TOP U.S. DRUG COP RIPS CALIFORNIA'S PROP. 5

The country's top drug cop came to Sacramento on Tuesday to rip
Proposition 5 as a back-door move to legalize drugs in the United States.

In blasting the measure on the Nov. 4 ballot, Office of National Drug
Control Policy director John Walters leveled some of his hardest shots
at the measure's principal backer, billionaire financier George Soros
of New York.

Walters said Soros and his Drug Policy Alliance can't achieve drug
legalization "by being honest and straightforward," so they've offered
Proposition 5 as a treatment plan for nonviolent offenders that will
unclog California's overcrowded prisons.

In the process, Walters said, the initiative will undermine
court-based treatment programs and "weaken our capacity to help people
in the criminal justice system" who still remain subject to punishment
if they fail.

Yes on 5 spokeswoman Margaret Dooley-Sammuli called the initiative a
"common sense response" to drug-related crime and blasted Walters as a
spokesman for failed criminal justice policies.

"President Bush's drug czar has come to California to insist that we
continue with the failed approach that has been so ineffective and has
crowded our prisons full of nonviolent offenders," Dooley-Sammuli said.

The initiative would increase spending on drug programs by hundreds of
millions of dollars a year and divert a range of offenders
incarcerated on drug and property crimes out of prison and into treatment.

Proponents say the measure will lower prison costs by treating
offenders as addicts instead of criminals. Opponents say that tack
will give addicts more opportunity to commit crimes by reducing the
accountability they would face in the criminal justice structure.

Proposition 5's backers include the League of Women Voters, the
California Labor Federation and assorted unions, drug treatment
providers and civil rights groups.

Opponents include Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Mothers Against Drunk
Driving, California Attorney General Jerry Brown and the state's
leading law enforcement management and labor organizations.