THE DECADE-OLD WAR ON DRUGS: A STATUS REPORT

Spending, Arrests, Use, And Support For Legalization Are All On The Rise

This spring Maurice Pitesky's front door became collateral damage in the War
on Drugs, just one more barrier to a drug-free America that needed to be
smashed.

San Luis Obispo County Narcotics Task Force officers kicked in the front
door to Pitesky's Oceano home on March 3, broke another door and a wall, and
ransacked the house before realizing the people who lived there didn't fit
the names on their search warrant.

So they left, smashing their way into a residence next-door that shared the
same address, which is where the alleged drug user on their warrant really
lived. Pitesky, a graduate student at Cal Poly, returned home that night to
find the damage and no explanation about how it got that way.

"If you come home at night, find your place all smashed up, and you don't
even know if someone was still inside, it's scary," Pitesky said.

Naturally, he called the Sheriff's Department, which sent a deputy out to
take the breaking-and-entering report. Only after the deputy left did
Pitesky find out what really happened. NTF officers had called his
out-of-town landlord to inform him.

Pitesky was upset that the police would thrash his home without so much as
leaving a note. The next day, hoping for an apology, he called Detective
Steve Larson, a contribution to the NTF from the California Highway Patrol
office in San Luis Obispo who led the raid.

"The first thing he said is, I'm not going to apologize for doing my job,
and I can kick down any door at that residence I want," Pitesky said of his
conversation with Larson. "He should have left a note, and that's all I
wanted him to say."

By the end of the conversation, Pitesky felt even worse about the situation,
so he followed up with a formal complaint to the CHP and a meeting with NTF
commander Craig Wright.

Pitesky still didnt get the apology he wanted, but he said Larson did
threaten him with forced eviction and a civil lawsuit and told him that
"with my attitude" Pitesky was lucky he wasn't home when the heavily armed
police burst into his house.

During a New Times interview with Wright and Ernie Klevesahl, Grover Beach's
police chief and chair of the NTF Board of Governors, the county's two top
drug cops were dismissive of Pitesky's desire for an apology.

"We're not going to comment on this anymore," Klevesahl said. "This guy has
gotten more attention than he deserves. Respect works both ways."

"I've been here for five years, and the task force has not made a mistake on
a raid yet," Wright said.

Others may not agreesuch as Pitesky, or the North County man who says NTF
raiders last summer mistook his agricultural operation for a meth labbut
Wright's claim is telling.

The Pitesky raid wasn't a mistake, Wright argues, because they had a valid
search warrant for that address. What NTF did that day was legal and done in
the name of the hallowed cause of trying to eliminate drug users from free
society.

"That's the scariest part. Everything they did was legal," Pitesky said.
"But that's doesn't make it right."

The Declaration

It was 10 years ago this September that then-President George Bush declared
our country's current "War on Drugs." Other presidents had made similar
statements, but it was President Bush's prime-time declaration that changed
things.

It was then that "Just Say No" became the "War on Drugs." With the country
in the throes of a well-publicized crack epidemic, the public was ready for
war. The November 89 Gallup poll showed 38 percent of Americans listing
drugs as the most serious problem facing the country, its highest showing
ever or since.

So Bush declared war, waving a baggie of crack for the cameras as he did.
And he launched that war with sharply increased anti-drug spending and zero
tolerance, filling jails and prisons with drug offenders.

Everybody got into the act, as legislators tried to outdo the president and
the courtsstacked with judges appointed by Republican presidents and
governorscreated what critics call the "drug exception" to our Bill of Rights.

But it is also a war that the drug warriors don't want to call a "war,"
despite regular increases in both war spending and growing legions of
prisoners of the war.

"I don't like that phrase," Klevesahl said. "The 'War on Drugs' term came
from the federal government. The 'War on Drugs' term never existed back when
this task force was formed. It's about a concern for the community and
keeping drugs off the street."

Wright also doesn't like the term, but says he understands why the war theme
is perpetuated by the federal government: "It keeps people aware that there
is a problem."

And they will grudgingly entertain the notion that their efforts can be
gauged in terms of winning and losing. "Are we winning the War on Drugs?"
Klevesahl asked rhetorically. "I don't want to use that term, but we put
people in jail, we have successful prosecutions, we take narcotics off the
street."

Yet the warlike undertones of the fight against drugs seem undeniable,
evidenced by the now-common use of weapons, tactics, intelligence gathering,
and rhetoric that are overtly military in nature.

Even children understand the message. For the DARE graduation program at San
Gabriel Elementary School in Atascadero on June 2, the drug warriors landed
at the school in a military-style Blackhawk helicopter to deliver the speech.

The militarism of the anti-drug efforts is a top-down effort. When President
Bill ("I Never Inhaled") Clinton had the opportunity to name a new drug
czar, he chose a decorated war veteran, Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, for the post.

"Few efforts are as important as law enforcement in controlling drug use and
related crime," is a statement prominently displayed by the website of
McCaffrey's office.

In addition to "war," neither Wright nor Klevesahl like the term "drug raid."

"I don't like the term 'raid' because it sets the wrong tone. We serve
warrants," Klevesahl said. "I don't want you to use the word raid; we're
talking about the serving of search warrants."

