Drug offenders dominate courts, jails

William R. Boman suggests as a hypothetical possibility (Viewpoints,
April 28) that if we had mandatory minimum sentencing in Texas there
might be a lot of violent criminals in our prisons who would have to be
released to make room for nonviolent ones. Far from a hypothetical
possibility, this is in fact what has happened as a result of the
mandatory sentences imposed in federal courts for so-called
"drug-related" offenses.

Approximately two-thirds of the 1.6 million people in state and federal
penitentiaries are there because of a drug-related offense, and about
half of these werr nonviolent offenders. The offenses committed by these
people should more properly be referred to as "prohibition-related."

The ones convicted in federal courts spend more time in prison than do
the violent criminals convicted of murder, rape, kidnapping, assault or
robbery. This is at least partly because many of the violent ones have
to be released early to make room for newly convicted drug offenders.

Mandatory sentences for drug offenders are also responsible for the
fact that in this country we imprison a larger percentage of our
citizens than any other industrialized country, including Russia and
South Africa.

Most of us who choose to use drugs choose such legally available
substances as coffee, tea, alcoholic beverage and tobacco products. The
excessive use and abuse of these substances is responsible for a great
deal of illnes and premature death in our society, but we are dealing
with this problem in an increasingly rational way (for example, by
imposing civil penalties for selling tobacco to children).

By contrast, we take people who use marijuana and fill our prisons with
them. This is not only an irrational way to deal with the problem of
drug abuse, it also does incalculable harm to society as a whole.

Even though the calculable part is horrendous (costing about $100,000
to build a prison cell and roughly $30,000 per year per prisoner to
maintain one), the incalculable part is worse. We should think about
this every time a crime is committed by a murderer or a rapist who has
been released early to make room for another person who has been caught
growing or selling marijuana.

Mandatory sentences are probably a bad idea in general, but they are an
especially bad idea for nonviolent offenders.

G. Alan Robison MD, director,

Drug Policy Forum of Texas,

Houston