BOOST FOR DRUG REFORM

Referendum results in the recent United States election seem to
indicate the pendulum there is reversing direction in the war against
"soft" drugs. ETHAN NADELMANN, executive director of the pro-cannabis
US Lindesmith Centre-Drug Policy, discusses these results.

ELECTION Day 2000 was a big day for drug policy reform. In California,
voters overwhelmingly endorsed "Proposition 36", the treatment instead
of incarceration ballot initiative that should result in tens of
thousands of nonviolent drug-possession offenders being diverted from
prison into programmes that may help them get their lives together.
The new law may do more to reverse the unnecessary incarceration of
nonviolent citizens than any other law enacted anywhere in the country
in decades.

It was not just California that opted for drug reform. Voters in
Nevada and Colorado approved medical-marijuana ballot initiatives,
following in the footsteps of California, Oregon, Alaska, Washington
state, Maine and Washington DC.

In Oregon and Utah, voters overwhelmingly approved ballot initiatives
requiring police and prosecutors to meet a reasonable burden of proof
before seizing money and other property from people they suspect of
criminal activity. They also mandated the proceeds of legal
forfeitures be handed over, not to the police and prosecuting agencies
that had seized the property, but to funds for education or drug treatment.

In Oregon, the first of 11 states to decriminalise marijuana during
the 1970s, voters in 1998 rejected an effort by the state legislature
to recriminalise marijuana. And in Mendocino County, California,
voters this year approved an initiative to decriminalise personal
cultivation of modest amounts of marijuana.

Clearly, more and more citizens realise the drug war has failed and
are looking for new approaches. The votes also suggest there are
limits to what people will accept in the name of the war on drugs.

Parents don't want their teenagers to use marijuana, but they also
want sick people who could benefit from marijuana to have it. People
don't want drug dealers profiting from their illicit activities, but
neither do they want police empowered to take what they want from
anyone they merely suspect of criminal activity. Americans don't
approve of people using heroin or cocaine, but neither do they want
them locked up without first offering them opportunities to get their
lives together outside prison.

So what do drug policy reformers do next? In the case of medical
marijuana, three things: enact medical marijuana laws in other states
through the legislative process; work to ensure that medical-marijuana
laws are effectively implemented; and try to induce the federal
government to stop undermining efforts by state officials to establish
regulated distribution systems.

If California's new law is implemented in good faith, with minimal
corruption of its aims, the benefits could be extraordinary, saving
taxpayers up to $US 1.5 billion in prison costs over the next five
years while making good drug treatment available to hundreds of thousands.

The victories demonstrated once again the public is ahead of the
politicians when it comes to embracing pragmatic drug-policy reforms.
Yet there was growing evidence this year that even some politicians
were beginning to get it. Three states - North Dakota, Minnesota and
Hawaii - legalised the cultivation of hemp (to the extent permitted by
federal law). Hawaii enacted a medical-marijuana law this year.

Perhaps it's too early to claim that all this adds up to a national
vote of no confidence in the war on drugs. But the pendulum does seem
to be reversing direction.

* The New Zealand Parliament's health select committee is continuing
its inquiry into legislation affecting cannabis use and is due to
report back in February. The issue was last examined here in 1972,
when continuing prohibition was recommended. Subsequently, the 1998
select committee inquiry into the mental health effects of cannabis
recommended a review of the appropriateness of existing policy and
reconsideration of the legal status of cannabis.