CONFLICT OVER LEGALIZATION A GROWING PART OF NATION'S DRUG WAR

Karen Daskam-Canaday was a Girl Scouts leader and a Sunday school teacher
and made sure her five children had good Christmases and birthday parties.

As a waitress, "they called me speedy. Little did they know," she said.

"I was what they call a functioning addict," she said. "I was good at
hiding it, or at least I thought so."

"I did everything." Black beauties and Crosses (amphetamines), cocaine,
PCP, marijuana, alcohol and methamphetamine, to name a few.

It started when she was about 14. Her dad was drunk and shot her mom.

"That didn't push me away from it," she said. "I turned to what made me
feel good."

Pot became a mainstay and when there wasn't anything else there was
alcohol. "Recreation" became "maintenance."

Drugs have been a part of every relationship and marriage Daskam-Canaday,
51, has been in.

But when she started using meth in 1992, "it was the straw that broke the
camel's back."

It wore her 5-foot-2-inch frame down to just over 100 pounds and took over
her life. More than most other drugs, meth pulls out the Jekyll and Hyde in
people, she said.

Then, in May 1999 at age 47, she got set up and busted, then later was
sentenced to six years in prison.

The two years, three months and nine days she served before being paroled
were some of the hardest and most eye-opening days of her life.

There were plenty of drugs available in prison, but she chose to change.

The experience may have saved her life, she said.

The war on drugs is personal to Daskam-Canaday, who is still on parole and
receiving treatment for her addictions.

She can play the devil's advocate and recall the days not so long ago when
she used the argument that marijuana is natural, it's an herb.

If one of her kids were to have a vice, she prayed it would be marijuana
instead of alcohol because "I don't know anyone who smoked a doobie and
beat their wife."

If drugs were legalized, she could see how crime rates might go down if the
substances were made available on an easy basis, she said.

There could be fewer armed robberies because people wouldn't need as much
money to buy the drugs. There might not be as many murders because not as
many people would be going into shady places or killing because they feel
ripped off in a deal, she said.

But when she sees a loved one or acquaintance living with drugs or someone
struggle through treatment, "there's a part of me that wants to go and
offer to work for the (Grand Valley Joint Drug) Task Force," she said.

"I cry for the addict that still suffers. I pray for the addict that still
suffers and the babies that are born without a choice. All I can do is show
them there's another way," Daskam-Canaday said.

The debate over drug legalization is little by little gathering steam as
people on both sides seek solutions to the "war."

The idea of rolling back the law doesn't shock people anymore, said San
Miguel County Sheriff Bill Masters, who edited 21 essays by 24
contributors, including himself, collected in the book "The New
Prohibition: Voices of Dissent Challenge the Drug War."

Between the December 2001 publication of Masters' first book, "Drug War
Addiction," and the release of "The New Prohibition" in May, "I think there
has been a groundswell of change," the Libertarian sheriff said.

While there's still a feeling about the drug war that, like the emperor's
new clothes, it shouldn't be criticized, there are also more people seeing
things aren't working, he said.

They want the truth and change, he said.

When "Drug War Addiction" came out, "a lot of people said here's this crazy
sheriff up in the mountains ... in reality I knew there were a lot of
police officers that agree with me, so we set out to find those people,"
Masters said.

"I've had a number of sheriffs tell me, 'Gee, you're right, but I can't say
that in my community.' "

"The New Prohibition" contributors include viewpoints from politics,
philosophy, medicine, the judicial system, business world and former
members of law enforcement. Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura wrote the
forward.

"It seemed like it would give the whole argument a little more credence,"
Masters said. "We have the whole spectrum saying, 'This doesn't work.' "

And if something doesn't work, it's time to change, reassess, he said.

"First we have to get to the point that we stop judging drugs," he said.
They are inanimate objects, neither good nor bad.

"Every drug probably has some benefit to someone and every drug has some
danger to someone."

Just because it comes from a doctor doesn't make a drug good, look at
OxyContin and Rush Limbaugh, he said.

Methamphetamine is considered bad yet it's given to military pilots to keep
them awake during missions, Masters said. "It's controlled."

So instead of having someone cooking meth in a house and endangering
children and the neighborhood, the government should be saying, "We are
going to give you measured doses of it to get you off of this," Masters said.

Law enforcement with the $50 billion it spends a year should not be trying
to control drugs. There needs to be a reasonable and rational medically
based system to deal with addiction and that may mean distributing some
drugs to help treat the problem, he said.

"We've got jails in every community, but what we really need are Betty Ford
Centers in every community," Masters said. "We need treatment on demand."

