A NEW FRONT IN THE DRUG WAR

California's Voting On Relaxing Penalties For Possession

August 20 -- California's voters may be in revolt again.

The folks who have to foot the bill in the state with the highest ratio of
imprisoned drug offenders in the country, 134 per 100,000 people, compared
with 49 in Texas, may have had enough.

This fall they will vote on a sleeper ballot initiative, Proposition 36,
that would effectively end jail terms for possessing any illegal
drug,including crack cocaine and heroin,and substitute drug treatment
instead. Last week Prop 36 was ahead by 10 points, and antidrug warriors
were in an uproar.

The real objective, they said, was a well-financed national movement that
would stop short of nothing less than decriminalizing drug use. Prop 36 is
drawing supporters from across the ideological spectrumfrom civil-rights
leader Jesse Jackson to Republican Senate candidate Tom Campbell, who says
the drug war amounts to "Jim Crow" justice for minorities. Financier George
Soros and two other wealthy businessmen have pledged $3 million to push the
cause.

They are also financing antidrug-war initiatives in five other states.
Soros, long a supporter of relaxing the drug laws, sees it as a "human
rights" issue, according to former Princeton professor Ethan Nadleman, his
principal adviser on the matter.

Prop 36 organizers sense they have tapped into more than California's
quirkiness. Thanks to mandatory-sentencing laws enacted across the country
in the 1980s, the prison population passed 2 million this year, up from
500,000 in 1980. Now the California initiative will challenge the idea that
most Americans still back the massive crackdown. "Traditionally, you've got
to be tough on drugs or you get marginalized [as a candidate]," says
Campbell. "I'm putting that to the test." But will Prop 36 do anything to
solve the drug problem? Under Prop 36, offenders arrested for
possession,not trafficking,are given the option of entering a treatment
program for up to 18 months. If they completed it, their records would be
wiped clean.

That would allow about 24,000 people a year,those who are now incarcerated
in California for possession,to stay out of prison. "This is a watershed,"
says Sam Vagenas, a consultant to the initiative's organizers. "It can blow
apart the whole notion that the only way to get people off drugs is to
incarcerate them." Opponents are just as vehement. They are led by the
California Correctional Peace Officers Association, the prison guards'
union, which has made building more prisons its signature issue.

The union pumped more than $2 million into the 1998 campaign of Gov. Gray
Davis, a tough-on-crime Democrat, who quickly signed legislation
authorizing $525 million in new prison construction. Letting more drug
users stay out will simply put more criminals on the streets, the prison
guards and their allies argue. "By the time [users] come to us, they've got
rap sheets as long as your arm," says Jeff Thompson, chief lobbyist for the
guards.

Union officials have enlisted their own heavyweights to fight Prop 36 White
House drug czar Barry McCaffrey, San Diego Chargers owner Alex Spanos and
"West Wing" president Martin Sheen, whose son Charlie has struggled with
addiction.

The campaign will be heated and expensive; and both sides realize that
Americans far beyond California will be watching.