LEGALIZE THIS

Local Group Begins Fight To Decriminalize Simple Possession

A joint in your pocket, even if you swear to the officer that it isn't
yours, can get you up to 30 days in jail and a $100 to $200 fine under
South Carolina state law.

Selling a joint can get you up to 15 years and as much as a $25,000 fine.
And, having 10-100 pounds of joints can get you put away for 1-10 years
with no hope of probation and a $10,000 fine. The law also reads that 100
doses of LSD can win you a three-to-10 year trip to a South Carolina
correctional facility and cost you $20,000.

And, while no one goes to jail for more than two years on a misdemeanor
simple possession charge (as well as a $5,000 fine), a gram or less of
crack, ice, or crank is a felony with a sentence of up to five years and a
fine of no less than $5,000.

Or, as was the case last week at Stratford High in Goose Creek, not having
any drugs can still land you face down on the ground with the rest of your
classmates during a guns-drawn police raid. (At least one group of local
lawyers has met with school parents and movement is underway to bring a
class action suit.)

South Carolina isn't alone when it comes to handing down stiff sentences to
non-violent drug offenders. The national "War on Drugs" is one of the
primary reasons why the United States locks up its citizens at a higher
rate than any other country in the world, according to an April report from
Human Rights Watch.

Some South Carolinians want to change that.

State Rep. Joseph Neal (D-Richland) says he will introduce a bill next
session to offer alternatives in sentencing for non-violent drug offenders.
He adds that the bill is still in preparation, but once he gets a final
draft, others will sign on

"Given the budget we're facing in January, I think everything needs to be
on the table," Neal says. The state's Department of Corrections has told
the General Assembly that if the courts keep locking up people like they've
been doing, South Carolina is soon going to need two more prisons at a cost
of $300 million, he adds.

"I think South Carolina has reached a point where we need to look at
alternatives."

Neal refers to similar legislation in the far-off land of California, where
61 percent of the voters passed a proposition, known to us as a statewide
referendum, to offer drug treatment instead of incarceration for drug
offenders.

The program started in July 2001 and offers drug treatment as opposed to
jail time for first and second offenders of "minor" drug crimes and those
who violate parole or probation with "minor" drug infractions. A California
state Supreme Court justice was reported by the San Francisco Chronicle as
saying that a year's worth of treatment costs $4,000 while housing someone
in a state prison costs $24,000 a year. In its first year, the program
saved California $275 million, according to researchers at UCLA.

While South Carolina does not have nearly as many people as California, the
Palmetto State locked up a higher percentage of its citizens in 2001.

Among the 50 states, California did not make the U.S. Bureau of Justice
Statistics' top-10 list for highest incarceration rates in June of 2001,
but South Carolina ranked seventh by locking up 526 out of every 100,000
state residents.

Of those in state prisons, 21 percent of all inmates were in for "dangerous
drugs" on June 30, 2002, with burglary at 15 percent, homicide at 13
percent, robbery at 12 percent and assault at eight percent, according to
the S.C. Department of Corrections.

And a report released earlier this year by the National Institute of
Corrections stated Charleston County has the highest incarceration rate in
the state.

But Charleston County Sheriff Al Cannon warns against notions that offering
alternatives for minor drug offenders would lessen housing pressures in
South Carolina's jails and prisons.

"Anyone who suggests this is going to free up space in the prisons is
either very naOve and offering a superficial solution to a problem that
won't fix it or they've got some kind of liberal agenda," Cannon says.

Cannon says the county's courts have such a large backlog of cases yet to
be tried that prosecutors speed things up by offering plea bargains to
defendants to plead guilty to a lesser charge, such as simple possession.

"The picture of somebody with a joint in their pocket going to prison is
not an accurate one," Cannon says. "If you find someone serving time for
simple possession, I can guarantee with almost 100-percent certainty that
person has actually done something worse."

But some folks with the organization South Carolinians for Drug Law Reform
want to do more than just offer treatment as opposed to jail time for drug
users.

"Drug laws as they are right now simply don't work," says Skip Johnson, the
group's vice president. "Drug prohibition has not worked any better than
alcohol prohibition did."

Johnson, a former religion editor at The Post and Courier, wants drugs to
be decriminalized, wants distribution to be legalized unless drugs are sold
to minors. He envisions legalizing drugs and regulating them like alcohol.

Short of this, two of the group's other missions are to make penalties for
crack equal to those for cocaine and change mandatory sentencing laws so
judges will have more discretion.

"If Rush [Limbaugh] goes to jail -- and he should if some poor guy goes to
jail for crack -- he'll still be an addict, and I'll pay $20,000 a year
keeping him there. That doesn't help anybody," Johnson says.

He claims that several state legislators have told him they were behind
what he was doing but would never risk political suicide by saying so in
public. Johnson calls it, "Fear of being branded 'soft on drugs'."

When asked whether he thinks their mission will ever succeed Johnson says,
"eventually." He says he takes heart from voters supporting medical
marijuana in other states.

The organization's co-founder and president, Sharon Fratepietro, says the
group also wants more drug treatment programs in the jails and out.

"We want them to expand drug treatment programs and keep people out of jail
instead of building new ones," Fratepietro says.

Of course, sentencing could be harsher. In Vietnam, it only takes 18 ounces
of marijuana to get a one-time audience with a firing squad there,
according to Human Rights Watch. So maybe South Carolinians ought to count
their blessings.