were growing dope.

So Ficano was asked once more for a coherent response. When the
moderator pointed out to the questioner that he was repeating himself,
he replied, "That's because I still haven't gotten an answer."

The moderator, constitutional lawyer Hugh M. Davis Jr., smiled and
said, "I don't think you are going to get one from the sheriff."

And with good reason. Ficano had to respond with babble because there
was no way he could provide a reasoned answer. And his intellectual
dishonesty reflects the big lie that was debunked time and again at
the conference.

The United States is spending billions of dollars a year in its
so-called war on drugs, with nearly every federal agency getting a
piece of the pie. It doesn't matter that the prohibitionist approach
is a costly failure. Too many special interests, from Ficano's
Sheriff's Department to the U.S. Forest Service to the CIA are
hopelessly hooked on the cash that the drug war pours into their coffers.

The result?

According to the federal government's own statistics, comparative
surveys of high-school seniors indicate that drugs such as heroin and
cocaine have become easier to obtain in the past decade. Marijuana is
almost universally available despite millions of arrests.

Even the well-established think tank the RAND Corporation, in a
government-funded study, found that "Treatment reduces about 10 times
more serious crime than conventional enforcement."

Faced with this harsh reality, even some law-and-order types are
admitting the current battle plan is failing. Former Detroit Police
Chief Isaiah McKinnon, now a professor at University of Detroit Mercy,
told the conference audience of about 200 that "we are fighting one
hell of a war and losing it every day."

"'Just say no' ain't never going to work," said McKinnon. "Let's start
thinking about areas other than 'Put them in jail and throw away the
key.'"

Those other areas, at least in part, were highlighted by community
activist Grace Boggs, keynote speaker at a conference dinner held Friday.

Prior to Boggs' talk, a documentary that showed her leading citizen
marches on crack houses in Detroit neighborhoods during the 1980s
drove home the point that she is anything but a defender of the drug
trade.

On Friday, however, Boggs drove home another point: "Putting
nonviolent offenders into prisons destroys a community."

Particularly communities inhabited by people of color.

At least two speakers during the conference pointed out that
minorities - especially African-Americans and Hispanics - are
purposefully singled out as targets by law enforcement.

"Racial profiling is a real phenomenon, not just a bunch of stories,"
said David Harris, a professor at the University of Toledo School of
Law.

According to Harris, who has written extensively on the subject, the
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration trained tens of thousands of law
enforcement officers across the country in racial profiling tactics
that resulted in disproportionate numbers of blacks and Latinos being
arrested.

"Everywhere we have the numbers, this has shown up," said
Harris.

According to the Washington, D.C.-based Criminal Justice Policy Foundation:
"While African-Americans constitute 12 percent of the U.S. population and
only 13 percent of all illicit drug users, they make up 38 percent of
persons arrested for drug offenses, 59 percent of those convicted of drug
offenses and 63 percent of those convicted of drug trafficking."

In her analysis, Boggs said that to deal effectively with the problem
we need to seek "restorative justice rather than punitive justice."

It is an approach, she said, that can't be limited to
individuals.

"What we should be doing," she explained, "is healing and rebuilding -
not just people, but entire communities."

It is a theme that was echoed throughout the conference. The real
solution to America's drug problem is not harsher laws and greater
enforcement. The answer lies in taking the billions of dollars
currently being wasted on police actions and redirecting that money
into programs that will fight poverty and despair. Spend that money to
improve education and health care and child care. Improve housing and
public transportation and employment opportunities. Spend that money
honestly teaching children about the reality of drugs. Make treatment
programs universally accessible to addicts.

For that sort of transformation to occur will require a grassroots
movement, observed Cheryl Epps, a former narcotics prosecutor for the
City of New York.

"The public will have to be in front of politicians on this," Epps
advised. "Unless we get very political, we won't put an end to this
senseless war."