It isn't surprising that they resist the "War on Drugs" label, because if it
is a war, the data seem to indicate that it is a war that their army is
losing, and one that's increasingly beyond what polls show most Americans
support.

Americans vs. Americans

Whether or not current drug eradication efforts are a "war" is a debatable
point, but to call it a War on Drugs is certainly a misnomer. A War on Drug
Users is probably more accurate.

While the number of drug dealers, traffickers, and manufacturers who get
arrested has remained static for the last 10 years, even dropping in 1997,
the number of Americans busted for possession of drugs has risen steadily
over that time.

Of the 1.6 million annual drug arrests in the United States more than
three-quarters are for simple possession, a category that has accounted
almost entirely for this decade's increase in drug arrests, which numbered 1
million in 1991.

Drugs now account for more arrests than any other crime, followed closely by
driving under the influence and theft/larceny. And despite high-profile
anti-drug campaigns against crack cocaine and methamphetamines, federal
figures shows this is mostly a War on Pot Smokers, especially in recent years.

In 1997 marijuana surpassed the "heroin/cocaine" category as the drug with
the most annual arrests. Nearly 700,000 people were arrested on marijuana
charges that year, more than 80 percent for possession, with police seizing
and destroying 1.5 million pounds of marijuana.

Also in 1997 the Drug Enforcement Administration's military-style marijuana
eradication program ripped up 241 million marijuana plants on 69,665 plots,
arrested 17,070 people, and seized $39.5 million in personal assets.

In 1996, the federal Office of National Narcotic Control Policy sought to
gauge public opinion by contracting the prestigious Gallup polling
organization to survey Americans on what they think is the best way to
allocate federal anti-drug resources.

Just 30 percent of those polled advocated stepping up various domestic law
enforcement activities, despite the fact that more than 61 percent of
federal anti-drug spending goes to domestic law enforcement.

The top two answers given in the survey were "stopping drugs from coming
into the U.S." (31 percent) and "having more programs to educate both youth
and adults about the dangers of drugs" (28 percent).

Coming in third at 22 percent was "more efforts by police action and
criminal prosecution to stop the drug dealers," followed by "more drug
treatment programs in communities and neighborhoods" (9 percent), "more
efforts by police action and criminal prosecutors to stop people who buy
drugs" (6 percent), and "building more jails and prisons for drug offenders"
(2 percent).

Yet the overwhelming majority of our anti-drug resources have been focused
on the two priorities rated lowest by the survey: busting drugs users and
building more cells for them.

The SLO County Front

The San Luis Obispo County Narcotics Task Force is a 17-year-old
organization that Wright says served as the model for similar programs in 48
of California's 58 counties.

"It has been one of the top-producing task forces in the state...when it
comes to arrests and seizures," Wright said.

NTF is a joint powers agency comprised of all the law enforcement agencies
in the county, with the exception of the Pismo Beach and Morro Bay police
departments (although the Pismo Beach City Council voted last week to rejoin
after pulling out several years ago). Each agency contributes money and/or
manpower to NTF.

But Wright actually works for the California Department of Justice, which
pays most of NTF's expenses, from rent and the phone bill to Wright's
$20,000 annual budget to pay confidential informants for drug information.

"We rely a lot on confidential informants, but we have a stringent
requirement before we even include them and make them informants," Wright
said, referring to background checks, multiple interviews, and corroborating
information from other sources.

Yet, as is common in the drug war, most of these informants are current and
former drug users who are using their status as a source of income or to
reduce their sentences. And most of their affidavits are sealed by judges,
preventing public scrutiny of the standards for issuing search warrants.

"Most of the confidential informants we deal with are from the criminal
element, who are working off a beef, if you will," Wright said. "It takes a
criminal to find a criminal."

Information from informants, investigations, and citizen tips is regularly
entered into massive databases like the Western States Computer Network,
offering police intelligence and surveillance information on drug users,
dealers, and manufacturers.

Asked if they were focused on any particular drug these days, Wright without
hesitation said, "methamphetamines," a focus that has become increasingly
common throughout California over the last two years.

"That's the drug of choice," Wright said.

"It's the drug people like and can afford," Klevesahl added.

"In the last five years, that is the drug that keeps elevating up. They call
it the poor man's cocaine," Wright said.

From the perspective of maintaining public support for the drug war,
methamphetamines are also an easy drug to demonize, much like crack cocaine
was in the 80s.

Both cause addiction and are associated with sometimes violent, erratic
behavior. Both are also popularly associated with minority groupscrack to
blacks, meth to Hispanics (and to gays on the only drug website linked to
the California Attorney General's home page)tapping into our racial biases.

Yet each drug was used by a minuscule percentage of the population,
according to federal figures, and account for a similarly small percentage
of our nation's annual drug arrests.

Seized Assets

Tom Dunbar sits in San Luis Obispo County Jail, just one of hundreds serving
time for using drugs. He's about halfway through a six-month sentence for
possession of narcotics.

Just over a year ago, Dunbar's Arroyo Grande home was invaded by police
dressed in commando gear, armed with semiautomatic weapons and a search warrant.

