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NORML Weekly Press Release (Reform Party, Canada's top cops back removing
criminal pot penalties; California high court says police must return medical
marijuana to [atients; Oregon first state to license medical marijuana
patients; Swiss government committee says legalize marijuana; House reps. to
introduce student drug testing bills in Congress)
From: NORMLFNDTN@aol.com
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 1999 18:46:23 EDT
Subject: NORML WPR 4/29/99 (II)
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
NORML Weekly Press Release
1001 Connecticut Ave., NW
Ste. 710
Washington, DC 20036
202-483-8751 (p)
202-483-0057 (f)
www.norml.org
foundation@norml.org
April 29, 1999
***
Reform Party, Canada's Top Cops Back Removing Criminal Pot Penalties
April 29, 1999, Ottawa, Ontario: Member of Parliament Keith Martin
(Reform Party-Esquimalt) introduced legislation in the House of Commons
Monday to remove criminal penalties for marijuana possession. The bill,
C-503, mimics a position adopted last week by the Canadian Association of
Police Chiefs recommending marijuana offenders be fined, but no longer
arrested.
"Canadian law enforcement officers and some MPs aptly realize that
otherwise law abiding citizens who smoke marijuana are not part of the
crime problem and should not be treated like criminals," NORML Executive
Director R. Keith Stroup, Esq. said. He noted that the proposed law is
similar to those of ten U.S. states that treat marijuana possession as a
fine-only offense. Ticketed offenders would not have to go through the
court system, or be booked by police under Martin's proposal.
Martin told the House that fining marijuana smokers would generate
funding for drug prevention and education programs.
Barry King, who heads the CAPC's drug abuse committee, said
decriminalization would free up judicial resources and allow police to
focus on more serious crimes. "This isn't legalization; it's
decriminalization," he said. "This is a balanced approach."
While Canadian police support relaxing the marijuana laws, one
anonymous senior law enforcement official told reporters at The National
Post that pressure from U.S. officials may cause MPs to reject the
proposal. "I wonder how they [the U.S.] will react to know that the
federal government is contemplating decriminalizing [marijuana]
possession," he said. "I suspect they would be somewhat pissed."
For more information, please contact either R. Keith Stroup or Paul
Armentano of NORML @ (202) 483-5500. A transcript of MP Keith Martin's
statements to the House are available online at:
http://www.parl.gc.ca/cgi-bin/36/pb_chb_hou_deb.pl?e.
***
California High Court Says Police Must Return Medical Marijuana To Patients
April 29, 1999, Ukiah, CA: Police who improperly seize medical
marijuana from California patients must return it, according to a ruling
by the state Supreme Court. The decision forced Mendocino County police
last week to return a half pound of dried marijuana to a Ukiah patient
who used the drug in compliance with Proposition 215, the state's medical
marijuana law.
"It's the first time the Court has allowed a person to walk out of a
police station with marijuana legally in their hands," said attorney
Hannah Nelson, who handled the two-year case pro bono. "The fact is that
the marijuana was being used legally and he has a right to it."
Police initially seized the marijuana in a 1997 raid on patients
Christopher Brown and his wife, now deceased. The District Attorney's
office later dismissed charges against the couple after determining the
defendants used the marijuana medically for their own personal use under
a physician's supervision.
Nelson filed a motion in municipal court mandating police to return
the Brown's supply of medical marijuana. The lower court granted the
motion, and the Superior Court and the California Court of Appeals, First
District, affirmed their decision. The state appealed to the California
Supreme Court, which affirmed the lower court rulings.
"The Court found at all levels that the marijuana in this case was
not contraband, but legal under state law," NORML Executive Director R.
Keith Stroup, Esq. said. "Therefore, they had no choice but to order
police to return Christopher Brown's legal property."
The High Court dismissed the state's argument that the drug's illegal
status under federal law prohibits police from returning marijuana deemed
legal under state law.
For more information, please contact either Keith Stroup of NORML @
(202) 483-5500 or attorney Hannah Nelson @ (707) 923-1933.
***
Oregon First State To License Medical Marijuana Patients
April 29, 1999, Salem, OR: Guidelines take effect next week allowing
the state health department to register and license medical marijuana
patients who legally possess the drug under state law. Oregon will
become the first state to issue ID cards to medical marijuana patients.
"Medical marijuana proponents and law enforcement officials found
common ground to encourage patients to register" when drafting the
regulations, NORML Legal Committee member Leland Berger said. Berger sat
on an advisory task force that helped compose the guidelines.
Oregon's medical marijuana law, passed by voters in November 1998,
mandated the Oregon Health Division to establish a medical marijuana
patient registry and issue identification cards to qualified applicants
by May 1, 1999. Patients issued ID cards and who possess state
authorized quantities of marijuana will no longer be subject to arrest or
criminal penalties. Patients who possess larger amounts of marijuana, or
who fail to register with the state, may raise at trial an affirmative
defense of medical necessity against state criminal marijuana charges.
The guidelines also allow the state to issue cards to patients'
primary caregivers to shield them from prosecution. Patients will have
to reapply for ID cards annually, and will likely have to pay a $150
application fee to offset costs of the program. The state registry will
remain confidential and its records will not be subject to public
disclosure.
