OVERHAUL FOR DRUG LAWS IS WAY OFF TARGET

Only those politicians farthest from the fighting refuse to acknowledge what
is plain to soldiers on the front lines: Michigan's war on drugs has been an
expensive bust.

Ask the judge who's dispatched dozens of drug addicts to prison under the
state's 650 Lifer Law whether she believes the tide is turning. Ask the
police chief who's spent his career taking down street dealers whether the
quantity or quality of illegal drugs available in metro Detroit's
neighborhoods has diminished.

Ask a federal prosecutor, or a probation officer, or a substance abuse
counselor.

Heck, ask your own kid.

As a longtime skeptic of efforts to combat substance abuse with high-profile
drug busts and mandatory sentencing laws that inevitably miss their real
targets, I welcomed the news that three internationally known business
leaders were bankrolling a campaign to reform Michigan's drug laws.

So you can be sure it causes me real pain to tell you the ballot initiative
they want to place before voters in November is an ill-conceived Rube
Goldberg that even champions of decriminalization will find hard to support.

Good Intentions

In broad outline, everything the Michigan Drug Reform Initiative seeks to
accomplish makes perfect sense.

Michigan should be pushing nonviolent drug offenders into treatment -- and
providing the dollars to make that treatment meaningful and effective.

Drug offenders should be sentenced under guidelines that strike a balance
between sentencing consistency and individual factors such as the
defendant's criminal history and potential for rehabilitation.

And the most draconian penalties should be reserved for the true kingpins,
who are seldom in the same ZIP code when one of their illicit shipments is
dramatically seized.

But the devil, as ever, is in the details.

The proposal Michigan's Board of State Canvassers has been asked to place
before voters is in the form of a constitutional amendment that would add
4,300 words to our state's fundamental law. Critics say it would establish a
fourth branch of government whose members would be beyond the reach of the
governor or legislators once they were appointed.

Dave Fratello, coordinator of the Campaign for New Drug Policies, told me
that amending Michigan's Constitution is the only way voters can mandate the
expenditures needed to provide meaningful substance abuse treatment. And
while he denies that the Sentencing Guidelines Commission his initiative
foresees would be a government unto itself, Fratello concedes that he wants
to protect reform efforts from legislative tampering.

"We're trying to change the balance of power," he admits.

The Trouble With Concrete

I'm all for that; the antidrug strategy mapped by posturing lawmakers has
gotten us nowhere. But the constitutional bunker Fratello seeks to erect
around his reformers would also make it difficult to fine-tune
implementation of the complex drug initiative. Framed in rosier economic
times, the amendment also would mandate appropriations that may be imprudent
or impossible to sustain in Michigan's current fiscal circumstances.

I hope the drug reform initiative will provoke legislators to make some
common sense changes in Michigan's current sentencing laws. But if voters
cast the reformers' proposal in constitutional concrete, the ensuing chaos
may make us nostalgic for the current stalemate.