They were looking for the marijuana he was growing in his garageDunbar was a
vocal medical marijuana activist with a doctor's prescription to use the
drugbut they also found opium poppies growing in his back yard (see "Poppy
Paradox," New Times, Nov. 19, 1998).

As part of a plea bargain Dunbar pled guilty to possession of opium poppies
and the marijuana charges were dropped.

Prosecutors never alleged that either the marijuana or poppies were for
anything but personal use. They never claimed Dunbar profited from drugs or
challenged Dunbar's assertion that the $2,000 in cash seized from residence
was from the sale of a used car.

Nonetheless, attorney Kirk Wilson of the District Attorney's Office went
into court two weeks ago and convinced Judge Charles Piccuta to let the
police who raided Dunbar's house keep the money.

"You cultivated marijuana in violation of the Health and Safety Code, so
these were expenses by the people to seize and eradicate the plants,"
Piccuta told Dunbar, shackled and wearing an orange jail uniform, looking
dazed and confused by what was happening.

Not only may the police invade the home of drug users, but they can also
charge the drug users for the cost of that invasion. Such cost-recovery
suits are less used and publicized than the seizure of the ill-gotten gains
of drug dealers, but Wilson said both are important weapons in the War on Drugs.

"We treat itand are required to treat it by the [Penal] Codeas an
enforcement tool," said Wilson, who handles all the asset-forfeiture and
cost-recovery cases for the DA's Office. "You can go to jail and you can
lose everything you have."

Last year was a banner year for drug asset seizures in San Luis Obispo
County, with the drug warriors seizing $93,052 in 34 cases, ranging from
$402 to $10,863.

Of that money the law enforcement agency (the NTF in most SLO County cases)
takes 65 percent, the District Attorney's Office takes 10 percent, the state
General Fund takes 24 percent, and 15 percent goes into a special fund for
"programs designed to combat drug abuse and divert gang activity."

Yet the law enforcers say asset-forfeiture revenues are a drop in the bucket
compared to the costs of waging the drug war.

"Asset forfeiture, costs recovery, none of these things are moneymaking
operations," Wilson said.

Rather, he emphasized that such cases are enforcement tools, making the
penalties for drug use so severe that citizens will choose the straight and
narrow path. Or, at least, stick with alcohol.

"If, in addition to going to jail, if they know they are going to lose
everything they have, I can't help but think it has a deterrent value," he said.

Acceptable Loss

Military and international relations experts are well-versed in the concept
of "acceptable loss," which is the toll taken by a chosen policy or military
approach.

To NATO, ejecting the Serbs from Kosovo was worth destroying Serbia, causing
hundreds of civilian deaths, and blowing up the Chinese embassy. Such damage
was an acceptable loss.

In the drug war, the invasion of Maurice Pitesky's home was an acceptable
price to pay for a war that uses the element of surprise to maintain officer
and suspect safety.

Fighting the use of drugs in the United States has also been deemed worthy
of spending billions of dollars. Weighing the value of a drug-free society
versus rights of drug users has been a decision made by judges across the
country.

The courtswhich in California and in the federal system are now
overwhelmingly stacked with appointees from Republican governors and
presidentshave consistently ruled that the necessity of a drug crackdown
outweighs concerns for privacy, due process, and other civil liberties.

The courts have upheld the legality of random drug testing in almost all
cases, although protection from illegal searches is why the government is
barred from drug testing most of its own employees, a rare court ruling
against drug testing.

The courts have also upheld most drug asset-forfeiture laws, which allow
personal assets to be seized before there is a hearing and without a finding
of guilt, even though the Constitution guarantees that our property can't be
seized "without due process of law."

The courts have refused to throw out evidence illegally obtained by police,
refused monetary damages to innocent people injured and killed during
mistaken drug raids, and allowed drug police wide latitude in searching
individuals who fit profiles of druggies.

"Our cases have recognized that a police officer may draw inferences based
on his own experience in deciding whether probable cause exists," U.S.
Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote in a 1996 opinion
upholding a police search of a vehicle based on a belief that the suspects
fit the profile of drug couriers.

An Unwinnable War

Despite spending billions of dollars, giving police more authority, and
increasing penalties, drugs and drug use are still as common in this country
as before the crackdown.

While the stated goal of the drug war is to eliminate the supply and use of
illegal drugs in the United States, there are few reasonable people who
think that is possible, even those whose lives are devoted to fighting drugs.

"It's like economics; there's supply and demand. If you have a high demand
you are going to find someone to supply it," NTF commander Wright said.
"It's money and economics. We're never going to be out of business, never.
But our job is to provide a service, and hopefully that service will provide
an impact."

Few would deny that the War on Drugs has had an impact. But the question is,
have the good impacts outweighed the negative ones?

The United States has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world,
with more than 600 citizens per 100,000 behind bars. And our ratio of police
to citizens is also one of the highest in the world. Yet we are also the
leading drug-consuming nation in the world, a fact that has been changed
little by our decade-old War on Drugs.

New Times staff writer Steven T. Jones is among the 37 percent of Americans
who have used illegal drugs.