PUSH TO END DRUG WAR FINDS FEW FOLLOWERS

Local Officer, Judges Don't Buy Suggestion Legalization Is Better

Maybe if he hadn't knocked down so many doors to drug dens. Maybe if he
could look past the blood and the tears, the thousands of lives lost and
the billions of dollars spent, and say that the nation's 38-year crusade
against drugs has made a difference. Maybe then it would be easy for
Columbus police Cmdr. Michael J. Manley to dismiss the idea of legalizing
drugs.

Like most police, Manley is opposed to legalization. But he acknowledges he
has wavered on the idea.

"The so-called 'war on drugs' is basically a joke," said Manley, who joined
the Columbus Police Division in 1978 and has been working drug busts for 20
years. "Our budget is down, but the drug dealers have an unlimited budget."
On the streets, "demand is up, supply is up and prices are down. It's kind
of a shame housing isn't like that."

Manley emphasized that he was speaking for himself and not the Police
Division. But a national group of mostly retired law enforcers known as
LEAP, or Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, sends members across the
country to denounce the drug war. Speakers include Eleanor Schockett, a
retired judge from Miami who served on the bench from 1991 to 2002.
Schockett told about 30 Ohio State University students last month that the
time has come to legalize drugs because the laws aren't working.

Schockett occasionally went out on drug sweeps with police. She remembers
remarking that new dealers would hit the streets by the next day and having
the officers reply, "Oh, no. They'll be out there in an hour."

Many current and former judges agree that laws against drugs have failed
but know it's political suicide to say so, she said. "There is not one
judge I know that, in private, will not tell you that they believe
(prohibition) to be a failure."

For two Franklin County judges who frequently deal with drug offenders,
their private opinion is the same as their public one: Legalization is
ludicrous. "My problem is not the usage -- my problem is, what is the
result of the usage?" said Dale A. Crawford, a Common Pleas judge since
1983. If drugs were legalized, drug use would be encouraged, he said.
"We're going to have another 150,000 people who can't work and they're
going to be unemployable and who are sick and are going to have to be
treated. . . . Somebody's going to have to pay for that."

Crawford said money should be channeled into treatment programs. Supply
will increase to meet demand, he said, "but if we concentrate on treatment,
supply will be irrelevant."

Jennifer L. Brunner, a Common Pleas judge since 2001, often takes a
carrot-and-stick approach to drug addicts: treatment vs. prison time.
Legalization would make drug use too easy, she said. "For some people, the
impediment of its being illegal probably helps."

Local, state and federal governments spent $30 billion to control drugs in
1999, the most recent year for which statistics are available, according to
the National Academy of Sciences. In her speech at OSU, Schockett said the
money could be better spent on treatment.

The drug trade "needs to be regulated and controlled, and only a
governmental agency can do it," Schockett said. She thinks that would put
drug dealers out of business.

Drugs weren't banned until the 20th century. George Washington grew hemp.
Cocaine was an ingredient in Coca-Cola. Heroin was prescribed as pain
medication until opium was banned in 1925.

In 1967, New York Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller declared the "start of an
unending war" on drugs after the state legislature approved a three-year
addiction-control program that allowed judges to commit drug addicts for up
to five years of compulsory treatment.

In 1973, New York passed a series of mandatory minimum sentences for drug
offenders that became a model for other states and greatly increased the
prison population. By the end of 2003, the most-recent year for which
statistics are available, state prisons were estimated to be at capacity or
as much as 16 percent above, while federal prisons were operating at 39
percent above capacity, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. On
Dec. 31, 2003, nearly 2.1 million people were being held in local jails and
federal and state prisons.

Critics say drug laws are draconian, but Schockett said the debate goes
beyond morality to economics and race. Minorities and poor people are more
likely to be prosecuted. At the end of 2003, there were 3,405 black male
prisoners per 100,000 black males in the United States and 1,231 Latino
male inmates per 100,000 Latino males, according to the federal government,
compared with 465 white male inmates per 100,000 white males.

The number of people serving time on drug charges is difficult to determine
because prisons typically classify inmates by their most-serious offense.
Someone doing time for robbery and drug possession, for example, wouldn't
show up as a drug offender. Thirty-one percent of inmates entered Ohio
prisons with a drug crime as their primary offense in the fiscal year that
ended July 31.

Many drug cases are prosecuted in federal courts, and drug criminals
accounted for 55 percent of federal prisoners in 2002, the most-recent
available statistics.

Schockett doesn't like the idea of cocaine and heroin use, but she said
people have the right to make bad decisions "as long as they're doing it in
their own homes."

Manley thinks it's unrealistic to believe that junkies wouldn't steal or
even kill to feed their habits, even if drugs were legal. Legal or not,
drugs will always be used, he said. "It's just part of our nature. It's sad."