Source: New York Times
Contact: letters@nytimes.com
Author: CHRISTOPHER S. WREN

New Voice in Drug Debate Seeks to Lower Volume

When Robert MacCoun, a psychologist at the University of
California at Berkeley, set out to analyze American perceptions
about illegal drug use, he found himself treading a political minefield.

"I was stunned at how emotional the debate is," MacCoun said. "The
emotions are very understandable drugs can cause a lot of serious
harm to society. But I think the emotions have made it hard to talk about
solutions in an effective way."

Now a group of 34 scientists, drugpolicy experts and public officials,
MacCoun among them, is moving to stake out the middle ground in the
drug debate by asserting that while drugs should not be made legal, the
policies adopted to prevent their use have sometimes done more harm
than good.

The polarized words of the debate have upset drug researchers and
policy experts who find themselves caught in a crossfire between those
who say the war against drugs has failed and should be abandoned in
favor of more liberal policies and those who believe that reconsideration
of existing policies is tantamount to a sellout.

"It's impossible to talk about any other alternatives without one side
accusing you of being a traitor and having a hidden agenda," MacCoun
said.

The polarization has been illustrated by the refusal of Sen. Jesse Helms
to let the Foreign Relations Committee that he leads consider the
nomination of William Weld as U.S. ambassador to Mexico.

Helms, RN.C., accuses Weld, the former Massachusetts governor, of
being soft on drugs because he favors making medicinal marijuana
available for seriously ill people. In fact, Weld, as a federal prosecutor,
put drug traffickers behind bars.

The 34 professionals advocating a new look at drug policy plan to
announce 14 "principles for practical drug policies" at a news conference
in Washington on Tuesday. Their move constitutes the first attempt in
years to bring pragmatism as well as civility to what has degenerated into
a shouting match.

"It's being done to make clear to people that the argument between the
legalizers and the drug warriors isn't where the action is, if what you're
really trying to do is reduce the damage that drugs do to American
society," said Mark Kleiman, a professor of public policy at the
University of California at Los Angeles. "What we'd like to do is make it
politically safe to say something sensible about drug policy."

Though the people who have signed the statement are generally known
for their work on issues like drug addiction, most have not publicly
spoken out about drug policy before.

To avoid partisanship, none of the prominent personalities on either side
of the drug debate were invited to sign the declaration, which also avoids
much of the language of the current heated debate. For example, it
speaks of reducing the damage of drugs to society rather than "harm
reduction," a phrase that connotes cutting down on the harm addicts do
to themselves.

The signers said: "The current drugpolicy debate is marked by
polarization into two positions stereotyped as 'drug warrior' and
'legalizer.' This creates the false impression that 'ending prohibition' is
the
only alternative to an unrestricted 'war on drugs,' effectively
disenfranchising citizens who find both of those options unsatisfactory."

In such a climate, the statement continued, "every idea, research finding
or proposal put forth is scrutinized to determine which agenda it
advances, and the partisans on each side are quick to brand anyone who
deviates from their 'party line' as an agent of the opposing side."

The signers included the former New York City police commissioner,
William Bratton; Detroit's prosecuting attorney, John O'Hair;
criminaljustice experts like John Dilulio Jr. of Princeton, and Francis
Hartmann, Mark Moore and David McLean Kennedy of Harvard, and
economists like Glenn Loury of Boston University and Philip Jackson
Cook of Duke.

The signers known for their scientific research into drugs included Avram
Goldstein of Stanford, George Vaillant of Harvard, George Bigelow and
Solomon Snyder of Johns Hopkins, Lewis Seiden of the University of
Chicago and Marian Fischman of Columbia.

"I oftentimes think that elected officials never hear from those of us who
espouse moderate principles," said one of the document's signers,
Charles Schuster, a former director of the National Institute on Drug
Abuse under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush.

"It's very important to have spokespeople for the moderate positions,"
said Schuster, who directs clinical research on drug abuse at the Wayne
State University School of Medicine. "All they're hearing from are the
two other extremes."

Several of the signers said that they had begun drafting the principles
after voters in California and Arizona approved the ballot initiatives
endorsing marijuana for medical purposes last November. Those
referendums triggered heated exchanges between government officials
and supporters of more liberal availability of marijuana.

Jonathan Caulkins, a drugpolicy analyst at CarnegieMellon University,
said he signed the statement because he favored a "smarter prohibition"
of illegal drugs. His recent analysis of mandatory minimum sentences for
drug offenses, published by Rand Corp., concluded that tax money
would be more effectively spent on treating minor offenders for drug
abuse than on locking them up for long periods.

"One of my frustrations is that the druglegalization groups are
intellectually irresponsible in a lot of their thinking, except they
raise valid criticisms of the current regime," Caulkins said. "And
the current regime is intolerant of criticism. It feels that even
constructive criticism is an act of treason."

The signers said: "We cannot escape our current predicament by 'ending
prohibition' or 'legalizing drugs."' Lifting controls, they contended, could
increase drug use. But they said that law enforcement and punishment
should be designed to minimize overall damage. "The use of
disproportionate punishments to express social norms is neither just nor
a prudent use of public funds or scarce prison capacity," they said.

Other principles make these points:

Policies to curtail drugs should be judged by the results they produce,
and not by their intentions.

Social disapproval, while a powerful, economical means of reducing
drug use, should not breed indiscriminate hostility toward drug users. But
people who violate the rights of others while under the influence of drugs
or while trying to obtain them should be held responsible.

Policies should be tailored for different drugs, because every drug
carries its own risks and has its own patterns of use.

Treatment that reduces drug use but fails to produce lasting
abstinence should be considered an incomplete success, not a failure.

Drugprevention messages should reflect accurately what is known
about specific drugs.

Several signers expressed hope that their statement would provide a
cover for politicians who have been reluctant to discuss the nation's drug
problem more openly for fear of sounding soft on drugs.

"A lot of politicians have avoided talking about drug policy because
there is no articulated middle ground, so they just stay silent on the
issue," MacCoun said. "We want to make clear to them that there's a
whole palette of choices, and any criticism of the status quo doesn't have
to imply endorsement of drug use."

Copyright 1997 The New York Times Company