VOTERS GETTING WISE TO THE WAR ON DRUGS

The tide is turning in the public's attitude toward the war on drugs.
Successful initiatives in five states show growing support for sensible
drug policies such as treatment and rehabilitation that turn addicts into
useful members of society as opposed to costly incarceration that doesn't.

California, with the highest drug incarceration rate and the highest drug
use rate in the country, is a bellwether state for social change.

Its voters recently passed Proposition 36, the most important drug reform
initiative so far, by 61 percent to 39 percent, or a margin of 2 million votes.

The initiative allocates $120 million a year for five years toward setting
up comprehensive and well-monitored drug treatment programs, backed up by
job and literacy training and family counseling. A California legislative
report estimated that this new approach would divert 24,000 nonviolent
offenders and 12,000 parole violators into treatment programs each year--
instead of sending them to jail--saving taxpayers more than $200 million a
year.

Nevada and Colorado voters passed initiatives to make marijuana legal for
medical use. Patients with certain illnesses will be able to obtain
credentials that protect them from prosecution for possessing or
cultivating the plant for their own use. Six other states already make
marijuana available to patients with cancer, AIDS and multiple sclerosis,
among other diseases.

In Oregon and Utah, voters passed initiatives to curb abuses by law
enforcement agencies in seizing and selling assets of people they suspect
were involved in a drug crime.

In both states, police departments have gotten bonanzas from forfeited assets.

As a result of these initiatives, police and prosecutors will have to prove
that property was involved in a drug crime before it can be seized.

Proceeds from seized assets now will go toward public education or drug
treatment, not to the police.

Efforts to support these initiatives were led by the Campaign for New Drug
Policies, and the Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation, which is backed
by financier George Soros. In Massachusetts, the two organizations backed
an initiative that failed.

It would have reformed the system of property seizure, but it also would
have gone much further than the other initiatives to provide drug treatment
to low-level drug dealers as an alternative to sending them to jail. It was
opposed by every district attorney and every police chief, as well as the
states' two biggest newspapers.

Another initiative would have legalized marijuana in Alaska. That effort,
which the two organizations were not involved in, failed by 60 percent to
40 percent.

The campaign to reform drug laws has been effective.

Backers have framed their arguments in terms of reducing harm caused by
drugs, rejecting the harsh law-and-order zero-tolerance policies that have
stuffed jails with nonviolent drug offenders.

Ethan Nadelman, executive director of Lindesmith, argues that a drug
policy's success ought to be judged on the rise or fall of such things as
drug overdose deaths, the incidence of HIV/ AIDS attributable to dirty
needles, spending on prisons, crime rates and suffering associated with
drug use. He says drug reformers have had more success during the past year
in state legislatures than in the past 10 or 15 years combined--with Hawaii
legalizing medical use of marijuana, Vermont adopting an enlightened
methadone treatment program, three states passing legislation making
syringes available through pharmacies, as examples.

"We do see some significant transformation of opinion and sentiment,"
Nadelman says.

Under California's watershed Proposition 36, which will be the most watched
reform, the first $60 million will be spent between January and June to set
up treatment and rehabilitation programs.

A statewide monitoring system will track how well they work. Instead of the
usual skimpy funding that ensures rehabilitation programs will fall short,
this effort has enough money to treat most offenders, if not all. Judges
have the authority to send offenders into more restrictive and intense
treatment if they are relapsing--and if that doesn't work, they can
sentence them to prison.

Backers of these drug policy reforms will be working to ensure that they
are effective, and they will be looking to export these initiatives to
other states. The drug policy reform effort is creating unlikely allies.

In Utah, for example, liberals backed the crackdown on property seizure
abuses because they violate civil rights.

Conservatives back the measure because it protects individual property rights.

Arizona already had chosen treatment and rehabilitation over incarceration,
and like Utah, it is one of our most conservative states.

Support for changing the country's approach to drug control is also coming
from the Congressional Black Caucus and civil rights organizations because
of the racial disparities in the drug war. Mandatory minimum sentencing
laws have sent the black prison population soaring with low-level
offenders. High-level dealers can snitch their way out of long terms by
providing substantial assistance to prosecutors in rounding up members of
their drug-dealing conspiracies. The low-level street dealers have no one
to snitch on. They're doing the time.

Momentum for reform is gathering a head of steam now, certainly at the
state level. Members of Congress need to start paying attention.

Voters have signaled that they want drug laws reformed to protect civil
rights and to promote public health.

In this year's elections, solid majorities in five conservative and liberal
western states said very clearly that they want smarter, safer, more
effective and more constitutional policies.

Sanity is threatening to make a comeback.