DRUG POLICY CONTRADICTS KING'S PHILOSOPHY

"I choose to identify with the under-privileged. I choose to identify with
the poor. I choose to give my life for the hungry. I choose to give my
life for those who have been left out of the sunlight of opportunity. I
choose to live for and with those who find themselves seeing life as a long
and desolate corridor with no exit sign." - Martin Luther King Jr.

According to a recent essay in The New York Times by Nobel Prize-winner
Milton Friedman, "In 1970 there were 200,000 people in prison. Today, 1.6
million people are. In addition, 2.3 million are on probation and parole.
The attempt to prohibit drugs is by far the major source of the horrendous
growth of the prison population."

He quoted from a speech by the director of Connecticut's addiction services
comparing prisons in America and South Africa in 1995: "In the land of the
Bill of Rights, we jail over four times as many black men as the only
country in the world that advertised a political policy of apartheid."

Friedman asked, "How many of our citizens do we want to turn into criminals
before we yell 'enough'? Can any policy, however high-minded, be moral if
it leads to widespread corruption, imprisons so many, has so racist an
effect, destroys our inner cities, wreaks havoc on misguided and vulnerable
individuals and brings death and destruction to foreign countries?"

Young black men are being incarcerated at unprecedented rates to prison
terms that echo King's words of a "long and desolate corridor with no exit
sign. These prison sentences linger on the brink of insanity. For
example, if an individual has a prior marijuana conviction that is a felony
(one year or more in prison) and is later found to be in possession of five
or more grams of crack cocaine, his or her sentence is 20 years to life, if
convicted. Crack cocaine is considered the drug of choice of young black
drug users.

The sentence is 100 times more severe for the person who has crack cocaine
than for the individual, more than likely a white person, who has the same
drug in powder form. Scientists nearly unanimously agree that the drug is
the same.

In my opinion, King would review these frightening statistics, measure
their impact on young black men - including the devastation in our inner
cities - and be outraged. He might use one of his first speeches before
reaching national prominence, "This is not a war between the white and
Negro but a conflict between justice and injustice. ..."

He would perhaps address the Department of Justice, members of Congress and
other elected officials who fear they commit political and personal suicide
if they speak out about the insanity of our failed "War on Drugs." He would
insist upon the adoption of a fair drug policy recommended by the U.S.
Sentencing Commission. The commission has in essence called racist the
sentencing guidelines distinguishing crack cocaine from powder cocaine. He
might tell the politicians, "This is a great issue we are confronted with
and the consequences for my personal life are not particularly important.
It is the triumph of cause that I am concerned about.... I think when a
person lives with fear of the consequences for his personal life, he can
never do anything in terms of lifting the whole of humanity and solving
many of the social problems we confront."

By ignoring the startling statistics concerning the effects of racism in
our sentencing practices in drug cases while hiding behind "crime rates,"
elected officials are adding to a moral crisis that has crippled one
generation and is making inroads on another. Continuing to lock up young
black males at the highest rate in the history of civilization will haunt
this country.

America's drug policy discriminates in a manner that contradicts the
spirit, ideas and philosophy of King. The effect of our drug policy is to
place voting black men in prison in an attempt to make them disappear.
However, as Ralph Ellison so eloquently stated in his opening passage to
the "Invisible Man": "I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and
liquid -- and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible,
understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless
heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been
surrounded by mirrors of hard distorted glass. When they approach me they
see only my surroundings, themselves, or figment of their imagination --
indeed everything and anything except me."

Some of our most respected and thoughtful state and federal officials are
wrong on the present drug policy. They must rethink a policy that makes so
many of our young people (especially young black males) convicted
criminals. They have a duty to create a drug policy that educates,
provides treatment and decriminalizes drug use.

It is the only way to rescue a failed, disastrous, discriminatory drug
policy and provide an exit sign at the end of what King describes as "a
long and desolate corridor."