What treatment is available now is grossly underfunded, said Masters, who
wouldn't mind seeing drug money leave law enforcement and go toward
programs to treat drug addictions.

In "The New Prohibition" Masters tells of a drug investigation that
occurred during his early days as sheriff in the 1980s. Half a million
dollars was used to bring down a drug ring "kingpin" and seize several
ounces of cocaine. When all was said and done, the kingpin "was let out of
jail by a local judge after serving only eight months of an eight-year
sentence," he wrote.

"The whole thing was a big joke," Masters said. "The public realized it on
both sides of the spectrum." They all realized "the whole system is a joke."

"Disparity in the application of the law debases the law," he said.

It makes people ask, what's the point of obeying? But unfortunately it's
common enough when it comes to the drug war, he said.

"It tarnishes every lawman's badge in this nation. ... It makes me sick."

Masters said judges have told him today's mandatory sentencing laws for
drug cases have taken away their discretion and don't allow them to
sentence an individual to rehabilitation instead of prison time.

The increased numbers of arrests and prison sentences because of drugs are
"gumming up the system," he said.

In the year before the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and
Pentagon, there were 750,000 arrests for marijuana possession and one
terrorist arrest, he said.

Does the drug war take precedence to the nation's detriment? "Absolutely,"
Masters said.

When a robber or rapist is arrested the community is made safer, "but when
I arrested a drug pusher, I simply created a job opening in a long line of
people willing to take his place," wrote Jack Cole, an essayist in "The New
Prohibition," a former detective and undercover narcotics officer with the
New Jersey State Police and the current executive director for Law
Enforcement Against Prohibition.

It's a waste of money, Masters said, to have a clogged criminal system and
9-11 terrorists doing what they want.

Drug laws "just don't work and it actually increases profitability for drug
dealers," Masters said.

The people and states should be allowed to decide on medicinal marijuana or
drug legalization instead of the federal government forcing its will on
all, he said.

"Do we need the federal government to be our nanny?" he asked.

The drug war also has caused tax increases to pay for more law enforcement
and prisons. Politicians use emotional arguments to get elected. It causes
public corruption and debasement to the law, Masters said.

And western Colorado is not immune.

In 1999, Ouray County Sheriff Jerry Wakefield was brought down after the
FBI and Colorado Bureau of Investigation indicted 19 people, including
Undersheriff John Wesley Radcliff and Deputy Leroy Dale Todd, for meth
trafficking.

Radcliff's wife and Wakefield's two daughters were also charged as
distributors.

"The reality is anybody who wants to use drugs can get them. We have had
this system spread to every community in the nation," Masters said.

Drugs are in every jail, prison and school. "That is not the mark of
success," he said. "And every year it gets worse and new drugs are released
all the time."

Tonya Wheeler disagrees.

"I think that our country is just at a loss for what to do next and in
desperation a lot of people would agree, yes, let's try (legalization). But
it's not the solution," said Wheeler, vice president of Advocates for
Recovery, a nonprofit organization based in Denver that works to educate
the public and reduce the stigma associated with addiction along with
advocating for policies for prevention and treatment.

More and more often, people have been asking Wheeler why she doesn't see
legalization as the answer.

She hears arguments from those who think the cops are basically a gang and
in the "war" for themselves or that legalization would create fewer
black-market situations.

They say the government would be able to tax the drugs, she said.

But Wheeler's question is, "How does that help the addiction problem in our
country? ... I don't see that legalizing any of the drugs is going to make
anything get better."

The idea there would be less crime is unbelievable to her because the drug
addicts would still be here. It doesn't matter if addicts are buying crack
on a street corner or at the drugstore, if they don't have the money they
are still going to steal to get what they want, she said.

And "what would be the justification for getting a prescription for heroin
or cocaine?" she asked.

Legalization "may look like a good idea on the surface, but the problem
goes a lot deeper," said Wheeler, who doubted any of those who wrote essays
for "The New Prohibition" are addicts.

Wheeler, though she's been clean for 14 years, is an addict.

"When you sit on the side of the fence that I do and watch ... these people
destroy their lives because they need another fix, your perception changes.
And the other thing is I've lived in those shoes."

In some cases, legalization could make getting treatment or admitting
addiction even more difficult, she said.

With alcohol, one of the most abused drugs in America, some "people fight
the fact that they are addicted based on the fact that it is legal," she said.

"Our society doesn't know that addiction is a disease," she said. "It's a
disease just like diabetes or cancer."

Wheeler said those who break the law should go to prison and she is not
against prison addiction treatment programs.

But "we don't take people who go into diabetic coma to jail. We get them
the treatment they need," Wheeler said.

