ELECTION RESULTS SHOW U.S. TIRING OF WAR ON DRUGS

Laws Against Punitive Approach Win Voter Approval In Five States

Judging by the results of Tuesday's election, Americans appear to be
growing weary of the decades-long war on drugs -- at least to a certain degree.

Following a $4.2 million campaign, California voters approved Proposition
36, a ballot measure that requires that first- and second- time arrestees
on drug charges be sent to drug treatment programs rather than jail or prison.

Despite the fact that the measure was opposed by California's governor and
attorney general and almost all the major law enforcement agencies and
county prosecutors' offices in the state, Proposition 36 received more than
60 percent of the vote and carried 40 of California's 58 counties.

At the same time, voters in Colorado and Nevada were approving legalized
medical marijuana by equally impressive margins. Meanwhile, voters in Utah
and Oregon were placing stiff restrictions on police asset-seizure
operations that have been primarily used against drug offenders.

Even rural, North Coast Mendocino County -- population 80,345 -- got into
the act: Voters there approved legalizing the cultivation of up to 25 pot
plants and to decriminalize possession of marijuana for personal use.

The drug policy reforms adopted by five states this week were all backed by
the Campaign for New Drug Policies, a Santa Monica-based organization that
is largely financed by George Soros, a billionaire philanthropist who has
vowed to change U.S. drug policies and fight the war on drugs.

Backers of the measures were understandably elated yesterday.

"Nobody here dared to dream that the margin of victory (for Proposition 36)
would be this huge," said Dave Fratello, spokesman and campaign manager for
the organization. "We pinched ourselves when we started to fantasize that
it could be even 58 percent."

The five states that passed drug-policy reform measures this week provide
evidence that the public has grown increasingly weary of more than 30 years
of intensive law enforcement anti-drug programs that have cost taxpayers
billions of dollars.

In 1996, Arizona adopted a mandatory statewide drug treatment approach
similar to California's Proposition 36. That measure effectively took minor
drug offenses out of the criminal justice system.

Six other states have legalized medical marijuana. A host of others are
moving toward handling drug usage primarily as a medical rather than a law
enforcement problem.

"More and more people are beginning to understand that the drug war has
gone too far," said Ethan Nadelmann, a key Soros' adviser on drug policy
and the executive director of the Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation,
a drug law reform organization.

"Tuesday's election is an indication that people are starting to listen to
something different," he said. "They are beginning to 'get it.' "

Now California is faced with the formidable task of changing a system that
sends up to 36,000 people to jail or state prison each year into one that
relies on medical treatment.

"There is now a huge challenge that is never going to end, making treatment
work for people day by day, county by county," Fratello said, noting that
his staff had spent most of yesterday pondering the implementation of the
measure.

"For our part, we are certainly willing to bury the hatchet and try to make
this thing work."

Apparently, some of the measure's opponents have also decided to pitch in
and help rather than look for ways to block it.

In an interview with The Chronicle yesterday, Gov. Gray Davis said he and
his staff will work to help implement the measure, even though he
campaigned against it.

"The people have spoken," the governor said.

Proposition 36 bans prison time for nonviolent first- and second-time drug
offenders who are not charged with selling, producing or manufacturing drugs.

The California legislative analyst's office says that within several years,
the measure could save $200 million to $250 million a year for the state
prison system, which currently houses roughly 20,000 inmates convicted on
drug charges.

Nadelmann said Proposition 36 is likely to serve as the model for similar
measures that will be placed on the ballot in other states where public
opinion polls show that people would support an alternative to existing
get-tough drug laws.