COUNTY LEADS SURGE IN MARIJUANA ARRESTS

Study Argues Drug War Focus Has Shifted Away From Heroin, Cocaine

A recent nationwide study has identified King County as having the sharpest
increase since 1990 in marijuana-related arrests among the country's 10
most populous counties.

When King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng sparked a political movement three
years ago declaring the "war on drugs has failed," marijuana arrests in
King County had risen 418 percent between 1999 and 2002, according to the
study results released this week by The Sentencing Project.

Misdemeanor and felony possession arrests alone were up 465 percent, the
study say, while pot-dealer arrests rose 99 percent.

The figures illustrate the futility of prosecuting nonviolent drug
offenders, particularly those who use marijuana, said Roger Goodman, drug
policy director for the King County Bar Association.

"It's shocking but true," said Goodman of the statistics produced by The
Sentencing Project. "The focus ought to be on crimes against persons,
crimes against property rather than psychoactive drugs."

In the King County Bar's own Drug Policy Project report released this year,
the Bar proposed a plan "for replacing the current framework of criminal
prohibition with one of legal regulation."

The Bar and a growing contingent of lawmakers, legal professionals and
health-care workers want to reduce the roles prosecution and incarceration
play in dealing with the drug problem by increasing money spent on
addiction treatment.

Goodman said he also hopes drugs such as marijuana can be taken off the
black market to remove the vast profit motive for people to grow and sell
it. Regulating the drug would restrict its access to children and provide
prompt health care and essential services to addicts, Goodman said.

"It's really about protecting kids and saving money," he said.

Bellevue police Capt. Jim Kowalczyk, who leads the multi-agency Eastside
Narcotics Task Force, said his narcotics officers aren't interested in
putting low-level, nonviolent pot smokers in jail.

Maybe so, but one of the Task Force's most effective strategies is
arresting recreational users and making deals with them for their help in
busting their suppliers.

"Our goal is to get to the source and stop it," Kowalczyk said. "We want to
go all the way up to the biggest fish we can get. A common way to get to
the producer is to go after low-level users."

Whether it's marijuana, methamphetamine or heroin, police are responsible
for enforcing the law, he said. If there is an emphasis, it's on those who
supply the most of any illegal substance.

"Are we winning the war on drugs? I don't think so," Kowalczyk said.

The study by The Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C.-based left-leaning
think tank, says the drug war's focus has shifted over the past decade from
hard drugs to marijuana, which now accounts for nearly half of all drug
arrests nationwide.

The numbers in the study were taken from the FBI's uniform crime report,
and according to the study's co-author Marc Mauer, those statistics take
into account only cases in which marijuana sales or possession was the
primary charge.

"It calls into question the strategy of the war on drugs at the present,"
Mauer said. "It doesn't appear that arresting this number of people for
marijuana is effective."

The study indicates that the percentage of heroin and cocaine cases plunged
from 55 percent of all drug arrests in 1992 to less than 30 percent 10
years later. Meanwhile, pot arrests jumped from 28 percent to 45 percent.

Mauer said the trend immediately followed the national focus on crack
cocaine in the late 1980s. When the crack problem leveled off, the federal
government continued spending about $35 billion a year to fund the war on
drugs.

Along with the rise in pot arrests was a rise in overall drug arrests, from
fewer than 1.1 million in 1990 to more than 1.5 million a decade later.
Still, about 80 percent of the jump came from marijuana arrests, the study
found.

The study also showed that although African Americans make up 14 percent of
marijuana users generally, they account for nearly a third of all marijuana
arrests.

"We need to consider whether current law enforcement strategies are having
the effect they should have," Mauer said.

From a local perspective, Kowalczyk said, the King County statistics don't
necessarily correspond with the direction the Eastside Narcotics Task Force
has taken.

In 1999, he said, the Task Force raided 18 marijuana growing operations,
which on average include about 100 plants. The next year, the Task Force
busted 22 grow houses, and in 2001 it busted 10. In 2002, the team found
only nine grow operations, and in 2003 it busted seven.

While police here are concerned with the increasing potency of home-grown
pot and the importation of notorious "B.C. Bud," the Task Force in recent
years has grown more focused on the damage caused by methamphetamines and
the dangerous labs popping up to make crystal meth. "That's scarier to me
than anything," Kowalczyk said

Despite the statistical appearance that King County has gotten tougher on
pot heads, Goodman said, Washington state and King County specifically have
led the country in a cultural change for dealing with the drug problem.

In 2002, the state Legislature reduced prison sentences for nonviolent drug
offenders and earmarked the money saved by releasing them for addiction
treatment and drug courts, which offer effective alternatives to jail.

So far, the results have been positive, Goodman said. So much so that last
week state lawmakers passed a bill for an additional $33 million to be used
for drug treatment and an additional $6.7 million earmarked especially to
help kids with drug problems.

"The Legislature has enthusiastically responded," he said. "I think there
has been a cultural change."