GOV. PATRICK, FIX BAY STATE DRUG POLICY

DRUG ABUSE presents such danger to public health and safety that it
requires its own war, the War on Drugs. The tangible results of three
decades of this war are a quadrupling of nonviolent prisoners,
resulting in a steady diversion of state funds from drug treatment and
to the prison system. No price is too dear for our health and safety,
but health and safety are expensive to maintain.

The cost of our current abuse-prevention system, when measured in the
lives lost to prison and a chronic lack of treatment available to a
growing user population, is painful for its victims and expensive for
taxpayers to bear. When the policy stakes and costs are high, leaders
demand an accounting, to ensure progress on important policy
objectives and to control the costs of a critical program.

For the mounting costs of this policy, the evidence of improvement in
our health and safety is scant. Our existing arrest-and-imprisonment
policy's impact on neighborhood safety, the incidence of drug abuse
and adolescent access to toxic drugs (and nontoxic marijuana) has been
a failure by any reasonable definition. Despite such indisputable
failure, state political leaders such as [the past] attorney general
and most district attorneys uniformly have opposed legislative reform
of this failed policy. Given the unsustainable costs in lives and
money to maintain a war policy yielding dubious benefits, leaders
should promote to the public the need for change, demanding visible
improvement to health and safety to justify the war's costs in lives
and money.

Many responsible leaders, including the late Massachusetts and U.S.
Atty. Gen Elliott Richardson, as well as Watergate prosecutor Sam
Dash, newscaster Walter Cronkite and former Secretary of State George
Schultz, have denounced current policy for causing more harm to
individuals and communities than the illegal drugs that the current
policy seeks to interdict. Leadership heeds the wisdom of experts and
hears the growing discontent of policy victims and former supporters.
There is a way to achieve the objectives that current policy fails to
deliver.

A growing number of states, several with Republican leadership, are
changing course from strict criminal prohibition of illegal drug use
(including re-commitment for non-abstinence) to policies emphasizing
honest education and abuse treatment instead of detention. These
reforms reserve criminal intervention for crimes of violence, and
reserve treatment resources for abusers rather than "mere users" whose
use is not disabling.

The objective of reform policy is improvement rather than perfection,
recognizing the values of stability, safety and self-supporting
conduct can be reached short of zero-tolerance abstinence. It is
beyond reasonable dispute that drug abuse is a treatable disease with
relapse being a frequently expected symptom that cannot be eliminated
by imposing or threatening imprisonment. Current policy ignores this
reality. Leadership is recognizing and acknowledging reality, however
uncomfortable.

Mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders should be
eliminated (as other states have done), returning sentencing
discretion to judges, reducing the life-disabling impacts of prison
and freeing the prison budget to fund more outpatient treatment.
Mandatory sentences already being served also must be changed, to
allow the same parole eligibility as non-drug nonviolent offenders.

Given the 10-fold difference between the cost of imprisonment and
community-based treatment, and the documented reduction in recidivism
rates for treatment compared to prison, budgetary savings are
inevitable. A prime use of these saved funds should be their diversion
to secure drug abuse and mental-health treatment on demand. Everyone
seeking treatment regardless of income or insurance should have access
to effective outpatient or residential (if necessary to protect public
safety) care, with care-providers paid an adequate wage to develop
continuity of care for indigent patients.

Government data establish that improved access to treatment not only
reduces the incidence of abuse significantly, but also dramatically
reduces the cost of government services from levels formerly consumed
by stabilized abusers. This strategy will save more lives and money
than our war policy.

One definition of insanity is repeating the same behavior but
expecting different results. We have spent good money after bad trying
to arrest and imprison our way out of the problem of drug abuse.
Governor Patrick, by changing course you have an opportunity to lead
us to a promised land of safer neighborhoods, healthier families, less
drug abuse and lower state budgets. Your leadership can save lives and
money.