DRUGS TAKING HEAVY TOLL ON NATION

The War On Drugs Is Not Measured By Casualties Or Damage Inflicted On An
Enemy, But Its Statistics Are Alarming Nonetheless.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 17,000
people died of drug-induced causes in 1998. The U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services says 550,000 people made drug-related emergency room
visits in 1999.

The 1999 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse shows 14.8 million
Americans recently used drugs. The Office of National Drug Control Policy
(ONDCP) statistics show 35 percent of people sentenced in state court are
sentenced for narcotics violations. The federal government spent $18
billion fighting drugs in 2000.

The war on drugs is not fought in some far-off land or exclusively on this
country's borders. Its main battlefields are in homes, schools and cities.
The war is fought in towns large and small, including one of its more
recent battlefields - Tulia.

The battle lines in Tulia are drawn between supporters of law enforcement
who demanded action on a perceived drug problem in the town and supporters
of 46 people arrested in 1999 for selling drugs to an undercover officer.

Those arrested in Tulia are seeking justice in the courts, but many of the
individuals and organizations involved on their behalf have a bigger
target: the war on drugs.

Opponents of the drug war who helped bring Tulia to national prominence say
the town embodies all that is wrong with the nation's drug policy:
excessive sentences for small-time users, the destruction of families whose
parents are sent to jail, and the inordinately large number of minorities
arrested for drug crime.

"I'm truly sorry this happened to Tulia, because the people there have been
so nice to me," said Randy Credico, who brought his battle against drug
policy to Tulia on behalf of New York's William Moses Kunstler Fund for
Racial Justice. "Tulia just happens to be the example that best illustrates
the problem."

Dr. G. Alan Robison, executive director of the Houston-based Drug Policy
Forum of Texas (DPFT), said his organization also got involved in Tulia as
part of the larger fight to change drug policy.

"Everything about drug policy in this country is wrong," Robison said. "We
should have learned from alcohol Prohibition that you cannot regulate a
black market. It's easier for kids to get drugs than it is to get beer
because at least the people who sell beer and cigarettes are required to
ask for (age identification)."

Some may write these organizations off as pushing a drug legalization
agenda, but nearly everyone involved said legalization is not their objective.

Robison said he personally favors legalization, but the DPFT supports only
reform of drug laws.

Credico carefully refused to commit one way or another on legalization, but
fights fiercely and openly against current drug policy.

The element of drug policy most at question in Tulia is the
disproportionate number of minorities arrested for drug violations.

According to ONDCP figures, blacks make up about 15 percent of cocaine
users, yet account for 38 percent of those charged with powder cocaine
violations and 88 percent of those charged with crack cocaine violations.
Crack constitutes approximately half of the cocaine use in the United States.

That nearly all of the people arrested in Tulia are black, although blacks
make up only about 10 percent of the town's population, perfectly
illustrates how the drug war is inherently racist, according to Credico.
"Right now, the war on drugs is the most egregious example of racism in the
legal system," Credico said. "Blacks are unfairly singled out for arrest,
but everybody knows that it's not only blacks that are doing drugs. If they
made these kinds of arrests in a white, middle-class neighborhood, it would
never stand."

Credico said blacks are unfairly targeted because they are generally easier
to arrest and less likely to be able to provide themselves a quality defense.

That assumption is borne out by the experiences of Rodney Williams of
Houston, whose 31/2 years of undercover work in Texas and Florida gave him
a firsthand view of the problems with the war on drugs.

"The whole drug war we were fighting, we were fighting it wrong," Williams
said. "The drug war now is about money, It's about meeting those quotas and
keeping that federal money coming in. It's not about fighting drugs."

Williams' experience started in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where he worked
undercover buying narcotics. He said he saw the effects of the money
provided by the federal government manifested in pressure to make arrests.

Williams said officers would focus on making quick, easy busts to keep
their numbers up, which would inevitably result in the arrests of the poor,
mostly minority street dealers.

Things only got worse when Williams went to Palm Beach County, Fla., where
he experienced not only unfairness in the system, but outright corruption.

The officers in Florida were required to make five drug arrests a month and
acquire two search warrants to keep up with productivity requirements
attached to federal money. Williams said some officers would get to the end
of the month and be short on arrests, so they would plant evidence on
suspects to make their quota.

"In Texas, they may have bent the rules a little bit, but they did it right
for the most part," Williams said. "In Florida, the only thing that
mattered was making that quota, and some of those guys were willing to do
whatever it took to make it."

Williams said he reported the corruption to his supervisor, but the
officers received only a slap on the wrist. Williams was subjected to
harassment, transferred from the narcotics unit and eventually quit law
enforcement altogether.

Lt. Mike Amos with the Panhandle Narcotics Trafficking Task Force in
Amarillo refused to discuss specifics of the Tulia undercover
investigation, but was willing to talk about drug policy. Amos agreed the
federal government demands results for the money it spends fighting drugs,
but he said the pressure is not so high as to result in corruption.

"There's a little bit of truth to that, in that we have to show results,
but it's not just arrests," he said. "We do all sorts of other programs.
There's no sort of quota going on here."

Amos said the Task Force submits federal grant applications annually, and
must detail the work done with the money. The work includes training and
public awareness programs as well as arrests.

The money trail in drugs runs farther than narcotics agents, according to
Credico. The system requires a constant stream of new prisoners to justify
the huge expenditures in building new prisons and to support the economic
benefits associated with prison employment, he said.

"Prisons are a self-sustaining economic system," Credico said. "You're
creating a slave class (of prisoners) to justify the economics of prisons."

A study released this year by the Justice Policy Institute backs up many of
Credico's claims. According to the study, the prison population in Texas
grew at 11.8 percent yearly during the 1990s, nearly twice the national
rate of 6.1 percent. Texas now places first among all 50 states in the
number of prisoners.

The study also shows blacks are incarcerated at seven times the rate of
whites in Texas, with one in three young black males either in prison, on
parole or serving probation.

Amos said he has seen statistics indicating 85-90 percent of prisoners are
incarcerated for drug crimes or were under the influence of drugs when they
were arrested.

With such startling numbers, the obvious question is what can be done to
address the concerns?

One solution gaining steam is a movement toward treatment rather than
incarceration for drug offenders.

Bob Weiner with the ONDCP in Washington, said treatment options came into
favor during the Clinton administration and have shown great promise. Drug
courts, which allow non-violent drug offenders to choose treatment over
prison, have risen in number from 12 to 700 nationally in the past few
years. Funds for treatment have risen 35 percent, while prevention spending
has gone up 55 percent.

"The legalization advocates talk about treatment, but we've been leading
the way in that for years," Weiner said. "I love how they're just now
catching up, but you'll never see them giving the government credit."

Weiner said the recidivism rate among offenders in drug courts has declined
by 25-50 percent. Defendants who fail drug tests while in treatment are
simply sent to prison and treated as any other prisoner, Weiner said.

The disparity in jail sentences for minorities may be harder to overcome,
however.

Weiner said former White House National Drug Policy Director Barry
McCaffery pushed hard for the reduction of the federal sentencing disparity
between crack cocaine, a largely black drug, and powder cocaine. The
sentencing differential currently sits at 100 to one.

Beyond that, Weiner said the answers lie in education and changes to the
socio-economic factors pushing many poor blacks into the drug trade.

"Education is really the key," Weiner said. "You have to keep at it
generation after generation. But you also have to consider the demographics
of the criminal. You have to look at the poverty factor, the health-care
factor. You have to deal with the whole picture."