DRUG LAWS VARY GREATLY AMONG STATES, REPORT SAYS

WASHINGTON -- A new report released today finds that state statutory drug
laws vary significantly across the United States, contradicting a
commonly-held assumption that state drug policies follow federal drug policy.

The report came from a study by a team from Andrews University and other
organizations that started two years ago.

The university received a three-year contract for about $970,000 from the
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to help assess the impact of state laws and
environmental conditions on reducing the health and psychosocial
consequences associated with youth illicit drug use.

According to the university and representatives of the report organization,
Dr. Duane McBride of Andrews was the principal investigator of the
ImpacTeen Illicit Drugs Team, which is issuing the report. Curt VanderWaal,
also of the university, was the project director.

Investigators and experts from MayaTech Corp. and the RAND Research Center
and the Andrews University team formed The ImpacTeen Illicit Drug Team.

The project is a policy research partnership established to reduce youth
substance use. It is supported by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and
administered by the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The report was to be released this morning at a conference at the National
Press Club in Washington.

State law matters because the majority of drug offenders are tried in state
courts.

Drug offenders are subject to very different penalties depending on the
state in which they are prosecuted, the substance and the offense. For
instance, from state to state a first-time offender may be subject from one
year to lifetime imprisonment and $5,000 to $1 million in fines for the
sale of one ecstasy pill.

The report also shows that, as of Jan. 1, 2000, 24 states and the District
of Columbia have enacted legislation that allows the use of marijuana for
medical purposes, despite the federal government's position against it.

The report is titled "Illicit Drug Policies: Selected Laws from the 50
States." It also includes the District of Columbia.

It documents each state's rating and penalty provisions for selected drugs,
as well as medical marijuana. It also identifies disparities in federal and
state controlled substance scheduling.

"This report illustrates that states play an important role in the war on
drugs. State legislatures have taken varied approaches to addressing the
drug problem," said Dr. Jamie Chriqui, vice president of the Health Policy
and Legislative Analysis program at MayaTech and lead author of the report.

"States have a history of drug policy experimentation that has, at times,
differed from federal policy," said McBride, director of the Institute for
the Prevention of Addiction at Andrews.

"This report highlights that this tradition continues today."

State governments and the federal government use schedules as a way to
classify controlled substances.

A drug is scheduled according to how safe it is, its medical use and its
potential for abuse. A drug's schedule plays a primary role in determining
punishments for crimes associated with the sale or possession of that drug.

The scheduling of club drugs (a term used to collectively describe a group
of drugs taken by young people attending all-night parties at raves and
night clubs) offers a prime example of how state drug policy
experimentation sometimes differs from federal policy.

The report shows that while drugs like marijuana, cocaine and
methamphetamine have been rated under the1970 Federal Controlled Substances
Act, there is considerably less conformity in state consideration of drugs
like ecstasy and ketamine (another popular club drug). In fact, as of Jan.
1, 2000, 11 state legislatures had not listed ecstasy as an illicit drug,
and the majority of state legislatures had not listed ketamine either.

State penalties for violating sale and possession laws vary by substance,
by the quantity of the substance sold or possessed, and by the type of offense.

This variation is particularly noticeable in the range of penalties for the
sale and possession of standard retail amounts of cocaine, methamphetamine
and ecstasy.

For instance, in North Carolina, a drug offender charged with selling 1
gram of cocaine could be subject to a maximum imprisonment term of one
year. The same sales offense in Montana could be met with a maximum fine of
$50,000 and a lifetime sentence.

Similarly, an offender caught possessing 10 grams of methamphetamine in
Minnesota could be subject to a $500,000 fine and 25 years in Minnesota.
The same offender in Virginia, however, would face statutory fines of only
$1,000 and maximum imprisonment of only six months.

On the Net:

www.andrews.edu/BHSC/impacteen-illicitdrugteam.