FINDING A FIX

Drug Combatants Diverge On Strategy

As a crossroads of marijuana commerce and conspiracy, Tucson has more at
stake than most communities in how to deal with the trafficking.

Arizona voters showed a willingness twice before to voice their opinions on
marijuana: They voted in 1996, and reaffirmed in 1998, to allow doctors to
prescribe otherwise illegal drugs, letting patients with serious or
life-threatening diseases possess them without fear of being arrested for
violating state law.

In 1996, voters also called for diverting first-time drug offenders to
probation and treatment.

The Star asked three Tucsonans representing the spectrum of opinion on
marijuana laws what should be done about the trafficking, which creates an
estimated $350 million in local revenues.

Among the questions: How much does the local economy depend on marijuana?
How well do our marijuana laws work? And should we consider further
measures toward decriminalization?

A small army of federal police here, along with local law enforcement
officers, argue that the trade could be minimized if the United States used
its full might against traffickers and source countries. So does Clarence
Dupnik, Pima County's longtime sheriff and an experienced drug investigator.

Mo Salgado, a counselor at a Tucson drug-treatment center, points out we
could significantly reduce the amount of marijuana traffic by increasing
funding for drug treatment instead of enforcement. Fewer users mean less
drug traffic, he said.

Marijuana-law reformers say the illegality of pot makes it a social
problem, not the effects of the drug itself. But Drew Foster, the chairman
of the Arizona branch of the National Organization for the Reform of
Marijuana Laws, said the legalization he favors would cost Tucson its
marijuana-trade and drug-war revenues.

EX-ABUSER, COUNSELOR RATE TREATMENT AS BEST WAY TO COMBAT DRUGS

Mo Salgado knows Tucson's illegal-drug trade, and he sees no benefit to it,
economic or otherwise.

Salgado came to Tucson from his native New York City to kick his addiction
to methadone, which he had begun taking as a substitute for heroin.

Salgado spent 28 days camping alone in the Santa Catalina Mountains, he
said, trying to rid himself of the need for methadone, which is a synthetic
narcotic that imitates the effects of heroin. He did come down off the
methadone, but when he came off the mountain, he started using again and
was jailed.

"My plan was to get out of jail, stick up one of my connections and go to
New York," Salgado said.

Instead he made his last attempt at a cure, this time at La Frontera
Center's Casa de Vida residential treatment center near Silverbell and West
Grant roads, and succeeded quitting his habit. Now Salgado is a counselor
at the center.

Salgado shares the view of many law-enforcement officials that marijuana
use leads to using other illegal drugs. But he acknowledges one of the
reasons marijuana functions as a "gateway" is that marijuana is illegal.

"When you're messing with an illegal substance, whatever that may be, the
fact of its illegality in itself carries a trip for some people," Salgado
said. "You get a rush."

He does not favor the legalization of marijuana or other drugs. What he
advocates is making treatment a much bigger part of the efforts against drugs.

"If you're going to start a war on drugs, you've got to have care for the
wounded," he said.

Right now, he says, it seems the approach is 90 percent enforcement, 10
percent treatment.

"If I was the drug czar, I'd put at least 60 percent treatment," Salgado said.

Joe Parker, the supervisor of Casa de Vida, said even a much smaller shift
in emphasis would reap big rewards. "If we could get to the point of 65
percent enforcement, 35 percent treatment, you'd see massive social
changes," Parker said.

Salgado said that far from increasing the availability of substance-abuse
treatment, the health-care system "keeps cutting us off shorter and shorter."

Even the state's drug courts don't provide an adequate solution, Salgado
said. Those courts, which offer drug offenders a chance at treatment
instead of jail time, give an addict one chance.

And for many, as Salgado well knows, that isn't enough.

U.S. NEEDS TO FORCE SOURCE NATIONS TO BAN DRUGS, SHERIFF SAYS

Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik has been investigating drug crimes
since before the war on illegal drugs was declared by President Nixon, and
he thinks he knows a winning strategy.

