TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT THE DRUG WAR

Change begins with truth-telling, and a report released Thursday by
the Massachusetts Bar Association puts the truth right out front. Its
title: The Failure of the War on Drugs.

The report, the product of more than a year's work by a task force of
respected lawyers, law enforcement and mental health professionals,
comes to a conclusion politicians have been reluctant to face: The
state's drug laws and policies, like those of most other states, are
wasteful, ineffective and cruel.

Drug education programs fail to teach anything useful and show no
signs of preventing drug abuse, the task force concludes. Addiction
treatment programs are underfunded and out of reach of those who need
them most. Incarceration isn't an effective deterrent to drug use or
to recidivism. Most of those imprisoned for drug-related crimes
receive no treatment and, thanks to mandatory minimum sentences,
receive no post-release supervision. It's no surprise that so many of
them find themselves behind bars again.

Even those who hold no sympathy for anyone who abuses alcohol or drugs
should care about public resources wasted on policies that don't work.
Between 1980 and 2008, the state's prison population rose by 368
percent and the county jail population grew by 522 percent. But we've
seen no decline in drug use or drug-related crime.

Meanwhile, Massachusetts has made significant progress against one
addiction - tobacco - without arresting a single adult. The truth is
addiction is more effectively treated as a public health problem than
a criminal justice one.

Drug treatment, while far from perfect, is cheaper and more effective
than prison. For the cost of housing a single, non-violent drug
offender in prison for a year - about $48,000 - we could provide drug
treatment for 10 non-violent substance abusers.

The task force offers both short- and long-term recommendations:
reform drug sentencing; refocus education and prevention efforts;
expand treatment programs. But its most ambitious recommendations call
for changing the way we think about drugs. Prevention and treatment
policies must be based on science, not prohibitionist morality. We
need to recognize history's lesson that drug abstinence is an
unrealistic goal; that harm-reduction strategies make more sense.

Truth-telling means recognizing what doesn't work, including, the
report says, "programs that make us feel good about crusading against
drugs - that wallow in public scorn against drugs but teach nothing
new; that ignore human nature's natural tendency to engage
irrationally in behaviors that are risky and adventuresome."

As substance abuse strategies, "just say no" and "lock them up" were
discredited years ago. They have persisted, in large part because
politicians tend to choose popular platitudes over tough truths. But
the tide may be turning. The new White House "drug czar" has decided
to stop talking about the "war on drugs" because we are "not at war
with people in this country."

Gov. Deval Patrick has called for the reform of mandatory sentences
and criminal records laws, issues his predecessors were too timid to
touch. The MBA task force goes even further, both in its analysis and
its recommendations. It estimates the state could save $25 million a
year by implementing its reforms. Given the state's fiscal challenges,
that ought to be reason enough for legislators to give these ideas the
hearing they deserve.