And when individuals get out of prison, you can't slap their hands and say,
"Don't get high again." That doesn't work, she said. "If a diabetic eats a
candy bar, we don't tell them they can't have insulin anymore."

"I'm really passionate about recovery. One of the things that I think is
important for people to hear is recovery works," she said. "This is a
chronically relapsing disease and people need to learn the tools to pick
themselves back up if that happens."

It's difficult for Wheeler to listen to a sobbing single mother on the
phone who doesn't have insurance or any money for treatment.

There is a "desperate" need for treatment programs specific to treating
drug addictions like that to methamphetamine, said Sgt. Tim Grimsby, Grand
Valley Joint Drug Task Force operations supervisor.

While the state Legislature has started to take funds seized from drug
traffickers and using it toward treatment programs, he said, there hasn't
been a whole lot of emphasis in that direction.

Meetings like the West Slope Methamphetamine Symposium held in June, which
get the community involved and informed, are the "key" to the so-called war
on drugs, he said.

"It's not just law enforcement's job," he said.

"My opinion is that (the drug war) can't be effective. Law enforcement
can't solve the problem alone," Grimsby said. "We are holding the line."

Arrests don't change drug use, but society can, he said.

Society must step up. The community and families must say "enough is
enough," Grimsby said.

If drugs were legalized tomorrow, the world wouldn't get rosy, the
correlation between other crimes and drugs wouldn't go away, people
wouldn't get less paranoid while under the effect of meth and children
would still be victims, he said.

"I say stand by. Our medical costs in this country are going to soar
because of meth," said Grimsby, who predicted health providers will be
seeing a serious impact from meth in five to 10 years.

Most addicts who have devastated their bodies with meth won't have the
money to pay for medical care, they've spent it on the drug, he said.

If drugs are legalized and, for example, there's a 30 percent increase in
the use of meth, imagine the increase in premiums for health, home and auto
insurance, he said.

While some would argue drug law is mocked, "I think it is a deterrent to
some degree," Grimsby said.

If the law stops 30 percent, it also helps to limit those increases in
insurance, he said.

Grimsby wishes adding 20 or 50 more officers to the drug task force's
10-man unit would stop drug trafficking in the Grand Valley, but it wouldn't.

Former Mesa County Sheriff Riecke Claussen can see nothing appealing in the
arguments for legalizing drugs.

During his tenure, "I came to the conclusion that the war on drugs is like
a three-legged stool," Claussen said.

The legs are prevention, treatment and enforcement and none can stand
without the others. Legalizing drugs would be like chopping off one of
those legs, he said.

Claussen admits sometimes he thinks the government has become too involved
in the daily life of citizens, but he also questions whether legalizing
drugs would really lessen governmental influence.

Claussen asks, who would regulate the drugs, the Food and Drug
Administration? Or would the country need another governmental agency and
who's to say it wouldn't become corrupt?

Should there be age restrictions? "Who is going to enforce that?"

An age restriction throws out the window the argument that legalizing drugs
will remove demand, he said. It would shift the population being targeted
by drug pushers to youths.

"I think it's fallacious to say there's not going to be a market for
these," Claussen said.

While some people may not fear drug laws, "I guess you could say the same
thing about any law."

We also aren't winning the war against auto theft or child abuse, "but no
one wants to legalize that," Claussen said.

An individual may not obey the speed limit all the time, but when you are
driving a stretch of road where you know there is a greater possibility of
a cop with a radar gun, you are less likely to speed, he said.

Claussen said he's seen studies in which high school kids were asked what
their biggest reason was for staying away from drugs. The majority of
responses were "afraid they would get into trouble," he said.

How do you measure how many people haven't used the drugs because of the
laws? It's one of those "intangible factors," Claussen said. "It's hard to
count things that don't happen."

While sheriff, Claussen said he looked at number of crimes directly related
to or resulting from drug use and decided that was where the department's
emphasis needed to be.

"Who in their right mind would want to legalize methamphetamine?" he asked,
and described how a man about his size can look nearly skeletal after six
months on meth.

"Once you start down that path (of legalization) ... It's hard to put that
genie back in the bottle," Claussen said.

There are some sincere people who consider legalization a solution to drug
enforcement problems or a way to resolve war and budget concerns, he said.

But there are also a significant number who want "public-sanctioned
self-indulgence," he said.

Masters is "a friend and I think he's a good sheriff. However, I think we
have some differences of opinion," Claussen said.

"What we need in our society is people making that personal decision not to
abuse any drug. It's not working having the government tell you what you
can and cannot do," Masters said.

"I would encourage everybody to strive as best they can not to use any
drugs. Everybody needs to try to live as pure a life as they can ... It's
their responsibility to take care of their own bodies," he said.