RETREAT, RECOVER FROM THE DRUG WAR

There is a new political wind blowing across the United States that some
elected officials are beginning to notice.

The "drug war" no longer has carte blanche with the public. By every
measure, the drug war is failing and is now creating new and larger social
problems. Polls show more of the public support legalization than believe
the drug war will succeed.

Political leaders such as New Mexico Gov. Gary E. Johnson are calling for a
debate on the obviously failed drug policy. Minnesota Governor Jesse
Ventura has also called for reform and Hawaii Governor Cayentano led the
fight for medicalization of marijuana in their last legislative session.

Their calls echo the views of President Ronald Reagan's Secretary of State
and current Texas Gov. George W. Bush advisor, George Shultz; former U.S.
Attorney General Elliot Richardson; Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman;
numerous federal judges; and the progressive Mayor of Baltimore, Kurt L.
Schmoke.

Here in New Mexico, a group of diverse organizations and concerned citizens
have formed an alliance to demonstrate broad and unified support for
Governor Johnson's call for public discussions on the so-called drug war.
The New Mexico Alliance for Drug Policy Reform is currently in its infancy
with a very small group of member organizations.

The goal of the alliance is to facilitate meaningful input into the public
debates and to sustain the discussions for the next several years. The
alliance believes a rational and sustained public debate will generate a
large number of effective solutions and compassionate alternative policies
with which our government leaders can address the devastation caused by
drug prohibition.

Nationally, a coalition of "unusual suspects" has called for a redirection
of drug control funds away from law enforcement toward prevention and
rehabilitation. Among them: the Service Workers Union International of the
AFL-CIO; the NOW Foundation; the NAACP; the United Methodist Church; the
American Public Health Association; Latino Commission on AIDS; Mothers
Against Misuse and Abuse; Volunteers of America and YWCA.

The New Mexico Alliance for Drug Policy Reform member organizations
currently includes The New Mexico Drug Policy Foundation; The New Mexico
Harm Reduction Coalition; New Mexicans For Compassionate Use; Delta-9
Re-Legalization Coalition; The Hemp Coalition of UNM; the Albuquerque AIDS
Brigade; and the New Mexico Green and Libertarian Parties. The alliance is
inviting any organization interested in drug policy reform to sign on in
support of Governor Johnson's call for discussing the drug war and possible
alternatives.

Why are people starting to speak out against the drug war? Because over the
last two decades the drug war has gotten more expensive in both monetary
and human terms. At the same time the failure of the drug war has become
more evident.

The conclusion: if we can't win the drug war after spending over $100
billion in less than a decade, then we need a new strategy and new social
policies to address drugs in our society.

There are more than 1.8 million Americans currently in jail or prison. As
of June 1996, 5.5 million Americans were under some form of control by the
justice system. This translates into 1 out of every 35 adults in the nation.

According to the Department of Justice, 85% of the increase in the federal
prison population from 1985 to 1995 was due to the increase in prisoners of
the drug war. While the law-enforcement model has succeeded in making a lot
of arrests, incarcerating record numbers of Americans and seizing
relatively large amounts of drugs, America's drug-related problems have
worsened.

The drug war has failed to protect adolescents from drugs. Despite mass
arrests and record spending on law enforcement, 89.6% of adolescents say it
is easy to get marijuana. Since 1991, twice as many eighth graders report
using heroin and three times as many report using crack. Surveys find that
it is easier for youth to buy marijuana than beer.

Despite spending hundreds of billions of dollars on arresting drug users
and sellers, on criminal prosecutions, and on building jails and prisons to
incarcerate millions of Americans, it would be difficult to find one
drug-free high school and very few middle schools in New Mexico or our country.

And while incarcerating record number of Americans for extremely long
periods of time pursuant to mandatory minimum sentencing, we have created a
generation of orphans. It is estimated that 2.4 million children in America
have one or both parents in jail or prison.

Women with children are not doing well under current "get tough" policies.
From 1985 to 1996, female drug arrests increased by 95%, while male drug
arrests increased by 55.1%. In 1996, 188,880 women were arrested for
violating drug laws. There are 130,000 American women in jail or prison.
Seventy-five percent of the women in New Mexico's prisons have children.
These women are generally not going to prison for their underlying felony
convictions but for violating their probation agreements by testing
positive for drugs.

