21-YEAR 'WAR ON DRUGS' SPIRALS INTO WEB OF INJUSTICE

They marched by the thousands Thursday in Jena, La., to protest a
terrible injustice against six teenagers there, and rightfully so. As
the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said in his famous April 16,
1963, Letter from the Birmingham Jail, "Injustice anywhere is a
threat to justice everywhere."

Now that the injustice toward those six young African-American
teenagers in Louisiana has been brought to the nation's attention,
it's time for those of us in Tennessee and elsewhere around the
United States to move toward protesting another gross injustice
that's been hanging around for far too long.

That's the war on drugs, which officially was started under President
Reagan's administration in 1986.

"Our goal in this crusade is nothing less than a drug-free
generation," Reagan was quoted as saying in October 1988 as he signed
a $1.7 billion bill, which at the time doubled the federal
government's budget for chasing drug dealers and smugglers and
stiffened penalties for traffickers. At the time, it was the most
sweeping anti-drug program ever passed by Congress.

"Today marks a major victory in our crusade against drugs," Reagan
said that day in Washington before signing the new legislation. "The
American people want their government to get tough and go on the offensive."

But a newly released report says that "war on drugs" has been mostly a failure:

Drug arrests triple since 1980: 82 percent of arrests are for
possession offenses.

Prison treatment programs lagging: Drug abusers are less than half as
likely to be in treatment as in 1991.

Racial disparities: African-Americans are 14 percent of drug users,
but 37 percent of those arrested and 56 percent of those imprisoned for drugs.

"The number of people in the nation's prisons and jails for drug
offenses has swelled by 1,100 percent since 1980 to a record
half-million people," a report released Thursday by the
Washington-based Sentencing Project says. The analysis, done by the
national nonprofit organization engaged in research and advocacy on
criminal justice policy, found that the "war on drugs" has
increasingly targeted low-level offenders for arrest and
incarceration and is largely failing to provide adequate treatment in prison.

Now, isn't this an injustice that merits our undivided attention?

"This report opens up the discussion in a more significant way than
has taken place in the last 20 years," said Marc Mauer, who along
with Ryan S. King authored the new report titled, "A 25-Year
Quagmire: The War on Drugs and Its Impact on American Society."

"We're seeing bipartisan interest in reform, and we're also seeing
criticism of the war on drugs coming from a broad-based spectrum of
constituencies," Mauer said. "We've also got some good models in
place for more cost-effect measures to deal with substance abuse."

The report coming from The Sentencing Project is based on an analysis
of 25 years of government data regarding drugs and the criminal
justice system. Mauer and King, along with others from their
organization, found that the tripling of drug arrests since 1980, to
a record 1.8 million by 2005, largely bypassed the "kingpins" of the
drug trade. The report said in 2005, four of five (81.7 percent) drug
arrests were for possession offenses and 42.6 percent were for
marijuana charges.

During the 1990s, the report added, fully 79 percent of the total
growth in drug arrests was attributable to marijuana possession.

The report recommends:

Shifting funding priorities toward prevention and treatment.

Repealing mandatory sentencing laws and granting appropriate
discretion to judges.

Increasing treatment options within the criminal justice system
through drug courts and other measures.

Utilizing public health approaches that emphasize prevention and treatment.

Again, thousands and thousands of people came from all over the
nation Thursday to march in protest of an injustice in Jena, La., and
it was merited. Now, we need to contact our lawmakers, both locally
and nationally, to urge them to take a new look at our drug policy.
Some are already doing just that because the old "war on drugs" is failing us.

What good does it do to lock up a low-level drug offender and the
trafficker goes free? What good does it do to lock up a drug addict
and he comes back on the street without having been treated?

I think you know the answer, but we must act on it just as we have
done in Nashville with our Drug Court.