For more information, please call either Leland Berger of the NORML
Legal Committee @ (503) 287-4688 or R. Keith Stroup of NORML @ (202)
483-5500.
***
Swiss Government Committee Says Legalize Marijuana
April 29, 1999, Bern, Switzerland: The Swiss government should
legalize the sale and use of marijuana, a federally appointed panel urged
last week. Their recommendation responds to a government inquiry to
revise the country's drug laws.
The federal commission proposed licensing marijuana sales to Swiss
adults. The plan also would prohibit sellers from advertising the drug,
and allow the state to regulate marijuana's market value.
Panelists made their recommendation after determining that marijuana
posed little danger as a gateway drug and negligible health risks
compared to legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco. The experts also
acknowledged that marijuana prohibition failed to discourage widespread
use of the drug.
The Associated Press reported that Swiss Cabinet officials will
likely reject the recommendation, but did not rule out the measure's
eventual passage in a national referendum.
For more information, please contact Allen St. Pierre of The NORML
Foundation @ (202) 483-8751.
***
House Reps. To Introduce Student Drug Testing Bills In Congress
April 29, 1999, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Representatives John Peterson
(R-Pa.) and James Rogan (R-Calif.) responded to last week's Littleton,
Colorado school shooting by announcing that they will introduce a pair of
bills allowing school officials to submit students to random drug tests.
NORML Executive Director R. Keith Stroup, Esq. criticized the
proposals. "While the Littleton shooting was obviously a tragedy, police
confirmed that the suspects were drug free. It is shameful for these
members of Congress to exploit this tragedy to advance their misguided,
drug war agenda."
Peterson's measure would authorize participating school districts to
administer random testing to students. Federal grants would defray 50
percent of the costs associated with the testing, an aide to Peterson
said. The bill is scheduled to be introduced in Congress next week.
Rogan's staff said he will introduce a similar bill today.
For more information, please contact either Keith Stroup of NORML
@ (202) 483-5500.
- END -
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New Jersey Police Enlist Hotel Workers in War on Drugs (The New York Times
says New Jersey state troopers have quietly enlisted workers at dozens of
hotels along the New Jersey Turnpike to tip them off about suspicious guests
who, among other things, pay for their their rooms in cash or receive a
flurry of phone calls. The Hotel-Motel Program, modeled on a similar program
in Los Angeles initiated by federal prohibition agents, routinely allows
troopers, without a warrant, to leaf through the credit card receipts and
registration forms of all guests, and provides $1,000 rewards to workers
whose tips lead to "successful" arrests. Hotel and motel managers say they
are assured that their workers will never be required to testify or have
their names revealed in court documents. Police also tell them to take racial
characteristics into account and pay particular attention to guests who speak
Spanish.)
Date: Sun, 2 May 1999 10:12:03 -0700
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: US NJ: New Jersey Police Enlist Hotel Workers in War on Drugs
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: emr@javanet.com (Dick Evans)
Pubdate: Thu, 29 Apr 1999
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 1999 The New York Times Company
Contact: letters@nytimes.com
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Forum: http://www10.nytimes.com/comment/
Author: David Kocieniewski
NEW JERSEY POLICE ENLIST HOTEL WORKERS IN WAR ON DRUGS
TRENTON -- In an aggressive effort to catch drug smugglers, New Jersey
state troopers have quietly enlisted workers at dozens of hotels along the
New Jersey Turnpike to tip them off about suspicious guests who, among
other things, pay for their their rooms in cash or receive a flurry of
phone calls, according to people who have participated in the program.
The Hotel-Motel Program, operated out of the state police special
projects unit since the early 1990's and modeled on a similar
initiative in Los Angeles and by some Federal agencies, has recruited
managers and employees at an undisclosed number of hotels to act as
confidential informers about people who fit the profile of drug smugglers.
Hotel managers who participate in the program say they routinely allow
troopers, without a warrant, to leaf through the credit card receipts
and registration forms of all guests at the hotel and to offer $1,000
rewards to hotel workers whose tips lead to successful arrests.
In return, the hotel and motel managers say, they are assured that any
searches or arrests will occur after the suspect drives off the hotel
premises and that their workers will never be required to testify or
have their names revealed in court documents.
At the heart of the program are the troopers' surveillance seminars,
which train front desk clerks, bellhops and porters to scrutinize
guests who fit the profile of drug traffickers by asking for corner
rooms, hauling trailers behind their cars or frequently moving from
room to room. Several hotel employees and union leaders said troopers
have also trained them to take racial characteristics into account and
pay particular attention to guests who speak Spanish.
State police officials, who have been besieged for years by charges
that troopers illegally single out black and Hispanic motorists on New
Jersey highways, acknowledge that hotel personnel have been enlisted
as informers.
But they would not say how many people had been searched, questioned
or arrested in the program, and they denied that race played any role
in it.
Lieut. Bruce Geleta, who commands the unit, declined to discuss what
factors troopers teach hotel employees to look for, saying that he did
not want to alert the drug traffickers to his tactics. But he insisted
that race was not among them.
"Believe me, these days, we're very careful not to do anything like
that," he said in an interview.
But Clo Smith, a front desk clerk at the Holiday Inn near Newark
Airport, said she sat through the hourlong seminar three years ago and
was offended that the state police detective suggested that
Spanish-speaking guests should be treated with more suspicion than
those who speak English.
