STATE'S POLICY OF LOCKING UP DRUG USERS IS NOT WORKING

They were two different events in two distinctly separate settings,
yet they might carry the same message.

The first happened Monday night at a gathering of deep thinkers
deeply concerned about the enormous increase in the state's prison
population. Burley Mitchell, the chief justice of the N.C. Supreme
Court from 1995 to 1999, put it as plainly as he could in a
presentation reported on by The Associated Press.

"What if we decriminalize drugs?" Mitchell asked. "If you knock out
all the profits, then there would be no more Colombian cartel. There
would be no more Mexican cartel. They would be broken."

The second played out in a Forsyth County courtroom last week. Bryant
Lomont Gwynn, 26, was sentenced to life in prison after being
convicted of first-degree murder and robbery with a dangerous weapon.
Gwynn was accused of shooting Deshard Smart while robbing him of a
pound of marijuana. If marijuana had been decriminalized, would that
have removed the motive for killing Smart?

Would Smart be alive if there had been no economic incentive to shoot
him? Legalizing vs. decriminalizing First, let's draw the distinction
between legalizing drugs and decriminalizing certain drug offenses.

Legalizing drugs, advocates say, removes the criminal element and
would allow the government to regulate sales. You could create a
registry of users and have them get some type of permit to purchase
them. You would have to be on drugs to buy that logic. Why would
anybody want to make illicit drugs more accessible? Don't we have
enough trouble with alcohol already?

Decriminalization makes more sense. Spend the money it costs to
incarcerate somebody convicted of drug-possession charges on
treatment instead. "We know that if we give them the Martha Stewart
jewelry - the house arrest ankle bracelet - urine screens and
treatment that we will have a success rate of over 65 percent to 70
percent," said Bert Wood, the president of the Partnership for a
Drug-Free N.C. treatment program. "They will do well in the community."

The numbers indicate that something has got to be done. According to
the N.C. Sentencing Commission, the state will need 10,000 additional
prison beds by 2010 if we keep locking people up at the present rate.
As of Sept. 30, we had 1,906 people locked up for first-degree
murder. At the same time, we had 3,279 people behind bars on
nontrafficking drug offenses. Every one of those prisoners costs us
about $26,500 a year. Figuring a solution You would expect a guy like
Wood, who's spent more than 30 years working to fight drug abuse, to
be in favor of treating nonviolent drug offenders. You might not
expect it from Tom Keith, the county district attorney with a
well-earned reputation for being hard on criminals. Though he is not
quite advocating decriminalization, he does favor using common sense.
"I don't have an answer for the drug problem," he said. "I believe in
the drug-treatment court. There's a difference between a user and the
trafficker. Hammer the trafficker."

Keith didn't go as far as Mitchell did Monday, when the former chief
justice called the war on drugs "an utter failure."

"I have told the young people on my staff that you guys have to
figure out a solution," Keith said. "My generation had no answer."
The three-strikes law that locked up repeat offenders didn't curb the
drug problem, nor did mandatory minimum sentences.

Those measures just crammed the prisons full. Is decriminalization
the answer? Would it reduce the number of crimes committed to finance
a drug habit? Would it keep people like Smart from dying? It's worth
a try. What we've tried so far doesn't seem to be working too well.