Part 2 Of 6

DRUG WARS

The War We Have Not Won

Carver is a blue-collar town with raised ranches and low-lying
cranberry bogs. It's home to the first divided highway in America, and
police cruisers have the town's motto, "Cranberryland U.S.A.,"
sprayed across them in crimson. The town's quiet rural ambiance
mirrors that of many other communities on the South Shore, and so does
its experience with illegal drugs.

In 1999, 129 of the town's 11,700 residents enrolled in substance
abuse treatment programs, according to state records. Some may have
sought help more than once, and some were treated exclusively for
alcohol, but 33 reported using heroin in the 12 months prior to
enrolling, 13 said they'd used cocaine and 19 said they'd used crack.

In the same year, Carver police made only two drug arrests, both for
misdemeanor marijuana possession, according to FBI records. One of the
arrested was a 15-year-old boy; the other was a middle-aged woman.

Health experts say only one-third of those who abuse drugs seek help.
If that's true, 99 people from Carver could have had a serious heroin
problem in 1999.

Police arrested no heroin users within the 39-square-mile area they
patrol.

With all the money being funneled into the so-called war on drugs -
$60 million to Massachusetts from the federal drug czar's office alone
- - the low arrest numbers in Carver and in other communities seem to
indicate that taxpayers aren't getting much for their money.

Carver Police Chief Diane Skoog said her officers try to stop drug
activity, but they can't do it alone.

"You can jump in and say the cops have to be firm and get out there
and kick butt, but if they don't have (society behind them) it's not
going to work," Skoog said.

She, like a growing number of police officials, said more arrests
won't change the fact that many people find the use of so-called
"recreational drugs" acceptable and others think addicts should be
dealt with in the health care system, not the courts. She called drug
use a "socially ingrained" problem and readily admitted the war on
drugs isn't working.

"The war on drugs started years ago, and where are we with it?"
Skoog said. "After we've spent all that money, not very far."

Carver's situation is not unusual. An examination of statistics from
across the South Shore reveals a glaring disparity between drug use -
as measured by people seeking treatment - and drug arrests. While
thousands seek help every year, FBI records show, police are making
scattered arrests.

Most law enforcement officials acknowledge that their departments are
overwhelmed by the sheer volume of drugs coming into their
communities.

"Statistically, we're not winning the war," Rockland police
Detective Jack Wentworth said. "Ninety-five percent of the drugs are
getting through, and we're only getting 5 percent."

A closer look at three of the larger communities in the region shows
that even departments with the most resources are not cutting off the
flow of drugs.

In 1999, 3,173 people who said they lived in Quincy checked into
state-licensed substance abuse treatment programs. Of those, 1,154
reported using heroin. That year, Quincy police made 203 drug arrests.

That same year, 693 people who said they were Weymouth residents
checked into treatment programs, the state Bureau of Substance Abuse
Services reported. Nearly a third, 215 people, said they had used
heroin in the prior year. Police in Weymouth made 69 drug arrests that
year.

The problems were the same in Plymouth, although percentage-wise,
police made more arrests. There were 888 Plymouth residents who
started drug treatment in 1999, with 180 reporting heroin use and even
more, 229, reporting cocaine use. Police made 147 drug arrests.

Local law enforcement officials say they are trying their best to
stifle drug traffic in their communities, but part of the problem is
an unwavering demand.

Thousands of people are regular drug users on the South Shore, and
police say many are addiction and crime time bombs waiting to go off.

A quick calculation yields shocking results about heroin use in
Quincy.

In 2000, there were 1,197 people entering treatment programs who said
they lived in Quincy and were recent heroin users, according to the
state Bureau of Substance Abuse Services. That's more than 1 percent
of the city's population. If health professionals are right, and only
a third of heroin users seek treatment, there could have been as many
as 3,591 users in Quincy, about 4 percent of the population.

Apply those numbers to Quincy residents 15 to 65 years old, the age
range for nearly all heroin users. Almost 2 percent of Quincy
residents in that age bracket were in treatment and 6 percent could
have been heroin users, or one out of every 17 people in that age range.

The problem is not Quincy's alone. Heroin use led to more check-ins at
detox facilities in Massachusetts last year than alcohol. That is the
first time that has happened.

Last year, 54,379 Massachusetts residents entered state-licensed
detoxification programs and more than 51 percent sought treatment for
heroin addiction, while 41 percent were there because of alcohol.

Newer alphabet drugs like MDMA (ecstasy) and the date rape drug GHB
are available in every South Shore high school, officials say. The
abuse of prescription drugs, in particular OxyContin, has been linked
to violent crime while simultaneously draining dollars from the
health-care system. And old standbys - cocaine, LSD and marijuana -
are available on demand.

So what are local police doing about the problem? Police say they know
how prevalent drug use is in their communities, and, when asked about
how they are addressing it, ranking officers and chiefs say their
departments try to target dealers. They maintain eliminating dealers
will ultimately reduce the number of users.

While this strategy sounds reasonable, a recent sampling of police
records indicates that most departments are nabbing people for using
drugs, not for dealing them.

In almost half of the 26 towns on the South Shore, police didn't
arrest a single dealer in 1999, according to FBI records.

