DAVIS WAGES WILSON'S DRUG WAR

With Governor Against Them, Reformers Look To Ballot

IF YOU GOT BUSTED for a drug crime in California in the 1990s, you probably
got something on top of a fine or a sentence: a six-month suspension of
your driver's license, thanks to a state law drafted by former governor
Pete Wilson.

Liberal Democrats unsuccessfully challenged that law several times. As its
expiration date approached, they hoped Wilson's successor, Democrat Gray
Davis, would let it die a quiet death.

No such luck. In March Davis announced his intentions to revive the law. A
bill that would do so, sponsored by Fresno Democrat Dean Florez, is
expected to come before the state assembly's Appropriations Committee next
week.

"Everybody is astonished that this is even an issue," says Dale Gieringer,
California coordinator for the National Organization for the Reform of
Marijuana Laws. "It means legal hassles. It means unnecessary court costs.
It doesn't help anybody at all."

Some 160,000 Californians are arrested for making, possessing, or selling
drugs every year. Some 46,000 of those arrests are for misdemeanor offenses.

Spokespeople for Davis and Florez failed to return repeated phone calls.

Appropriations Committee chair Carole Migden (D-San Francisco) is
nonplussed by the legislation. "I oppose the bill, and I don't believe the
bill will get to the governor's desk," Migden told us.

Taking The Initiative

With no sign of a drug war cease-fire coming from the state's top Democrat,
some conscientious objectors are going to the ballot.

The Santa Monica-based Campaign for New Drug Policies has qualified the
Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act for the November ballot. The act
would offer first- and second-time drug-possession offenders the
opportunity to go to rehab instead of jail and would set up "drug court"
programs to process small-time substance abuse cases.

"It means treating drugs as a health problem rather than a criminal justice
problem," campaign spokesperson Dave Fratello told us. "We'll have fiscal
savings, but also it's a much better way of dealing with drug offenders -
rather than locking them up and sentencing them to a life of crime."

The campaign is well funded, thanks to financier and criminal-justice
reformer George Soros. Veteran political consultant Bill Zimmerman, who ran
the campaign to pass Proposition 215, the 1996 medical marijuana
initiative, is at the helm.

They'll be targeting fiscal conservatives as well as advocates of drug
legalization. By reducing prison and parole costs, the measure could save
the state $1.5 billion over the next five years, according to state officials.

That raises the specter of the California Correctional Peace Officers'
Association, the prison guards' union.

"The big question is whether the prison guards will get involved," Fratello
says. "That'll make it a very competitive race, because they have very
deep pockets."

San Francisco politicians, including Sheriff Mike Hennessey, District
Attorney Terence Hallinan, and Mayor Willie Brown, have already signed on
as endorsers. Campaign members say many more high-profile backers will
come forward soon. Davis isn't expected to be among them.

While the statewide campaign makes some modest proposals, North Coast
drug-law reformers have set their sights on game. The Mendocino Green Party
has put the Personal Use of Marijuana Initiative on that county's November
ballot. If passed, the measure would instruct law enforcement to permit
residents to grow and own up to 25 pot plants - probably the biggest move
toward legalization in the country.

Even if it passes, the Mendocino measure may hit the same roadblock
Berkeley's Kinder and Safer Streets Act ran into. Sponsored last year by
city council members Kriss Worthington and Linda Maio, the proposal would
have decriminalized private cannabis consumption by adults. With the city's
marijuana arrests jumping nearly 50 percent in two years, the duo was
looking to stem increasingly costly enforcement efforts.

"We wanted to take the biggest step forward possible," Worthington said.

The plan was shot down by Berkeley city attorney Manuela Albuquerque, who
saw an unwinnable battle with federal and state authorities in the offing.
"They had a provision purporting to legalize the possession and cultivation
of marijuana, which the city doesn't have the power to do," Albuquerque
told us. "We're not allowed to prevent police officers from enforcing state
law."

The "Kinder" act has since been redrafted as a simple medical marijuana
ordinance. In that form it's still pending, more than four years after the
passage of Prop. 215.

Despite the setbacks, local backers of a drug war detente haven't quit
strategizing. Thanks to the efforts of the legalization forces, the city
last week held an official public forum - boasting Orange County judge
James P. Gray and left firebrand Alexander Cockburn, among others - to
discuss "solving the drug problem through health-based alternatives to
police, prison, punishment, and violence."