SPEAKER: WAR ON DRUGS IS A HOAX

As a group, they had about as much in common as any assemblage of people
waiting in line at the grocery store.

They included an attorney-turned-psychologist, a car painter and a Chatham
County commissioner.

Instead of heading home from work on a damp and rainy Monday night, this
disparate group turned into the lovely campus of Savannah State University,
some for the first time, to hear a woman they never heard of speak about
the government's failed war on drugs. Nora Callahan, whose brother is
serving 27 years for conspiracy to sell drugs, is a crusader. She calls the
federal government's war on drugs a hoax "and a war on ordinary people."

She offers surveys from judges who say they hate the drug laws, statistics
about the overwhelming number of black men in prison, examples of "asset
forfeiture," in which homes and properties are seized without due process,
and states, like Michigan, that have started releasing first-offender,
non-violent prisoners to save money and free up space in the prisons.

"Meanwhile," she said, "kids are imprisoned for an ounce of marijuana while
the rest of us can't turn on television without hearing about the latest
prescription drugs like Prozac or the way our pilots in Afghanistan are
offered 'uppers' to stay alert. Do you want to tell me the difference?"

The drug panic started in 1985, she said, "when the cheapest thing to do
was to up the penalties. Well, it's not working. We have just as many drugs
on the street if not more. And we have people who won't call for an
ambulance if someone is overdosing because they're afraid they'll be
implicated and be held responsible."

Traveling around the country with her husband in an RV, this grassroots
organizer, who formed the nonprofit group, The November Coalition (
www.November.org), appears before Congress, publishes a monthly
publication, "The Razor Wire" and tries to coalesce community groups.

Mark Beberman was among the first of the 35 people in the audience. He's a
mental health counselor and program coordinator for the Chatham County Drug
Court. Beberman started off as a defense attorney -- mainly for the
indigent -- but when he kept seeing the same people in court, again and
again, he switched gears and got a masters in psychology from Georgia
Southern University.

"People who don't understand addiction see it as a weakness, not a
disease," he said. "They regard people like me as being soft on crime when
that's not the case at all."

The car painter, who didn't want to give his name, came from another
perspective.

"The first week of my son's senior year, his school had a drug and weapons
search and the drug dogs, who the principal said smelled a marijuana stem
and a few seeds, went to his truck," he said.

"When they found a box cutter in his tool box they came to his classroom,
threw him down on the ground, put him in handcuffs and hauled him off to jail.

"At first they told us he was at the youth detention center but when my
wife, who had to leave work, got there we found out they decided to try him
as an adult and he was at the Chatham County jail. He was 16. He tested
clean for drugs and no one ever did show me the marijuana seeds they said
were in the truck.

"The box cutter was there because when he gets out of school he comes and
works at the car dealership where I work. He's a car porter. It's his job
to cut open all the boxes that come in here, hub caps, floor mats, cup
holders, and to assemble the cars. Then he cuts the boxes and puts them in
the Dumpster to be recycled."

On the advice of a lawyer, he pleaded guilty and his son was put on
probation, because "If he had been found guilty, which he was because he
did have the box cutter, he could have been sent to prison for two years,"
his father said.

Frozen out of public school in Chatham County and three credits short of
graduating, the boy passed the GED and is now a junior at Armstrong
Atlantic State University. Probation costs his parents $110 a month, plus
$2,500 in fines and attorney fees.

The last person to raise his hand and speak was Chatham County Commissioner Joe Murray Rivers.

"I'm here because I'm angry at zealous prosecutors and the warehousing of
black youth," he said. "I have a son who is doing 10 years. I don't condone
that he was doing drugs, but I don't think his sentence was just, either.

"When I visit him I see how many young people are being stuck away and not
restored. Where he is in Jesup, he's lucky enough to be connected to
Ogeechee Tech. So far, he's gotten his GED and taken courses in carpentry
and electrical.

"I know plenty of people in prison and just as many who come out with no
skills," he said. "That is not what we need."