NAACP RALLY TARGETS DRUG WAR

The nation's drug war was in the spotlight Saturday night at a rally
sponsored by the Amarillo chapter of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People.

The rally, which was held at the Amarillo United Citizens Forum Black
Cultural Center, attracted about 75 participants and featured Harvard
graduate and noted drug policy expert Deborah Peterson Small.

Small, who is the director of public policy and community outreach for
the Lindesmith Center in New York, involved the spectators in a
discussion about the problems she sees in the nation's current drug
policy, using the controversial 1999 undercover drug investigation in
Tulia as an illustration.

The major problem with the drug war in America stems from the focus on
law enforcement and incarceration rather than intervention and treatment
of drug addicts, Small said. That enforcement focus leads to
discrimination in drug arrests, ever-increasing costs for incarceration,
and the general failure of the effort to stop drugs, she said.

"We need to move away from a criminal justice model and toward a health
model," Small said. "I think if we were able to get people to look at
this as a health issue, we could begin to make progress on getting a
handle on the drug problem."

Small said she does not favor legalization of drugs, but rather
decriminalization, which would focus on treating drug addicts rather
than locking them up. Small said treatment is much more economical than
incarceration and shows a higher success rate at stopping drug abuse
than prison.

A shift in drug policy is not an easy step to take, but Small said she
sees increasing support for new ideas as the problems become more
familiar to the populace.

"I do believe that, in general, the public is starting to question the
underlying structure and thought of our drug policy," Small said. "With
more and more people getting caught up in drugs, not too many people
haven't seen the effects of drug policy in their own families."

Small said another major motivating factor for change will be money,
pointing to the uproar over recent calls to institute an income tax in
Texas, which would be used in part to support an increasing prison
population.

"Right now, that money (for incarceration) is hidden away," Small said.
"But as the penal system keeps growing, people will start to see how
much of their money is going to keep this non-producing enterprise
going."

The drug arrests in Tulia serve as a good illustration of what's wrong
with the drug war, Small said. An inordinately high number of minorities
were arrested, long sentences were handed out, and convictions were
secured with little evidence, all commons occurrences in the drug war,
she said.

Small's comments were followed up by Amarillo attorney Jeff Blackburn,
who filled the crowd in on the progress of the fight against the
arrests. The attorneys involved in the fight, which includes a
multi-million dollar civil lawsuit and efforts to get the cases
overturned on appeal, continue to work, with discovery in the civil suit
scheduled to be wrapped up in the next few months.

Blackburn said the attorneys will soon begin filing writs of habeas
corpus in attempt to overturn several of the cases that were settled
with plea bargains, then proceed with their plan to get all the cases
tossed out.

"We've got a very deliberate, very careful time frame laid out for all
of this," Blackburn said. "We're committed to seeing this through."

Blackburn also said a U.S. Department of Justice investigation into
possible civil rights violations in the arrests continues.

Small will continue her conversation about drug policy in Tulia today.
She plans to hold an open conversation about the drug war at noon in the
basement of the Swisher County Memorial Building at 127 S.W. Second St.
The meeting is open to the public.