"Let's just say I found it somewhat insensitive," said Ms. Smith, the
union steward for Local 819 of the International Brotherhood of
Teamsters, which represents front desk employees at the hotel.
David Feeback, president of Hotel and Restaurant Employees Local 69 in
Secaucus, said some of his members have also complained that troopers
have pressured them to participate and report any patrons at hotel
restaurants who speak Spanish and pay with large sums of cash.
"It's racial profiling, plain and simple," Feeback said. "They
shouldn't be discriminating against people that way. And if any of my
members ask, I tell them to have nothing to do with it."
Lieutenant Geleta said he would not provide a racial breakdown of
those people stopped, searched or arrested as part of the Hotel-Motel
Program. John R. Hagerty, a spokesman for the state police, also
declined to release the names or court case numbers of individuals who
were prosecuted after being arrested by troopers in the Hotel-Motel
unit.
Although it is a common, and widely accepted, investigative technique
for detectives to develop a network of sources within the community
they police, the state troopers' Hotel-Motel Program is particularly
aggressive because in some cases it uses the entire staff of a hotel
to keep guests under the watchful eyes of police informers throughout
their stay.
That has made the program very effective, Lieutenant Geleta said.
And although the practice of using such informers is legal as long as
their participation is voluntary, civil rights advocates and members
of the tourism and hospitality industry say it raises privacy concerns.
"For the state police to be looking through people's credit card
receipts and registration forms, and from what I understand,
conducting surveillance on some of them, is just a gross invasion of
privacy," said Lenora Lapidus, legal director for the New Jersey
chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Jan Larsen, president of the New Jersey Hotel and Motel Association,
said that he had not heard of the program and that the organization
had never been asked to take a formal position on it.
But Larsen, who runs the East Brunswick Hilton, said he would not
allow his staff to participate.
"We wouldn't allow the police to look through our records without a
subpoena, period," Larsen said. "We have an obligation to protect
people's privacy. I would think there's a civil liability if we start
giving out information."
Robert Fields, owner of the Days Inn near Newark Airport, said he
refused to participate in the program because he thought it violated
his guests' right to privacy. Fields said that in 1997, his general
manager was asked by the state police to join the program, but Fields
and his manager both decided it would be intrusive to grant the
troopers' requests to search arbitrarily through "the bucket" where
registration cards and credit card imprints are stored.
"It's like a tactic out of some dictatorship," Fields said. "When a
person checks into a hotel, he or she has a reasonable assumption that
the place of business will protect their privacy, not treat them like
a criminal."
Days Inn is part of national chain, as are some of the participating
motels; the national owners or managers in some cases allow each
individual manager to decide independently whether to participate. The
Hilton chain, for instance, forbids managers to allow the police to
inspect the records of its guests without a subpoena.
The existence of the program came to light after some hotel workers,
offended by what they perceived to be discrimination, began to
complain to lawyers who in turn notified some reporters.
Ms. Lapidus said that among the questions raised by the disclosure of
the informer program was whether troopers testified truthfully in
court hearings about arrests that were initiated by hotel employees.
"There are certainly search and seizure issues here," Ms. Lapidus
said. "The Constitution guarantees that every defendant knows all the
evidence against them and all the witnesses against them, so if we
find that that hasn't been happening, it's certainly something we'd be
interested in pursuing."
But Lieutenant Geleta said that his detectives were savvy enough to
conceal their informers' identities without violating either the law
or police procedure.
"We have ways of handling that," he said, but declined to elaborate.
Moreover, he said, the vast majority of the arrests made by the
Hotel-Motel unit ended with guilty pleas long before trial.
Hotel managers who participated in the program differed in their
assessments of whether race played a role in it.
Fred Hartman, manager of the Ramada Inn near Newark Airport, said he
was convinced that guests were scrutinized only on their behavior, and
not on their race.
"There's no profiling whatsoever," said Hartman, who acknowledged that
he never attended one of the troopers' training sessions. Hartman said
he had no qualms about allowing troopers to check through the credit
card receipts and registration forms of guests on a weekly basis
because "they're good guys, and we want to cooperate with them
whenever we can." But even some hotel managers who support the program
say that state troopers have told them that the intent is to catch
West Indians or Hispanic people, particularly South and Central
Americans, involved in the drug trade. Chip Woodell, general manager
of the Hampton Inn near Newark Airport, said he agreed to let the
state police address his employees last month because troopers
convinced him they were interested only in catching international drug
smugglers rather than guests who may use narcotics themselves.
"They told me they weren't interested in catching someone smoking a
joint in their room," said Woodell, who said he allows troopers to
check through his guests' registration records an average of twice a
week. "What they want is some guy from Colombia, who swallowed a kilo
of cocaine wrapped in balloons, who was trying to sneak it through the
airport."
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Films And Music Glamorize Substance Use, Government Says (The Associated
Press version in the Orange County Register)
Date: Fri, 30 Apr 1999 16:12:33 -0700
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: US: WIRE: Films And Music Glamorize Substance Use, Government
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: John W. Black
Pubdate: Thursday,April 29,1999
Source: Orange County Register (CA)
Copyright: 1999 The Orange County Register
Contact: letters@link.freedom.com
Website: http://www.ocregister.com/
Section: News,page 13
Author: Deb Riechmann-The Associated Press
FILMS AND MUSIC GLAMORIZE SUBSTANCE USE, GOVERNMENT SAYS
Media: Most depictions of drug,alcohol and tobacco use fail to show ill
effects,a U.S. report complains.
