DRUG TREATMENT FOR OFFENDERS GAINS FAVOR

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, antidrug policy is taking another turn. Treatment is
making a comeback, driven largely by a grassroots revolt.

Arizona has taken the boldest step. In defiance of the state's political
establishment, voters took the law into their own hands and voted 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.

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.

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 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 also was 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, the user must undergo drug treatment.

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 conveyer-belt justice of
the war on drugs, these courts have grown from a handful at the start of the
decade to nearly 600 nation wide. More than 90,000 people have been sent to
treatment through drug courts.

Gen. Barry McCaffrey, 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 II." 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.
Under the state's basic drug laws, it is a felony to possess even the
smallest amount of drugs such as marijuana.

In the last five years, the prison population has ballooned by 50 percent,
to 26,000. State officials say drug and alcohol abuse are at the root of the
crimes of about 75 percent of the inmates, matching national surveys.

Arizona used to proclaim zero tolerance toward drugs. But in 1996, retired
millionaire Joseph Sperling started a political rock slide.

"As a social scientist, I thought the drug war was one of the most
disastrous public policies I'd ever encountered," he said. 'Three years ago,
I was talking with some Arizona politicians, and I said, 'We ought to reform
the drug laws'"

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

Virtually the entire Arizona political establishment and major national
antidrug leaders campaigned against Proposition 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.

Proposition 200 passed by a 2-1 ratio. Then the state Legislature amended
the measure, saying voters committed a grave error. 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.
Early results show that three-fourths of the people who complete treatment
test clean for drugs afterward.