The problem, Dupnik said, is the United States lacks the will to adopt that
strategy. "The U.S., if it had the will, could eliminate all the drugs in
source countries," Dupnik said. "They know specifically where each acre of
cocaine and marijuana is planted.

"If, for example, we had the will, we could tell a Latin American country
tomorrow: 'Either you deal with this problem, and we'll give you the
resources to do it, or we're going to come down and do it for you.' "

Dupnik developed his opinion over three decades of a quiet rise within the
drug-war hierarchy. He started in drug investigations as commander of
Tucson's Metropolitan Area Narcotics Squad in 1967. Now he is a member of
the executive committee that oversees the Southwest Border High Intensity
Drug Trafficking Area, or HIDTA, as well as the Arizona HIDTA, a branch of
the bigger organization based in Tucson.

The Southwest Border HIDTA coordinates drug-trafficking enforcement efforts
by all levels of law enforcement along the Southwest border and is
affiliated with the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

"We talk about a war on narcotics, but the fact is there isn't one now, and
there never has been one," Dupnik said.

Dupnik acknowledges that marijuana is not as addictive as other illegal
drugs and even some legal drugs, such as the nicotine in tobacco. But he
believes marijuana has an overall harmful effect on the character of the
people who use it, which justifies marijuana's illegality.

The same is true of tobacco, said Dupnik, himself a former smoker.

"I say outlaw tobacco," Dupnik said.

While Dupnik favors expanding the law enforcement efforts against illegal
drugs, he also wants drug treatment made more available to addicts. Dupnik
said he tried quitting tobacco several times before he finally succeeded.

"Almost any addict would love to rid themselves of the plague of
addiction," Dupnik said. "Rehabilitation has always taken a back seat. It
shouldn't. But that doesn't mean we should reduce our efforts at enforcement."

LEGALIZATION ONLY WAY TO BEAT BLACK MARKET, ARDENT FIGHTER INSISTS

Drew Foster is so opposed to the marijuana black market that he took his
argument to the source in Mexico.

In 1996, Foster said, he traveled to Sinaloa state, the homeland of
Mexico's marijuana trade, to try to convince a trafficker to grow
industrial hemp instead of marijuana. Hemp would grow in the same areas and
also be profitable, he said he argued.

But the trafficker was uninterested because the illegality of marijuana
provided too many attractions, Foster said. Most important was the big
profits generated by marijuana's black market, but there were other
attractions.

"They like the power trip," Foster added. "Legal business to them means no
more power."

Foster, the chairman of the Arizona branch of the National Organization for
the Reform of Marijuana Laws, favors legalization.

If marijuana were legalized, Foster said, the big profits and underworld
power trips would vanish. At a minimum he favors decriminalizing marijuana use.

Legalization would mean permitting the cultivation and consumption of
marijuana, while decriminalization would mean making possession or
consumption of small quantities a civil violation, like a traffic fine.

It's the illegality of marijuana, Foster said, that breeds the violence
associated with the drug and that creates its associations with other
illegal drugs such as cocaine. Marijuana's main side effects, he said, are
much less severe, including short-term memory loss, munchies and a dry mouth.

"It's a gateway drug due to the fact that to use it you have to go to the
black market," Foster said. "There's been no overdose deaths, ever, from
marijuana. That's why it should not be illegal."

The main resistance to legalization comes from law-enforcement officers
whose jobs depend on the endless effort to enforce drug laws, he said.

"If the drug warriors really want to end the war on drugs, and they don't
want to continue this for their own benefit, then they would legalize,
because it would completely eliminate the black market," he said.

But if marijuana were legalized, it would harm Tucson economically, Foster
warned. "I think we would drop off as a distribution hub. The other states
could produce their own, because it grows in every state."

Although Tucson might lose marijuana-traffic revenues, Foster said, it
would also lose the crime that goes with the black market.