Washington-Musicians sing about guzzling liquor and movie stars puff
cigarettes and take drugs on the big screen.But federal officials ask:
Where is the unglamorous side of substance use - like hangovers,
slurred speech or getting in trouble with the law?
A government study released Wednesday says people were depicted doing
drugs, drinking or smoking in 98 percent of the top movie rentals and
27 percent of the most popular songs in 1996 and 1997. Fewer than half
these movie scenes and song lyrics mentioned any downside to these
activities.
The $400,000 study of 200 movies - rated from "G" for all ages to
"NC-17," no one under 17 admitted - and 1,000 songs was commissioned
by the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the Department of
Health and Human Services.
The study stopped short of saying that music and films cause young
people to use drugs, alcohol and tobacco.But researchers said that
determining the frequency and nature of substance use in entertainment
media is the first step toward understanding how much influence films
and music have on young people's decisions to smoke, drink and take
illicit drugs.
"We do not suggest that we want to dictate the message. Drugs, alcohol
and tobacco are a reality of American life. They should be part of the
art form of the entertainment world," said Barry McCaffrey,
drug-control policy director for the Clinton administration. "But we
are suggesting they need to be tied to the consequences that are
realistic, given our experiences in American life."
A Motion Picture Association of America spokesman declined to comment,
saying there hadn't been enough time to review the two-year study.
The Recording Industry Association of America issued a one paragraph
statement, saying efforts already were under way in the music industry
to help control teen substance abuse.
Since 1985, for example, the music industry has put labels on
recordings that contain strong language or descriptions of violence,
sex or substance abuse. In an average record store with 110,000
titles, about 500 recordings would have the "parental advisory"
sticker, the association said.
Nelba Chavez, administrator of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health
Services Administration, said the entertainment media are a powerful
influence on young people, but parents have more of an impact.
"There's a lot of room for improvement in the entertainment world,"
she said, "but there's just as much room for improvement in homes and
communities."
On a positive note, Chavez said only 3 percent of the song lyrics
mentioned tobacco. And 15 percent of the movies that portrayed illicit
drug use also contained an "anti-use" message, such as limiting how
much and how often substances are used.
Only five of the movies, however, were substance-free. And in at least
two of the five, there was a scene about using substances, according
to Don Roberts, a Stanford University communications professor who
helped research the study.
"In one scene, a set of characters sit around a tea table, drink out
of little toy tea cups and go through an entire drunk shtick," Roberts
said.
Among the study's other findings:
Of the movies, 93 percent showed alcohol use, 89 percent tobacco use
and 22 percent drug use.
Of the songs, 17 percent included lyrics about people drinking
alcohol, 18 percent using drugs and 3 percent smoking.
More than half the movies and more than 80 percent of the songs that
mentioned drugs and alcohol indicated no consequence to users.
Of the 669 major adult characters in the movies, 5 percent used
illicit drugs, 25 smoked and 65 percent drank alcohol.
Reflecting concern about media violence, four members of Congress
asked President Clinton to convene an emergency summit meeting at the
White House with leaders of the entertainment industry.
In a letter to Clinton, Sens. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., and John
McCain, R-Ariz., and Reps. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Dan Burton, R-Ind.,
said school violence is a complicated issue, but "we believe that
media violence is contributing to this problem, and we need the help
of the entertainment community to solve it."
The four also asked Surgeon General David Satcher to conduct a new
study into the influence of mass media on the increase in violent
behavior by children and young adults.
Also, two House Republicans, John Peterson, R-Pa., and James Rogan,
R-Glendale, introduced separate bills Wednesday that would establish
federally funded drug testing programs in schools.
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The Fix is In (A list subscriber forwards an excellent book review by Stanton
Peele, from an upcoming issue of the International Journal of Drug Policy, of
"The Fix," by Michael Massing, and "An Informed Approach to Substance Abuse,"
by Mark Kleiman. "It is hard to escape the conclusion that Kleiman and
Massing ignore legal remedies for our current drug policy mess because they
wish to avoid offending their audiences rather than due to their
straightforward evaluation of the current drug scene. They support an
anti-drug stance because it is essential for legitimacy in popular,
scientific, and political circles in the U.S.")
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 1999 10:22:25 +0000
To: vignes@monaco.mc, polydor@club-internet.fr
From: Peter Webster (vignes@monaco.mc)
Subject: [] The Mystery of Michael Massing
How does Massing do it? Why will apparently any U.S. publication (or
publisher) give his views a wide audience? Even the flagship U.S.
intellectual publication, the New York Review of Books, publishes Massing's
essays on the War on Drugs. Massing's most recent work, *The Fix,* has been
praised, and far more important books ignored. The mystery perhaps is not
Massing's appeal nor his writing, nor his publishers, but the state of the
Drug War in the U.S., and the general paradigms of American self-perception
concerning its leadership in world affairs, even the general perception by
the public and many leaders alike that America can do no wrong, and if it
does, it need not be admitted nor even mentioned. The following analysis by
Stanton Peele reviews and critiques Michael Massing's popular fantasy, *The
Fix*, along with the parallel work of drug policy maven Mark Kleiman. Both
authors believe that, if we would only divert from (or add to) massive sums
being spent on interdiction, policing, and punishment so as to vastly
increase our spending on drug abuse treatment, we could lick our substance
use problems. Stanton shows that this tempting but wrongheaded idea leads
nowhere.
