WAR ON DRUGS NEEDS NEW DIRECTION, SOME AT DRUG CONFERENCE SAY

HOUSTON - America's war on drugs should focus more on an individual's
actions and less on what substances a person might possess or ingest,
officials attending a drug policy conference at Rice University said
Wednesday.

The two-day drug policy conference taking place at the Baker
Institute for Public Policy in Houston concludes Thursday. Besides
focusing on the United States' drug policy, attendees will discuss
policies in other countries with hopes of eventually making
recommendations for policy changes in the United States to "reduce
negative consequences of drug use and abuse, including attention to
more effective drug education and treatment."

"It seems to me that the current (U.S.) drug policy has created
strains on both the law and democracy," Ronald Earle, Travis County
District Attorney in Austin, told those who gathered at the
institute, some of whom traveled from as far away as Switzerland,
Australia and Colombia.

Earle said the nation must develop a policy which results in no more
harm than the use of drugs already causes, addresses the underlying
reasons for drug abuse, preserves the public safety without violating
people's civil liberties and doesn't stress public resources such as
jails and law enforcement agencies.

"There are so many harms that we are unnecessarily inflicting on
ourselves because of drug prohibition," said James Gray, a superior
court judge from Anaheim, Calif. and a former prosecutor who once
held a record for the largest number of drug convictions.

"There's got to be something wrong here," he said. "It's easier for
our children to get illegal drugs than it is a six-pack of beer."

Gray suggested that laws need to be restructured and more programs
developed, such as drug courts, to help people overcome dependency.
He said the possession or ingestion of drugs should not be a crime in
and of itself.

"Where government goes astray is where government tries to protect us
from ourselves," he said. "That is where the drug war is going wrong."

Gray said state and federal agencies have become too "addicted" to
federal funds handed out to fight the war on drugs and that
government is sending the wrong message through current drug
legislation.

The judge said marijuana stays in a person's system for 30 days while
cocaine is only present for about 72 hours. The difference results in
a message to convicted drug users undergoing drug tests that curbing
their habit can be less detectable through harsher drugs.

"The message is: 'If you're worried about being caught, take cocaine
not marijuana,'" he said. "That is not the message we want to send,
but that is the message that is being received."

Asa Hutchinson, administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration, said the nation's drug war has stalled in recent
years, but has achieved amazing successes in the past few decades.

"One of the greatest myths of this decade is that there is no success
in our anti-drug efforts in this country," Hutchinson said. "The
facts are that cocaine drug use is down by 75 percent during the last
15 years.

"We have reached the optimum level of reducing drug use in our
country and we can't do any better than we have done at the present
time."

Hutchinson said the DEA must now work toward reducing dependency. He
said the only way to keep drug usage down is to keep such substances
illegal.

"I believe it is a wrong conclusion to say that we have not made
enough progress and that therefore, we should move in an entirely
different policy direction by legalizing harmful drugs," he said.
"The fact is you cannot legalize enough, you cannot decriminalize
enough to put the cartels and the criminal organizations out of
business.

"After prohibition ended, did the organized crime element of our
country go away? Of course it did not."

Hutchinson's declaration that the nation has been victorious in its
war on drugs is a sad commentary for a country in the middle of a
drug epidemic enhanced by its own policies, said Kevin Zeese,
executive director of Common Sense for Drug Policy, a non-profit
group focused on expanding discussion about the nation's drug policy.

"The price of heroin, cocaine is cheaper today than it was in 1980s,"
he said. "The purity of heroin, cocaine is greater than it was in
1980. Drugs like crack cocaine, which didn't exist in those days now
exist. We are not winning the war on drugs."