WINNERS AND LOSERS

As long as the government is allowed to enforce unconstitutional conspiracy
laws and unjust sentencing practices, the country's drug problem cannot be
solved.

We are in the throes of a brutal and divisive war.

There are people who are strongly for this war and those who believe we can
accomplish the same goal through other means.

Those who wage this costly war are tucked away safely in their ivory towers
or underground bunkers. It is the civilian population and those simply
following orders who are this war's casualties.

Because Saddam Hussein is nowhere to be found and an Iraqi regime change is
imminent, that is not the war I am speaking of. I am speaking rather of the
war we have been engulfed in (with very little to show for it) for
four-plus decades: the United States' war on drugs.

Even though the number of flaws in the United States drug policy is roughly
equal to the number of the country's drug users, this column will only
point out two elements of our drug policy: conspiracy laws and mandatory
minimum sentencing.

Unlike most criminal cases, where proof is needed to establish "an act to
affect the object of conspiracy," the simple act of talking about breaking
a drug law is enough to have a person convicted of conspiracy to sell
and/or distribute illegal drugs.

In essence, a person can be sent to federal prison on drug charges without
ever touching drugs or drug money.

These laws, by their very nature, do not prosecute people for what they do
but for what they know, who they know and, in some cases, for what they did
not know but should have. Isn't this the type of governmental abuse the
Bill of Rights was designed to protect us from? This type of blatant
disregard for the Constitution should be reserved for America's enemies and
not used against her citizens.

As if these conspiracy laws were not enough of an infringement on our
guaranteed civil liberties, our government also employs a system of
mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses.

The best way to think of mandatory minimum sentencing is as "zero
tolerance." The best way to think of "zero tolerance" is "zero thought."

This means that if a person is in possession of a certain amount of drugs,
no matter the reason, a judge is forced to impose a minimum sentence,
without giving thoughts to any mitigating circumstances. For example,
whether a person is caught in possession of five grams of crack or 500
grams of cocaine, he or she is sentenced to five years in federal prison
with no chance of parole. That is truly absurd.

With mandatory minimum sentences such as these, the average length of jail
time for a first-time drug offender (84.2 months) is almost one year more
than the average length of jail time for a first-time child molester (76.4
months).

What makes this inhumane sentencing practice more despicable is that our
government figured out in the late '60s that mandatory sentencing did not work.

Congress saw drug use and the prison population both increasing, so by
1970, nearly all mandatory sentencing laws were repealed. But in 1986, our
elected officials saw that drugs were a hot-button issue. So Congress
passed a new set of mandatory minimum sentencing laws, even though it had
been proven these laws did not work, so they could say, "See, we are tough
on drugs and crime."

And the political pandering of those politicians has caused a
disproportionate number of blacks and Latinos to be caught up in our
federal prison system, the number of female inmates to triple since 1986
and about 60 percent (almost 66,000 people) of our federal inmates to be
drug offenders, most of whom are non-violent, first-time offenders.

No one knows what will work to solve this country's drug problem. But
analysis of our drug war will show what does not work to solve this
problem. As long as we allow our government to enforce unconstitutional
conspiracy laws and unjust sentencing practices along with countless other
atrocities, we will never be able to explore other alternatives.

- - Demond Reid is a journalism senior and a regular columnist for The Shorthorn.