Prepublication version of article appearing in the
International Journal of Drug Policy, 10:9-16, 1999.
(c) Copyright 1999 Stanton Peele. All rights reserved.
THE FIX IS IN
A Commentary on The Fix (Massing, 1998)
and
An Informed Approach to Substance Abuse (Kleiman,
1998)
Stanton Peele
Fellow, The Lindesmith Center
New York City
Other than current and former drug czars, it is hard to find someone to
praise American drug policy. While pointing to the overall decline in
illicit drug use in the U.S. since 1980, those inclined to defend this
policy must also acknowledge constant levels of addiction and intensive
usage, periodic rises in adolescent drug use, the readily available and
inexpensive illegal supplies of cocaine, heroin, and marijuana,
historically high prison populations, continued drug-related social
problems (most notably AIDS and hepatitis), along with the tremendous
economic, social, and emotional costs of an ever-escalating war on drugs.
At one point, the focus of critics of drug policy was
legalization - primarily of marijuana - and was associated mainly with
community researchers who studied drug users in the field and who were
joined by a vocal group of drug enthusiasts. Although some preliminary
steps were taken in this direction at the state level and by national
commissions (notably one under Jimmy Carter) in the 1970s, this stance was
largely polemic and quixotic, and has continued to be so in the U.S. At the
same time, there has always been a category of public health critics (which
is not well-recognized by the authors discussed in this article) who
decried the lack of focus on treatment of addiction (current treatment
advocates should familiarize themselves with the history of the U.S. Public
Health Hospital at Lexington and the career of Lawrence Kolb; see Kolb, 1962.)
However, beginning in the late 1980s, drug policy reformers started to find
legitimate national voices in Europe and, to a lesser extent, in the United
States. This loosely organized group of policy critics began to focus on
decriminilization of all drugs or just "soft" drugs such as marijuana, as
was tried in several states in the U.S. in the 1970s. Typically,
decriminalization means not permitting legal sales of drugs, but dealing
with users by other than criminal sanctions. As we approach the 21st
century, this position has taken a number of new directions. In the U.S.
widespread support for medical use of marijuana has been expressed in
electoral initiatives. The term "harm reduction" is now commonly used to
describe policies that recognize and accept the continued use of drugs by
many people and to prevent harms from this use, particularly the spread of
AIDS. Needle exchange programs, as well as reducing HIV infection, keep
addicts healthier in general and offer them positive connections to society.
In much of Europe and the English-speaking world, harm reduction has been
adopted by many elected officials, and it has been made national policy in
a number of these countries. This means that, unlike the U.S., these
nations endorse and fund the provision of clean needles for injecting drug
users, as well as experimenting with innovative approaches such as the de
facto decriminalization of the sale of marijuana in the Netherlands and
provision of heroin for addicts in clinical or controlled settings, a
practice begun in Switzerland and which is being considered or tried in
countries such as Germany, the Netherlands, and Australia. Harm reduction
has thus had a liberating impact by suggesting an entirely different
relationship to drugs. It means recognizing that drug use will be a
continuing feature of civilized life and that reasonable provisions must be
made for the range of people who use drugs - from young people who primarily
experiment with drugs, to a small group of people who continue to use drugs
either occasionally or regularly in adulthood, and finally to a still
smaller group of people whose drug use is problematic in ways beyond the
danger of running afoul of the law.
The United States as a society has not been able to make this leap to a new
conception of drug use in relation to society. It is the only western
nation that refuses to support needle exchange programs (in most
communities and states it is actually illegal). The reason for opposing
such programs (which are nearly universally endorsed by American public
health and AIDS organizations) is that "they send the wrong message about
drugs" - that is, they recognize and accept continuing drug use. But the
opposing position, that drug use is bad and must be eliminated, is one that
does not lead to a viable public policy.
The U.S. is thus the most polarized western nation about drugs. Moderate
politicians elsewhere can openly consider a heroin maintenance program, for
instance. In the U.S., socially liberal Republicans (like New Jersey
Governor Christine Whitman) and Democrats (President Bill Clinton) feel
they must reject their own commissions' or cabinet members' support of
needle exchange, and virtually no Congressperson (except perhaps one or two
from the very most liberal sections of the country) and virtually no United
States Senator or state governor can come out for liberalized drug policies
(one recent exception has been the governor of Hawaii). These politicians
reckon they cannot be seen to accept drug use in any form. Perhaps they are
wrong, or will become wrong. However, more likely their reticence is
appropriate, given the anti-drug bias and campaigning in the U.S.
There is thus a large opening available in the U.S. for a middle ground in
drug policy. For many, this middle ground comprises the view that it is
counterproductive to spend drug war funds on eradicating drug crops in the
U.S. and overseas and interdicting drug supply lines in combination with
heavy police efforts and the imprisonment of drug users. Instead, this
position maintains, the bulk of our effort should be spent on prevention of
drug use, drug treatment, and research to discover the sources of the
impulse to use drugs - the so-called demand-reduction rather than
supply-reduction approach.
