Bookmark: MAP's link to shadow convention items:
http://www.mapinc.org/shadow.htm

MAKE WAR ON THE WAR ON DRUGS

The Justice Department has just issued another indicator of the damage
being done by the war on drugs: An all-time high of 6.3 million people
were under correctional supervision in 1999--1.86 million men and
women behind bars and 4.5 million on parole or probation, 24 percent
of them for drug offenses.

The criminal justice system reached 1 percent of the adult population
in 1980. Its reach now exceeds 3 percent--about one of every 32
people. Our $40 billion-a-year war on drugs has created more prisons,
more criminals, more drug abuse and more disease. An estimated 60
percent of AIDS cases in women are attributed to dirty needles and
syringes.

A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision probably will spur more
litigation in the drug war, as prisoners use the ruling to appeal
unusually harsh sentences.

The court ruled that any factual determination used to increase a
sentence will have to be made by a jury, not a judge. While a judge
can use a standard of the preponderance of the evidence in sentencing,
a jury must decide beyond a reasonable doubt, says Graham Boyd,
director of the Drug Policy Litigation Project of the American Civil
Liberties Union. "If the government wants to impose draconian
sentences for drug crimes, they should have at the very least to prove
their case to a jury by a criminal standard, and that hasn't happened
in the past--amazingly."

That's just one example of the civil rights casualties of a war in
which paramilitary police raid people's homes and authorities seize
their assets without due process, flying in the face of the Fourth and
Fifth amendments.

A few politicians are brave enough to declare the obvious: The war on
drugs hasn't worked. New Mexico's Gary E. Johnson (R) was the first
governor to call for marijuana legalization and other major drug
policy reforms. Rep. Tom Campbell (R-Calif.), a candidate for the U.S.
Senate, is the first major-party politician to run statewide with a
platform that includes prescription access to heroin. They will speak
at the "shadow conventions" to be held at the same time as the
Republican and Democratic conventions to address three issues of
critical importance that organizers say are being given short shrift
by the two major parties: the drug war, campaign finance reform and
the growing gulf between rich and poor.

Drug policies affect millions of people who have family members behind
bars. Some of them will be at the shadow conventions. They will put
names and faces on this whole failed drug war effort. Many of them are
likely to be black. While African Americans constitute 13 percent of
the illegal drug users, they account for 74 percent of those sentenced
for drug offenses. Convicted felons lose their right to vote, a
backdoor way of reinstituting Jim Crow laws.

Pressure to change drug laws is mounting, and it is coming from
unlikely places, including farmers, who are forbidden to grow hemp,
the plant from which marijuana comes but which has other, non-drug
uses. The Lindesmith Center, which advocates drug policy reform, did a
survey several years ago that found more than 50 percent of farmers in
five midwestern and western states favored legalizing hemp. Only 35
percent were opposed.

"This was the first indication we had that the public, in fairly
conservative agricultural states, were supporting this," says Ethan
Nadelmann, executive director of the center.

More recently, Hawaii and North Dakota passed legislation legalizing
hemp's cultivation, and similar measures are "in play" in more than 10
other states, Nadelmann says. From 30 to 40 countries, including
Canada, have made it legal. "This is quite galling for farmers on the
northern border who can look across the border and see people growing
this stuff," he says.

Nadelmann believes that both Texas Gov. George W. Bush and Vice
President Gore, the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates,
would be well served if they did some research on hemp. "It may be an
issue that a number of people care about, and it would be sending a
message they are willing to think rationally about the economic and
agricultural interests of farmers even when the product has a
relationship to marijuana."

The Lindesmith Center is one of more than 35 public policy, health,
religious and racial advocacy organizations that sent a list of 10
tough questions to the presidential candidates during the primaries,
pointing out where the drug policies have failed and asking what they
would do to change them.

None of the candidates have answered, according to Kevin B. Zeese,
co-chair of the National Coalition for Effective Drug Policies,
although the groups will try to pursue the issue during the general
election campaign. "Unless the drug issue is forced on them, they
prefer to avoid it rather than confront it," Zeese says. "Our basic
point is the drug war is bankrupt and our policymakers aren't facing
up to it. We tried to construct those questions in a way that showed
the drug war methods are causing more problems than they solve, and we
got a range of groups to show a breadth of concern about this."

Highly visible people, including Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura (I), are
now calling for a genuine debate on how to deal with drugs. Approaches
gaining support include legalizing marijuana (except for sale to
minors), prescription access to heroine, needle exchanges, taxing
drugs and redirecting most of the drug war funding into public health
and education.

We are a nation of intelligent and thoughtful people who deserve
better than overheated rhetoric and a drug policy dictated by crazy
hard-liners and pandering politicians. At the very least, in the face
of the well-documented harm the war on drugs has caused, we deserve a
debate on how to control the drug market in a way that works. This
lackluster presidential campaign would be a good place to start.