REFORMING N.J. DRUG POLICIES

Group: Addicts need treatment, not prison

TRENTON _ Ethan Nadelmann is convinced that New Jersey is backward when it
comes to drug laws, and he's making it his mission to convince the rest of
the state. Nadelmann, head of the Manhattan-based Drug Policy Alliance,
says the group, which also has offices in California, New Mexico and
Washington, D.C., will start promoting humane alternatives to New Jersey's
drug war when it opens an office in Trenton Wednesday.

"New Jersey is to drug policy today what Mississippi was to civil rights 40
years ago, except almost nobody knows it," said Nadelmann, who taught at
Princeton University until 1994. "Very simple measures could save a lot of
lives, reduce crime, reduce disease and save taxpayer money. People in New
Jersey don't know that now, but they will soon." Roseanne Scotti, who will
head the Trenton office, intends to pursue those goals by advocating ideas
that have already caused some controversy. She plans to lobby for a needle
exchange program and expanded treatment options - including more methadone
availability - for drug users in New Jersey. At the same time, she wants
her office to become New Jersey's primary source for information about
drugs and drug policy.

Later, if state residents ask her to, Scotti may advocate some of the other
changes the Alliance supports: reducing mandatory minimum prison sentence
laws, making marijuana a legal medicine and decriminalizing it for other
uses. "Our focus will really be what is going on in New Jersey now, what
people are working on now," said Scotti, a University of Pennsylvania
addiction research coordinator who is about to graduate from Temple Law
School. "We are there to provide support in terms of information and to
advocate for changes in public health and drug policy." Nadelmann barely
comes up for air as he makes his case for why those changes are needed. Of
all the states in the country, he says, New Jersey has the highest
proportion of new inmates imprisoned on nonviolent drug offenses. It is the
only major northeast state that refuses IV drug users access to sterile
syringes. It also has the third-highest number of children with AIDS and
was the first state in which more than half of the IV drug users tested
positive for HIV. While New York and Philadelphia are breaking away from
the zero-tolerance approach and trying to find ways to reduce the harm that
can come with drug use, Nadelmann said, New Jersey has turned its back on
such ideas. "We have needle-exchange programs throughout the advanced
industrialized world, in Katmandu and Ho Chi Minh City, but not in Newark,
Camden or Jersey City," he said. "When people begin to realize how out of
step New Jersey is with any sort of science-based, public health-driven
drug policy, more people will get up in arms and call for change." It's a
shift, he said, that may have already begun.

Nadelmann said he is encouraged by Gov. James E. McGreevey's plans to start
a hospital-based pilot needle exchange program.

McGreevey's plan, which could reduce health-care costs by slowing the
spread of HIV and hepatitis, is especially appropriate for New Jersey
because of its budget crisis, Nadelmann said. The state could save even
more money by offering drug offenders treatment instead of prison,
repealing mandatory minimum prison sentence laws and decriminalizing
marijuana, he said, all of which would significantly reduce the number of
people behind bars. "What we see is opportunity: There's a change in the
composition of the political leadership of the state that suggests real
opportunities to move forward now," Nadelmann said.

But the road ahead will not be without obstacles for Nadelmann and his
Alliance. Debate has already begun about needle exchange.

In January, two assemblymen - Reed Gusciora, D-Princeton Borough, and
Loretta Weinberg, D-Teaneck - introduced a bill that would start a pilot
needle exchange program. In March, Assemblyman Kevin O'Toole, R-Cedar
Grove, responded with a bill that would prohibit the state from
implementing such a program. David Evans, an attorney and head of the New
Jersey-based Drug Free Schools Coalition, agrees with O'Toole.

"The needle exchange message goes out that there won't be consequences for
this behavior, and society will support you in your drug addiction," he
said. "We should make it harder, not easier, to be addicts." He added that
education about how to avoid getting HIV, along with outreach and
employment programs, would be better solutions to the problems that can
come with IV drug use.

Marlene Lao-Collins, of the New Jersey Catholic Conference, added that a
Vancouver needle exchange has failed to lower the HIV rate there. But to
Brian Butler, a counselor at New Horizon Treatment Services in Trenton,
Nadelmann's ideas make sense.

Although needle exchange has reduced the number of new HIV cases in the
United States and elsewhere, drug treatment counselors funded by New Jersey
have been barred until recently from even discussing such programs - or any
sterile injection techniques - with patients, said Butler, who has been
treating drug users for 16 years.

Meanwhile, Butler said, not enough patients are getting treatment. Some
miss out because of rules that require them to totally abstain from drugs
before they get help. Others, he said, end up as inmates.

"We see people every day who have been incarcerated because they are
suffering from addiction, so on one hand the American Medical Association
classifies substance dependence as a disease or medical disorder, but our
government criminalizes people because of their disorder," Butler said.
"It's like incarcerating people because they are depressed or they have
diabetes." Since drug prohibition hurts users and has failed to stem the
tide of substance abuse, Butler says, the answer is to decriminalize not
just marijuana but all illegal drugs.

"Drug use is a personal choice when adults choose to use, and incarcerating
people for using or abusing substances does not help the individual and
costs society billions of dollars," he said.

Lao-Collins, however, said her group is against the decriminalization of
illegal drugs. While she agrees that first-time offenders or people in
possession of small amounts of drugs may not deserve harsh prison
sentences, she said the solution should lie with the justice system -
either in pre-trial intervention programs or drug courts.

Legalizing marijuana, she said, would simply be too dangerous. "It's a
drug, it's harmful, it could lead to other drugs, and I question, given all
of the talk around terrorism and how that's even funded and the connections
with drugs, why we'd even want to consider that at this point in time," she
said. "It sends a bad message to our young people."

Nadelmann has repeatedly disputed claims that marijuana is dangerous or
leads to the use of more dangerous drugs.

"Over the past century, numerous reports from independent government-
sponsored commissions have documented the drug's relative harmlessness and
recommended the elimination of criminal sanctions for consumption-related
offenses," the Alliance's Web site says.

Nadelmann scoffed at the idea that recreational marijuana use in America
contributes to terrorism. He said that comparison is part of a "Reefer
Madness-like" campaign by the federal government to scare people with
exaggerated claims about the dangers of certain drugs.