Several groups and individuals claim the middle ground between the punitive
approach and that of decriminalization per se - notably the College on the
Problems of Drug Dependency, a group of drug abuse researchers, and the
Physician Leadership on National Drug Policy. But this middle position
actually shares a primary assumption with current policy - it regards drug
use in exclusively negative terms as something wrong and harmful that must
be avoided, treated away, and medically cured (Peele, 1996). This position
appeals to an influential, largely federally-funded scientific lobby and to
medical groups which feel that illicit drug use leads to medical harm and
has no benefits.
A middle-of-the-road drug policy also appeals to the moderate but moralist
tradition in American policy which justifies itself by pointing to
"extremists" on either side. This centrist tendency has worked well to
preserve political stability in the U.S., but is not necessarily the best
avenue for solving complex social problems. Two thinkers who have
nonetheless garnered praise for their claims to bypass the polarization of
"drug warriors" and "legalizers" are Mark Kleiman, a professor of policy
studies at U.C.L.A., and journalist Michael Massing, former editor of the
Columbia Journalism Review. Kleiman, who has achieved currency among policy
analysts inside the government and out, and who previously wrote Against
Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Kleiman, 1992), expressed his views in a
recent article in the journal Issues in Science and Technology (Kleiman,
1998). Michael Massing (1998c) has written The Fix, a book that has
received wide attention.
Both men obviously delight in being able to point out extremists on either
side of them. Both clearly recognize that current American drug policy is
wrongheaded, and the clearest sign of this for them is that the majority of
funds earmarked for drugs are for policing and interdiction, rather than
for prevention and treatment. Both have at the center of their reform goals
the reprioritizing of this spending. Of the two, Kleiman is by far the
better informed and more sophisticated about drugs and drug users. But the
two men both display the strong and weak points of the "treatment uber
alles" position.
To begin with, both men recognize the distinction between drug abuse and
addiction, on the one hand, and casual or experimental use (although they
do not explicitly come to grips with regular, controlled use). Kleiman
correctly rejects the causal importance of the gateway hypothesis, since
the overwhelming majority of marijuana users do not go on to use other
drugs. Instead, he emphasizes compulsive marijuana use per se, although he
clearly indicates that it occurs with only a small minority of pot smokers.
Massing, who has little time for epidemiological data and concepts,
embodies his analysis in journalistic vignettes. For Massing, parent
anti-drug groups like the National Federation of Drug-Free Youth and
benighted drug policy figures like Carlton Turner, Ronald Reagan's White
House drug advisor, eradicated the distinction between serious and casual
drug use and simultaneously misdirected American attention away from drug
treatment.
Massing's story-telling approach makes for appealing reading. His ideas
have gotten broad exposure in the major liberal intellectual outlets - his
book and views were virtually ubiquitous in prominent periodicals in the
latter part of 1998, at least in New York City. The Fix was reviewed in the
December 17 New York Review of Books (Gladwell, 1998), featured along
with - but far more prominently than - Mike Gray's (1998) outspokenly
anti-drug-prohibition book, Drug Crazy. Massing himself authored articles
in the New York Times Sunday Magazine in September (Massing, 1998d) and the
November/December issue of the Columbia Journalism Review (Massing, 1998b).
That one cannot look at a major publication addressing thoughtful people
without encountering Massing's work is an indication of the extent to which
current American drug policy is being questioned (as well as of Massing's
connections).
Massing critiques American drug policy while holding out the promise we
need only modify our approach in a clear but modest way, one that does not
require a fundamental reorientation towards drugs and drug use: the title
of his New York Times Sunday Magazine article is, "Winning the drug war
isn't so hard after all." Massing's secret solution is current drug
treatment programs, only more of them. Massing lauds in The Fix grass roots
inner-city treatment centers like those he encountered in Harlem and
elsewhere. His Columbia Journalism Review article features a picture of a
blindfolded man in the center of a group. The caption reads, "a 'trust
exercise' at Walden House, a drug treatment center in San Francisco."
Kleiman's and Massing's rejection of the need to reform legal penalties for
drug use is puzzling. For, after all, their recognition that most drug use
is non-harmful seemingly suggests that drugs should be decriminalized.
Kleiman rejects this position, maintaining that, if drugs were legalized,
many more people would abuse them. Massing's response involves even more of
a non sequitur. When his argument draws him towards legalization, he
instead leapfrogs to the horror of lives which are dominated by drug use.
Thus Massing alternates policy discussions with the case of Yvonne
Hamilton, an inner-city African American cocaine addict.
Massing's reliance on Ms. Hamilton's story as evidence about drug policy
epitomizes the problem with a journalistic approach to drug issues. The
question is not whether some people suffer from drug use - the issue is
whether we can reduce the frequency and severity of drug problems through
changing our approach to them. While Kleiman and Massing indicate there
will be more addicts like Yvonne Hamilton if drugs were legalized, her case
does not support this view. To start with, Ms. Hamilton is an example of a
person who became a drug addict under current, prohibitionist policies
towards drugs. Moreover, the very first drugs she sampled and abused were
tranquilizers prescribed for her mother. Ms. Hamilton developed a drinking
problem - examples of which are many times as common as drug addiction, even
in the inner city - before she became a cocaine addict. Her case suggests
that illicit drug abusers come from a group of people who could just as
easily abuse licit drugs and alcohol.
