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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
Aside from the need for legislative reform of drug laws, substance abuse treatment, special drug courts, and needle exchange and other forms of "harm reduction," activists point to the need for more-logical alternatives to the endless cycle of drug-related arrests and heavy-handed mandatory minimum sentences in the federal prison system. The inmate population has increased by 81 percent since 1995, and 55 percent of federal prisoners are incarcerated because of a drug offense, serving an average of three years and seven months. (For African-Americans, the average jumps dramatically to four years and nine months.)
Former prisoners with felony drug records can't access public housing, federal assistance for education, and many other social services, to say nothing of the permanent black mark against them when it comes to finding a job or getting back the right to vote. Is it any wonder that so many federal and state prisoners end up back in jail or prison?
The ridiculously costly war on the consumption of cannabis is clearly misdirected, as detailed in a May 2005 report by the Sentencing Project. Of the nearly 700,000 marijuana arrests in 2002, a shocking 88 percent were for simple possession. (The number of marijuana arrests far exceeds the number of arrests for murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault combined.) And the Sentencing Project estimates that 27,000 men and women are currently locked up for a marijuana-related offense. Legalizing marijuana would be an appropriate start to a long-term vision based on rational fiscal and public health policy.
If we're so worried about our kids' experimentation with recreational drugs, why aren't we pouring our resources into providing accurate information about drugs (alcohol and cigarettes being not only the most commonly used but the most obviously damaging as well) and into effective treatment programs for those who develop a destructive habit?
Unfortunately, and this is the bad news, American drug policy is still being shaped by political rhetoric rather than fiscally or medically sound strategies for keeping people healthy and out of trouble. For the latest and most egregious evidence of that, look no further than H.R. 1528, introduced this session by Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., and named in classically Orwellian doublespeak as the Defending America's Most Vulnerable: Safe Access to Drug Treatment and Child Protection Act of 2005.
There hasn't been anything this scary in the already frightening reach of the American drug war in a long time. As written, this bill would create a new, three-year federal mandatory minimum for parents who witness or gain knowledge about drug activities happening around their kids and do not report what they know to the cops within 24 hours, or provide requested assistance to law enforcement in a resulting investigation, apprehension or prosecution. It would also create a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence for parents who commit a drug crime in or near the presence of their child, add a new five-year mandatory minimum sentence for anyone who sells drugs to someone who has ever been in treatment, and increase to five years the mandatory minimum for the sale of drugs within 1,000 feet of a school, library or drug treatment facility. That means just about anywhere in urban centers -- and especially in the concentrated inner cities.
The bill is fundamentally aimed at subverting important Supreme Court decisions about the unconstitutionality of federal sentencing guidelines by converting those guidelines into a new framework of mandatory minimums -- once again, with little or no judicial discretion possible.
Civil liberties groups like Families Against Mandatory Minimums, the ACLU, the Drug Reform Coordination Network and the Drug Policy Alliance are combining forces to raise awareness and prevent the bill from passing, but it's too early to say if their efforts will succeed.
Enough already. The ongoing war on drugs has reached into every echelon of society, dragging medicinal-pot smokers and would-be college students into the mix. And it has made the lives of millions of citizens more miserable than they ever would have been on their own as either recreational or habitual substance users. We certainly don't need another piece of regressive legislation to add to the damage by turning us into a nation of drug-war spies.