Although South Shore communities don't have abundant open-air drug
markets, drug use is pervasive. Only Norwell had fewer than 50
residents in state-sponsored treatment programs in 1999. So, if the
users are out there, the dealers who supply them are, too. Yet they
seem to slip by, largely unhindered by law enforcement.

Capt. Michael Botieri of the Plymouth Police Department said he's not
surprised police are catching more users than dealers, even though
they try to target dealers.

He said users far outnumber dealers, so police tend to happen upon
them during routine traffic stops or when they respond to crimes like
fights and robberies.

On the other hand, he said, arresting dealers often requires lengthy
and expensive investigations that are difficult to conduct when police
personnel are occupied with the daily demands of crime fighting. The
war on drugs is often not the primary focus of local law
enforcement.

Local departments also maintain they're more successful at making drug
arrests than the FBI numbers indicate.

Marshfield police Capt. Al Knight said arrests are catalogued by the
most serious offense for which a person is arrested. Because of that,
he said, drug charges sometimes don't end up getting counted.

Knight said his department also sometimes opts for issuing court
summonses instead of arresting every person caught with drugs.

Knight supports the war on drugs and stands by law enforcement's
current battle plan.

"You're never going to totally eliminate it," Knight said. "We'd
love to if we could, but you can control it and improve the quality of
life."

From local police stations to federal offices, responsibility for the
drug problem is easy to spread.

Police say they lack the resources to be effective against
increasingly sophisticated and well-financed drug dealers. District
attorneys say that arrests that do lead to prosecutions often don't
produce worthwhile results because judges do not stick to sentencing
guidelines, and some judges say issuing longer sentences to drug
offenders wouldn't solve anything.

While those points are debated, suburban communities struggle to
combat addiction and increases in crime.

In Holbrook, Police Chief Jonathan Cordaro said his department doesn't
have the capacity to conduct major investigations.

"We've been understaffed for the last three or four years," Cordaro
said. "It's pretty hard to do undercover work when you don't have the
resources."

The Norfolk and Plymouth county district attorneys say they try to
assist local departments by lending them the services of the State
Police detectives assigned to their offices.

Yet, even when state and local police are able to conduct successful
investigations, the district attorneys say, sentencing often falls
short of their expectations.

"Sometimes the court system frustrates me," said Michael Sullivan,
the U.S. attorney in Boston who was the Plymouth County district
attorney until last fall. "I feel we're not operating on a fair and
level playing field. Some judges are so opposed to minimum mandatory
sentences, they slant the scales of justice to allow defendants less
time. ... It's a part of the system the public doesn't see, and we
can't do much about it."

Sullivan also said certain drug laws are antiquated. In Massachusetts,
a person now must be caught with 14 grams of heroin, slightly less
than half an ounce, to be charged with trafficking, which brings a
minimum mandatory sentence of three years. Fourteen grams is enough
for about 700 users to get high once, and Sullivan said the quantity
defined in the law is unrealistic. People are getting arrested as
users when, in fact, they're dealers, he said.

"Addicts break into houses, and the system responds with treatment,"
Sullivan said. "We've had 1,200 bags of heroin on one person, and
it's not considered trafficking. We have to lobby the Legislature to
change the laws."

At the federal level, drug enforcement officials say it's not their
job to come in and sweep up local problems.

Vincent Mazzilli, a recently retired special agent in charge of the
Drug Enforcement Administration in New England, said that if local
departments are not stopping the flow of drugs into their communities,
nobody is.

"They are our first line of defense," he said. "We're not here to
arrest street dealers. We have to direct our resources to assist state
and local authorities."

When asked why the billions of dollars spent annually to fight drugs
are not eradicating the problem, Mazzilli shifted the blame from law
enforcement to legislators, and finally onto voters.

"The effectiveness of money that's allocated comes into play," he
said. "How it's spent is decided by the political process, in the
Legislature by legislators who answer to the people."

The blame is easy to toss around, but on the front lines, where local
residents are checking into treatment programs or dying from overdoses
before they get there, local police had little more than frustrated
words to offer.

In one department after another, officers toed the party line and
asked for even more money to fund a strategy that many admit doesn't
work.

Weymouth police Capt. James Thomas, whose town saw four overdose
deaths from heroin last year, said police there do the best they can,
but he feels they are fighting not only an endless supply of drug
users, but a government that calls the war on drugs a major priority,
and then offers little to the people charged with fighting it.

"Ever since the Sept. 11 tragedy, all of a sudden the government is
finding tons of money - billions here and billions there - to combat
terrorism," Thomas said. "Where was all that before when we could
have been using it for drug enforcement?" --

In this series:

DRUG WARS

Today: The War We Have Not Won

Far more people from local towns get treated for heroin and cocaine
than get arrested. And overwhelmingly, it's users, not dealers,
getting busted

Tuesday: Drug Detective

Let Braintree police Detective Jeff Jernegan drive you around his
town. What he sees and how he looks at things will shock you

Wednesday: Stakeouts, Buys And Busts

It is dirty and dangerous for undercover agents making buys. But
that's the way the war on drugs is waged

Thursday: Our Pill-Popping Nation

Far more people abuse prescription drugs than ever touch cocaine or
heroin. It the silent epidemic

Friday: Is There A Better Way?

To anti-drug warriors, it's simple: do everything we've been doing and
more. But drug-policy reformers say that's doing more harm than good