SYSTEM'S STANCE ON ILLEGAL DRUGS FILLING TEXAS PRISONS

Before Texas lawmakers get too far down the road during this session
expanding our prison system and enacting tough new laws for drug
violations, they should consider the possibility that public opinion is
moving in another direction.

In other parts of the country, America's commitment to zero tolerance for
drugs is unraveling.

In the recent past, voters in several states, not just kooky California,
have approved of laws that made it easier, not harder, for people with
actual medical needs to get their hands on marijuana without fear of long
prison sentences.

That's evidence on its own of an erosion in the public mind about the hard
line we've taken in this country to try to rid society of drugs regardless
of cost in dollars and in spent lives and personal freedom.

In California, too, voters have told the state to send most of those
convicted of nonviolent drug possession to treatment, not jail, according
to a rundown on the growing sentiment that we've overreacted to the drug
problem published in the Jan. 21 issue of The New York Times.

Arizona has passed a similar law, and New Mexico is expected to follow.

A week or so ago, New York Gov. George Pataki proposed softening that
state's laws that essentially require judges and juries to lock up drug
offenders and throw away the key.

In New Jersey about the same time, Gov. Christie Whitman said she was
reining in state police who had been using racial profiling to stop
motorists as they cast their net far and wide to catch drug law violators.

And before he left office, President Clinton put forward a plan that would
back off on tough federal drug sentencing laws and that would make
penalties for possession of crack cocaine consistent with penalties for
possession of the powdered variety.

What's going on here, Times reporter James C. McKinley Jr. suggested, is
that the public at large is no longer as fearful of crime as it was when
most of the strong and inelastic anti-drug laws were passed in the first place.

Crime, particularly violent crime, is indeed on the wane, according to FBI
and Justice Department reports, and that's the case all across the country,
even in large cities.

Undoubtedly that's a factor. But, it's just as likely that people have
looked long and hard at the consequences of our nation's war on drugs - put
in the spotlight again during the last years of the Clinton administration
when we committed ourselves to a protracted and hugely expensive police
action in Colombia - and have not seen much of a payoff for the investment.

In Texas, that investment has been in increased numbers of law-enforcement
officers and a vast prison system filled with nonviolent drug offenders who
have little hope of rehabilitation and less hope of making it when their
sentences are up. We have also created an environment where some basic
rights to property and liberty are subrogated to the goal of wiping out
illegal drugs.

Texans, like people elsewhere in the country, ought to be stopping along
about now long enough to see if we have our priorities in order, and it is
in that context that what's happening elsewhere has to come into view.

We can't spend what we need to spend to attract and keep the best teachers
and college professors, for example, while also trying to finance the
nation's largest penal system.

There's got to be a better way, and other states are taking the time to
look for it.

Texas ranks No. 30 among the states in spending per pupil, and No. 36 in
teacher salaries. Texas ranks No. 1 in total adults in the criminal justice
system and No. 2 in total number of prisoners.

Let's hope Texas legislators are paying attention.