TRIO'S BALLOT MEASURE WOULD RESTRUCTURE WAR ON ILLICIT DRUGS

A major battle in the drug war will be fought this year in Michigan.

The fight will have little impact on the amount of narcotics on state
streets. But it may push Michigan toward a more honest and rational
approach to handling drug crimes and drug users.

Don't dismiss the Michigan Drug Reform Initiative as the work of a bunch of
potheads intent on upending the state's drug laws. It's a highly organized
effort financed by a trio of super-rich businessmen.

Investor George Soros, University of Phoenix founder John Sperling and
insurance executive Peter Lewis are serious about forcing America to
re-evaluate the war on drugs. They have put their own money behind a string
of ballot measures across the country aimed at overturning mandatory
sentencing and property forfeiture laws, allowing the use of medical
marijuana and requiring treatment rather than jail for first-time offenders.

They've gone to voters 19 times and won 17 elections.

In Michigan, the trio will commit $2 million to $3 million to a ballot
proposal that would require stiff prison terms for major drug traffickers,
but wipe out most other mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes. Drug
users would be treated, not jailed. Offenders currently in jail would be
eligible for resentencing under the new law.

Drug warriors are attacking the measure as a back-door attempt to legalize
marijuana. It's not, although someday Michigan and the rest of the country
will have to confront the hypocrisy of permitting a vigorous commerce in
hard liquor while banishing the no-more intoxicating or debilitating
marijuana to the black market.

This proposal would help shift the focus of the drug war away from drying
up supply and toward addressing demand. It recognizes that the 25-year-old
drug war, which continues at a cost of $75 billion a year, has failed dismally.

To borrow a business analogy, the three executives want to restructure the
drug war. It's a familiar business model -- if one strategy isn't
delivering results, adopt another.

Ideally, reforming drug laws should be a legislative matter, and not a
reason to alter the state constitution through initiative. But backers are
taking their case directly to voters because politicians have little
stomach for surrendering the sacred supply-side battle plan.

The success the campaign has enjoyed in other states suggests the public is
tiring of the ever-escalating drug war. The drug supply is as healthy as
ever, despite our now worldwide effort to wipe it out.

Dave Fratello, political director of the Michigan campaign, argues state
voters understand the futility of locking up drug users in prisons that are
awash in drugs, and the unfairness of treating drug offenders as a special
class of criminal, even more heinous than murderers and rapists.

He describes the initiative as "middle ground between continuing the drug
war forever and legalization. The practical reality is voters are willing
to take a step in that direction, but they don't want to get rid of the
laws altogether."

The initiative may at least get people thinking about whether drug use
should be treated as a criminal act or as the symptom of a psychological
problem, and how much criminality or availability really influences the
demand for drugs.