PARDONS SHOULD GO TO THOSE CAUGHT IN THE 'WAR ON DRUGS'

Almost as troublesome as the last-minute pardons President Clinton
decided to grant rich, powerful and connected figures like financier
Marc Rich are questions about the pardons he failed to issue to
hundreds of very ordinary people caught in the legal traps of our
misguided "war on drugs."

The number of Americans incarcerated for drug offenses has spiraled
upward tenfold since 1980. Some 500,000 are now held - 80,000 in
federal prisons. Many are serving extremely long sentences - 20
years. 25 years, life - with no chance of parole.

Under the mandatory sentences enacted by Congress in 1988, federal
drug offenders typically serve longer than people convicted of rape,
assault or robbery - often longer than murderers.

Bill Clinton knew all this.

In the same "Rolling Stone" interview in the magazine's January
edition in which he supported decriminalizing possession of small
amounts of marijuana, he acknowledged that many drug sentences "are
too long for non-violent offenders."

The great majority of federal judges, he noted, now want to do away
with those mandatory sentences.

Additionally, an intensive campaign was launched to persuade Clinton
to grant clemency to nonviolent drug offenders - smalltime users or
carriers - who have ended up serving decades-long sentences under the
mandatory federal sentencing guidelines.

In the final weeks of his term, Clinton received an eloquent plea
from 675 leading clergy of all denominations. They proposed that he
commute the sentences of virtually all low-level, non-violent drug
offenders who had served five years of their terms.

Not only are the sentences excessive, the clergy noted, but thousands
of the offenders are parents whose children are deeply hurt by the
separations.

A prisoners' rights group, Families Against Mandatory Minimums, even
supplied Clinton with a list of the nearly 500 prisoners who would
have been released had they been convicted following (and not before)
a 1994 "safety valve" law that allows judges to be more lenient on
first-time offenders.

So what did Clinton decide? In his final day in office, following up
on a handful of earlier drug-case pardons, he included 22 drug
offenders in his final pardon list.

What a dismal showing, when one considers that Clinton could
legitimately have pardoned hundreds, ideally thousands!

Even worse, it turns out that one of the lucky 22 who received a
presidential commutation looks more like a drug kingpin than an
innocent victim. His name: Carlos Vignali Jr., a major player in a
Twin Cities cocaine ring before his 1994 conviction and 15 year
sentence for a major interstate cocaine shipment. Vignali's father,
Minnesota newspapers report, donated $160,000 to Democratic
officeholders after his son went on trial.

Said a disappointed Eric Sterling, president of the Criminal Justice
Policy Foundation that worked with the clergy on their appeal: "We
were hoping to elevate the thinking of the president about these
issues. To reflect on the appropriate and merciful and just use of
the pardoning power. To leave a just legacy. It's evident he didn't
care about that."

Had Clinton worked to pardon several hundred deserving minor drug
offenders, Sterling suggested, he would have received press accolades.

Even more important, Sterling said, "It would have been an extremely
powerful policy message to the new president - and Congress-that drug
sentences are an issue that needs serious attention."

Without that, one can at least detect other signs of a reform tide sweeping in.

George W. Bush hardly championed reduced sentences for anything as
governor of Texas. Yet if the new administration has its ears open at
all, it will hear some of its friends urging radically new drug
policy.

Seven Republican governors are now supporting less jail time and more
treatment, supervision and community service for drug' offenders. The
guiding concerns are: prisons crowded with inmates who have chronic
alcohol or drug problems; the high costs of prisons - to build them,
to maintain them; and the blatant failure of nearly three decades of
a furious, punitive war on drugs.

Also dying an overdue death is the idea that cutting off foreign drug
supply will happen, or make a difference.

Mexican President Vicente Fox tells the truth here: The United States
"has shown a grand inability to reduce drug consumption. It has shown
a grand inability to prevent drugs from entering."

America's entire anti-drug strategy needs revamping. Clinton had a
chance to start with the humblest victims. He failed. But the
rationale for the status quo is crumbling.