Nor does Ms. Hamilton prove that expanding the availability of drug
treatment will work to rescue many more urban African Americans and others
who abuse drugs. Rather, Ms. Hamilton's difficult trip through treatment is
really an illustration of how people's drug use is not so much amenable to
treatment as it is a response to larger issues in their lives. Ms. Hamilton
followed the typical serendipitous course through addiction and recovery, a
pathway that seems most indebted to gradual but large changes in internal
and external experience than to specific treatment episodes. As Massing
(1998a) notes, "Most addicts require two, three, or more exposures to
treatment before the process takes hold." Treatment was not a realistic
issue for the young Yvonne who used drugs and drank for thrills and
psychological relief.
It is hard to escape the conclusion that Kleiman and Massing ignore legal
remedies for our current drug policy mess because they wish to avoid
offending their audiences rather than due to their straightforward
evaluation of the current drug scene. They support an anti-drug stance
because it is essential for legitimacy in popular, scientific, and
political circles in the U.S. Neither Massing nor Kleiman seems to feel
free to explore the experiences of the vast majority of drug users, who
enjoy and successfully integrate drug use into their lives. Likewise, both
are completely tone deaf to fundamental constitutional or personal-freedom
concerns about why the state is so concerned about even non-harmful drug
use that police, employers, and schools routinely intrude into people's
most private functions and places.
While avoiding direct policy recommendations that would affect these users,
they instead deride decriminalizers as closet legalizers. Yet, they surely
don't believe that casual drug users should be jailed. Thus, the cost of
soft peddling their finding that limited or controlled drug use - even among
those who use crack and heroin - is the norm is that Massing and Kleiman
ignore a large group of otherwise normal and happy American drug users who
are currently criminalized. If this group is not addressed, how then are we
really reorienting American drug policy?
The authors' shortchanging of moderate drug use is apparent in their
concentration on the value of treatment (since controlled users do not seem
to require treatment). Both writers emphasize the need to shift attention
to treating hard core users or addicts. Both promise that more treatment
will reduce drug use, drug crime, health costs, and the range of other
drug-related maladies, as some recent research shows (Rydell and
Everingham, 1994; SAMHSA, 1998). Both endorse the expansion of methadone
maintenance programs, along with other treatments. Massing reports that it
was only during a brief period under Richard Nixon that treatment was
available to America's drug addicts "on demand," as it should be today.
This suggests that there are many addicts around the country clamoring for
treatment who cannot find it. But the truth is that, to the contrary, most
people undergoing substance abuse treatment in the U.S. had to be forced
into it. I currently work as a public defender in Morris County, New
Jersey, where my indigent clients are invariably substance abusers. The
State forces them to enter treatment as a way of minimizing criminal
penalties or as a condition for regaining custody of their children.
Treatment is in county- or state-supported or charitable programs or is
paid for by Medicaid, and my clients parade through inpatient and
outpatient programs not only in my county, but around New Jersey and even
in other states. Meanwhile, they all have been in treatment previously.
Since our current drug treatment slots are already filled with unwilling
(or at least involuntary) participants, opening many more treatment centers
like the ones we have now will not affect drug use and addiction rates.
Rather, to fill these treatment slots, coercion will have to become more
systematic and pervasive. Kleiman's primary recommendations are that many
more people be forced into treatment by the criminal justice system. He
touts compulsory treatment of prisoners, probationers, and parolees
monitored by drug testing, along with drug courts and other means for
sentencing people to treatment. Although Kleiman endorses "coerced
abstinence" plans, he points out that much benefit occurs from reduced drug
use other than abstinence - an insight that expresses the harm-reduction
viewpoint. Kleiman is also enamored of the idea that biological research
can remedy people's urges to take drugs (cf. Goldstein, 1993), a view that
completely dominates the agenda of the National Institute on Drug Abuse
(NIDA).
Massing, with his journalistic cult of personality, harkens to a brief
halcyon period he virtually alone has detected under Richard Nixon, when he
claims pharmacologist Jerome Jaffe reoriented drug policy towards treatment
of addicts. Most people will not recall Nixon's war on drugs as being so
enlightened, particularly as it is described by Edward Jay Epstein (1977)
in Agency of Fear, or in that administration's efforts to eradicate
marijuana supplies which, while reducing middle-class marijuana use,
ushered in a new period of narcotics use in inner cities. One classic of
the drug policy literature is Gooberman's (1974) comprehensive
investigation of the impact on New York City of Nixon's Operation
Intercept. Although marijuana for a time did become more scarce and
expensive due to government efforts to block importation of the drug from
Mexico, Gooberman found that only casual users tended to desist drug use as
a result. Those immersed in the drug culture continued to find supplies of
marijuana, while other heavy users with fewer resources switched to
hashish, amphetamines, barbiturates, and LSD, as well as (particularly for
ghetto youths) heroin and cocaine.
