TREATMENT REPLACING WAR ON DRUGS?

Corrections: Policymakers give addiction programs a second look after seeing
prison spending swell from narcotics offenders.

Phoenix-A dozen years after the national alarm over crack hastened the
decline of drug treatment in favor of punitive laws that helped create
the world's largest prison system, anti-drug policy is taking another
turn. Treatment is making a comeback, driven largely by a grass-roots
revolt.

Arizona has taken the boldest step. In defiance of the state's
political establishment, voters took the law into their own hands and
noted twice, by large majorities, to make Arizona the first state to
mandate treatment instead of prison for criminal offenders whose
primary legal problem is drug use.

At least 40 states have set up drug courts to steer offenders toward
treatment instead of jail. A number of states are considering changing
their mandatory prison laws for drug offenders, most notably New York,
which was the first to require long sentences for possession of small
amounts of drugs 26 years ago.

In the crack years of the 1980s, treatment programs were gutted while
the drug-fighting budget quadrupled. News reports said crack was the
most addictive substance known to man, and prisons started to fill
with people who once might have gotten help instead. The number of
Americans locked up on drug offenses grew from 50,000 in 1980 to
400,000 today.

Yet even during the height of the prison boom, a number of treatment
centers continued to have success,

While not all addicts respond to treatment, these programs showed that
crack was less addictive than some other street drugs, or even
nicotine, and that many of its users responded to conventional group
therapy. Habitual users of crack, according to a five-year federal
survey of treatment published last year, showed greater success at
staying clean than alcoholics.

Some of the experts who called crack the worst drug of all have done
an about face.

"I've changed my view because of the data that has come in over the
last 10 years," said Dr. Charles O'Brien, chief of psychiatry at the
Veterans Administration Medical Center in Philadelphia, who in the
late '80s described crack as "by far, the most addictive drug we've
ever had to deal with."

What changed his mind were national surveys that showed 84 percent of
people who tried cocaine - either smoking it as crack or inhaling it
in powder form - did not become addicted. He said he had also been
swayed by a study he co-wrote of habitual users of crack who were
assigned to treatment. A year after treatment, at least half tested
free of drugs.

Locking up crack users is still the policy in the federal system. But
in Arizona, the same crack user prosecuted under state laws cannot be
sent to prison. Instead, he must undergo drug treatment. The money for
treatment comes from the offenders themselves and from a tax on liquor.

Many states have adopted similar policies by establishing drug courts,
which sentence people to treatment as a way to keep them out of jail.
Started in Miami by judges and prosecutors frustrated by the
conveyor-belt justice of the war on drugs, these courts have grown
from a handful at the start of the decade to nearly 600 nationwide.

Where basic state laws on mandatory sentences for a host of drug
crimes have not changed, in many cases it is prosecutors who have
discretion to send offenders to treatment, instead of filing charges
that could lead to jail time.

While critics say the dug courts coddle chronic abusers who belong in
jail, the cost savings have won over many others. Treatment instead of
prison saves about $20.000 per person annually, according to a study
last year by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at
Columbia University.

Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the director of national drug policy, has become
a promoter of drug courts, saying they "constitute one of the most
monumental changes in social justice in this country since World War
11." After three years as the drug czar, McCaffrey has concluded that
treatment is the best way to reduce drug use.

Arizona might seem an odd state to turn the table on American drug
policy. Its voters are generally conservative and definitely not soft
on crime. For years, the state's imprisonment rate has ranked among
the top. And under the state's basic drug laws, it is a felony to
possess even the smallest amount of drugs like marijuana.

Arizona used to proclaim "zero tolerance" toward drugs. But in 1996,
retired millionaire Joseph Sperling started a political rockslide that
is still sending down stones. Sperling, who is 78 and calls himself a
lifetime student of British empiricism and economic history, made
his fortune by building a university system for profit and then
taking public the company that ran the system, called Apollo. But he
was not ready to retire.

"As a social scientist, I thought the drug war was one of the most
disastrous public policies I'd ever encountered," he said.

Joined by philanthropist George Soros, who has spent millions of dollars on
efforts to overturn drug laws in several states, Sperling became a
principal financial backer of a 1996 initiative to change Arizona's drug
laws, Proposition 200.

Virtually the entire Arizona political establishment, the press and
major national anti-drug leaders campaigned against Prop. 200. Its
most controversial part could have made drugs like heroin, LSD or
marijuana legal for medical purposes when prescribed by two doctors.

But a less-discussed provision mandated treatment instead of prison
for certain nonviolent offenders, mainly criminals whose core problem
was drug addiction.

Prop. 200 passed by a 2-1 margin. Then the state Legislature amended
the measure, saying voters had committed a grave error. But then
supporters of the original initiative put it up for another statewide
vote in 1998 and again it passed, with a 57 percent majority.

The part of the law that allowed doctors to prescribe major drugs has
been effectively halted by federal restrictions on the medical use of
such drugs. But the treatment provision was quietly put to work more
than two years ago, and early results show that three-fourths of the
people who complete treatment test clean for dugs afterward.

Richard Nixon was the first president to declare a "war on drugs," but
he also directed about two-thirds of all federal anti-drug money at
treatment and prevention - with great success, as measured by sharp
drops in crimes committed by drug addicts. His policy expanded
federally financed treatment facilities from six in 1969 to more than
300 in 1973.

Discouraged by news accounts of addicts who had skipped out of
treatment, New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller became one of the first
major politicians to turn against treatment. "Let's be frank," he said
in a 1973 speech, "We have found no cure,"

Rockefeller created some of the nation's most punitive drug laws,
which licked people up for 15 years for possessing certain drugs.

For the next 20 years, the dominant sentiment among politicians and
prosecutors was that "nothing works," and treatment fell out of favor
- - particularly in the crack years.

Locking up drug users, in the view of some criminologist, is a main
reason why crime is down. But as many of the nation's 400,000
imprisoned drug offenders are released in the coming years, they are
likely to follow a pattern that has already taken hold: The ones who
have not been treated - the great majority - will commit another crime
within five years.