FIX DRUG LAWS

Voters Make Wise Choices As Legislators Abdicate Their Responsibility.

One vote in which there was a clear majority and clear winners is the
initiative passed in California to require that non-violent drug offenders
receive rehabilitation instead of incarceration.

A full 61 percent of California voters recognized that the
traditional-style war on drugs is not working. They recognized that too
many addicts are simply that - not necessarily criminals. And they
recognized that those who are locked up while still addicted simply keep
using. When they get out, they are likely to commit more crimes and go
straight back to prison.

Proposition 36 was put on the ballot in California by longtime foes of the
drug war. But the people there really responded. About $120 million will be
spent each of the next five years to set up the program. But the amount
that can be saved in lowered prison costs, health expenses and human misery
is likely to be much, much more.

They may be on to something. Consider that the federal drug-fighting budget
is nearly $18 billion. It was $1 billion in 1980. More than $20 billion a
year is spent by state and local governments. Yet does anyone believe there
are fewer drug addicts today than 20 years ago?

Nationwide, drugs and drug-related offenses now account for about one-third
of all arrests, more than any other category of crime, the FBI reports. The
Arizona program on which the California system will be modeled found in its
first year that after rehabilitation, 61 percent of addicts do not end up
back in jail.

California voters and those who backed the proposition acted in the absence
of their state Legislature. Those folks, like many across the country, are
more interested in re-election insurance than in making changes in drug
policy. They cling tightly to the tough-on-crime label while wasting untold
millions on incarceration and ignoring the crime and misery ongoing drug
habits perpetuate. There, voters took matters into their own hands.

Here in New York state, the voice of rationality is Chief Judge Judith
Kaye. In June, she ordered that judges offer first-time non-violent drug
offenders the chance for rehabilitation instead of prison. After pleading
guilty, offenders could enter treatment. The problem is that Kaye doesn't
have the budget to put a plan in place like California's. And, some
opponents to her plan cast it as an end-run around the Legislature. But who
cares. The Legislature has abdicated its responsibility when it comes to
instituting rational drug policies.

This state continues to lock up drug users for terms longer than some of
those received by the most violent criminals. And the Legislature, despite
pleas from the very people who passed the draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws,
has done nothing. Instead, New Yorkers pay millions and millions of dollars
to imprison these non-violent offenders, leaving them to a graduate course
in lawlessness to prepare them for their release.

Locally, 5th Judicial District Administrative Justice James Tormey III
recently made the case for expanding the already successful "Unified Drug
Treatment Court," as Kaye has proposed. Speaking last Thursday at the
Thursday Morning Roundtable, Tormey said 76 percent of the people sentenced
to the Onondaga County Correctional Facility in Jamesville have significant
substance-abuse problems. And each one of them costs about $35,000 a year
to house. A drug court operated by Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes
for more than 10 years has had a 60 percent success rate at keeping
offenders off drugs.

Kaye, other judges and the voters of California have taken courageous and
practical stands in the fight against drugs. It is now time that those who
write the laws take notice. Rehabilitation is more effective, more humane
and in the long run cheaper than incarceration. Legislators who do not take
that into consideration are not serving their constituents, and they are
spending money foolishly.