The horrific violence in our communities being reported every night on the
news is not because of drugs but the violence caused by drug prohibition.
The drug-dealing black market is regulated through violent street justice.
Is this what we want for the communities where we are trying to raise our
children? Our country has already gone through this disaster earlier in
this century with alcohol Prohibition.

The price of pure heroin has dropped from $3,500 per gram in 1981 to nearly
$1,000 today, and cocaine has dropped from $275 per gram to $94 today. At
the same time purity of both drugs sold on the streets have increased
dramatically. The result? Drug overdose deaths have increased 540% since
1980 and emergency room visits are at record highs.

Rio Arriba county has the highest per capita death rate from heroin
overdose in the entire country. We are now told we are in the midst of a
methamphetamine epidemic.

The drug war has endangered our country's health in other ways. The United
States is facing epidemics in AIDS and hepatitis C. Both diseases are
driven by intravenous drug users sharing contaminated syringes.

Nationally, Congress has taken the most effective prevention strategy,
needle exchange, off of the table even though it can slow the spread of HIV
by 50% without increasing drug use.

Fortunately, here in New Mexico, thanks to the leadership and work of
Department of Health Secretary Alex Valdez and the New Mexico legislature,
Governor Johnson signed in 1997 the New Mexico Harm Reduction Act, which
provides a needle exchange program throughout the state.

The law-enforcement approach to drug control costs tens of billions of
dollars annually and has led to the destruction of lives devastation to
families and communities, and exacerbated race relations.

In many urban areas, one out of two young black males is currently
incarcerated or under criminal justice supervision. According to the
Department of Justice, black males born today have a nearly one-in-three
chance of going to prison and Hispanic males have a one-in-six chance.

Disillusioned by the drug war's failure to ameliorate the harms of drug
abuse and prohibition, a growing number of Americans are seeking
alternative approaches.

When put to a vote, 11 out of 11 drug-policy reform initiatives on medical
marijuana, decriminalization of possession of marijuana or medicalizing
drugs have won by wide margins in the last two elections.

When our neighbors in Arizona voted to medicalize drug control 96 allowing
only treatment and education, not prison for drug offenders 96 many
predicted a disaster. But now that the program is in place the Arizona
Supreme Court issued a report analyzing it and found success: Arizona
taxpayers saved $2.6 million in one year and 77.5% of drug-possession
probationers tested negative for drug use after the
alternative-to-incarceration program.

The nation's drug czar would have us believe that our only choices are to
continue to criminalize 70 million Americans who have used drugs or throw
up the white flag in surrender.

However, there are alternatives.

A comprehensive alternative drug-control strategy has been developed by a
coalition of organizations. The New Mexico Drug Policy Foundation was one
of the signatories. (See www.csdp.org for a complete copy.)

Our strategy calls for reducing adolescent drug use through fact-based
education, prevention efforts and supervised activity programs. Drug
problems among all Americans can be reduced by treatment on request,
education and prevention, with special attention to the specific needs of
women.

We advocate reducing crime and violence associated with the illegal drug
market by focusing law-enforcement resources on violent crime, and reducing
property crime by making treatment and substitute drugs more available. The
coalition supports reducing the spread of HIV and other communicable
diseases through healthcare services for drug users.

While many Americans still have reservations about legalization, an
increasing number believe that we must end the law-enforcement dominance of
drug control, particularly the racial bias in drug enforcement.

Ending racial profiling and the discrepancy between crack and powder
cocaine sentencing are essential steps toward a more effective and just
drug policy. As Gov. Johnson has noted, controlling drugs through a legal
market needs to be discussed and considered as it is obvious that
prohibition will never work.

America is ready for drug-war recovery. New Mexico is likely to be a leader
in this new debate. In order to prepare for that responsibility, New
Mexicans who are concerned about drug abuse and the adverse effects of the
drug war have joined together in an alliance to work with Gov. Johnson to
develop an effective drug policy. We are reaching out to civil rights
groups, women's rights advocates, civil liberties groups, libertarians,
public-health advocates and others who are concerned with the effects of
drug policy.

To learn more about joining The New Mexico Alliance for Drug Policy Reform
and the member organizations and their projects, please contact me, Steve
Bunch at The New Mexico Drug Policy Foundation, (505) 344-1932, or e-mail:
sbunch@newmexicodrugpolicy.org . .