This is not to belittle Jaffe's insights and accomplishments, or to say
that he would not be a greatly preferable figure to head U.S. drug policy
over General Barry McCaffrey. But he was far from the dominant force in
Nixon's drug policy. Jaffe's greatest contribution to our knowledge of drug
use was rather the seminal role he played in the study of Vietnam veteran
heroin addicts under Nixon. Jaffe announced in the pop psychology magazine,
Psychology Today, that a defense department task force had found that most
returning veterans overcame heroin addiction when they returned home (Jaffe
and Harris, 1974). The remarkable insights provided by the classic study
(Robins et al., 1980) of these veterans included that their remission rate
was not improved by receiving treatment and that remission persisted for
the large majority of even those former addicts who used narcotics stateside.
Massing thus misses the key insight produced by Jaffe's stint under Nixon:
treatment is secondary in comparison with the impact of a facilitative
environment in accounting for drug users who resist or escape drug
addiction. Massing instead highlights what he claims to be the immediate
reduction in crime statistics that resulted in major cities due to Jaffe's
treatment initiatives. Only a very, very optimistic - one might say
"naive" - individual can believe that treating drug addicts leads to a large
and appreciable decline in crime in a given city. Indeed, if one argues
reflexively that whatever policy precedes a reduction in crime statistics
is successful, one is forced to concede that Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and
other drug warriors are on the right track, since the major categories of
crime have dropped substantially in American cities since 1991 (which
Massing is certainly reluctant to do - see Massing, 1998a).
It is a reductive fallacy - akin to describing individual drug use or
addiction as a biochemical function - to believe that treating individual
drug abusers will result in large-scale policy benefits. Not enough users
are addicted, not enough addicts can be reached to be treated, not enough
reliably improve as a result of treatment, not enough can maintain
non-drug-addicted lives following treatment, not enough new addicts can be
prevented from surfacing to make a dent in our overall national drug
problem. At points, both Kleiman and Massing recognize this. According to
Kleiman, "Even if money were no obstacle, getting hard-core drug users into
treatment and keeping them there would be a major problem."
For his part, Massing (1998d) notes that "drugs not only impart intense
pleasure but also provide great comfort to people coping with various
crises in their lives." But these are the individuals whose drug use both
he and Kleiman want to correct. Massing recognizes that addiction is a
function of poverty and deprivation, and that until poor schooling,
employment opportunities, housing, community support of parenting, and the
like are addressed, there is little chance of changing the inner-city
environments that provide the most fertile soil for substance abuse of all
sorts. Indeed, if he put two and two together, he would see that
overselling treatment, like overselling criminal penalties, is simply
another way to avoid contemplation of urban minority depredations that are
the single largest failure of American society.
The programs that most often show the kind of benefits that Kleiman and
Massing cite do not really represent the treatment available to these
inner-city addicts, nor will such programs be the primary beneficiaries of
new investment in treatment. The typical program instead is one staffed by
undertrained personnel, that relies on religious 12-step bromides and group
sessions in which expressions of contrition are the main aim, and that does
not provide the broad range of supports needed to assist people out of
addicted lifestyles. The "trust exercise" pictured in Massing's (1998b)
Columbia Journalism Review article is not going to cure inner-city heroin
addicts.
Massing incorrectly attributes problems like these to insufficient funding.
Just as he opportunistically uses crime statistics to support the policies
he dreams will succeed at remedying America's drug woes, Massing fails to
appreciate the financial implications of his analysis. For while, as he
notes, "only" $5.4 billion of the current $16 billion dollar federal drug
budget goes for demand reduction, this figure can be compared with the $420
million total drug budget in 1973, the halcyon year when Jaffe's treatment
approach supposedly reigned supreme under Nixon. In other words, all the
drug problems Massing depicts with alarm have grown as the treatment budget
has increased steadily, not to say exponentially.
Kleiman includes state and local government drug war expenditures along
with federal ones, which he adds up to be $40 billion. This, in turn, means
we are currently spending about $13 billion in government money on demand
reduction. At the same time, Kleiman places "the total number of hard drug
addicts at any one time at fewer than 4 million." Thus, government
expenditures for demand reduction in the U.S. currently total more than
$3,000 annually per addict. What, in Kleiman's and Massing's view, would be
the ideal rate of expenditure to get each drug addict to stop using
drugs - $5,000, $10,000, $25,000, or more? But the current $3,000 figure is
already a substantial underestimate, since it ignores large private-sector
expenditures on drug treatment through EAPs, facilities like Hazelden, the
Betty Ford Center, and chains of "chemical dependence" hospitals around the
country, among which there have been recurrent scandals concerning
over-diagnosis, -utilization, -treatment, and -charging.
Is America's major problem in fighting the drug war really that we have
been chary with our expenditures on drug treatment, as Kleiman and Massing
and other liberal reformers assert? Or has American society already
over-relied on drug treatment as a kind of all-purpose totem consistent
with its belief that all social problems can be successfully treated as
medical problems? We might consider the title of Massing's book in this
regard. What is "the fix" meant to indicate (Massing supplies no subtitle)?
Apparently, it is a play on words, meaning both the drug the addict is
driven to pursue, and the elusive solution the U.S. pursues for its drug
problems. But the treatment "fix" is just as imaginary a magic bullet as
are the other illusions that drive both addictive drug use and drug policy.
References
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