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July 4, 1996

Regional and other news

'Drug Policy Ignites Debate In Montgomery County'

By Brian Mooa and Manuel Perez-Rivas
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, July 4 1996; Page A01
The Washington Post

Montgomery County State's Attorney Andrew L. Sonner said yesterday that starting next month, his office will prosecute fewer petty drug crimes and will concentrate instead on drug violators who carry weapons, are repeat offenders or operate in high-crime areas.

Few prosecutors across the nation have announced such a policy because the issue is so politically charged, but experts say that a growing number already are doing what Sonner (D) wants to do starting Aug. 1 - clear cases of nonviolent drug users and small-time dealers from the dockets.

The proposal immediately provoked a testy debate within the county. Opponents argued that the prosecutor is abdicating his role as a leader in the drug war, while proponents touted the plan as a tool to save taxpayer dollars and ease jail crowding.

"Clearly, we're not going to" stop arresting small-scale drug offenders, an outraged County Executive Douglas M. Duncan (D) said yesterday. "This county has had a zero-tolerance policy for drugs for a long time, and we're not going to change that as long as I'm county executive."

"Many of our officers are young, and they're anxious to get out there and enforce the law," said county Police Chief Carol A. Mehrling. "We cannot tell our officers not to enforce the drug laws. What our officers are doing they will continue to do; what Mr. Sonner does he will have to live with."

Sonner outlined the plan to about a dozen community leaders Tuesday during a secret dinner meeting in Bethesda. People at the meeting, who have been asked to form an advisory board to monitor the plan after it takes effect Aug. 1, included representatives of county civic groups, the legal profession and the NAACP. Representatives of municipal police departments and other law enforcement agencies that operate in Montgomery also participated -- with the notable exception of the county police, who would be most directly affected.

"Sonner is really concerned that 40 percent of his resources are going into these drug cases . . . in a time of shrinking budgets," said a source who attended the meeting and spoke on the condition of anonymity. "He's telling the police department, `You've got to come in here with better cases, not [make drug arrests] like a fire engine going from fire to fire to fire without any plan."

Sonner confirmed the change yesterday and said he planned to discuss the policy with newspaper editorial boards and hold a news conference within the next month in an effort to explain his rationale and build support.

"Right now, [police] are just randomly arresting [drug suspects] with no other purpose than to arrest as many people as they can," Sonner said. "That's been the policy for a good 10 years. Everyone who's observed this has said it was a failure; it's simply crowding the jails and making our dockets more heavy without any benefit to the community. Drugs are still readily available."

Sonner's decision to eschew widespread prosecutions of small-time drug dealers in favor of a more targeted approach comes at a time when law enforcement officers across the country are coping with a resurgence of drug problems and when prisons are full and budgets are tight.

No one disputes that Sonner, the county's elected prosecutor and top law enforcement officer, has the discretion to put the policy into effect.

Paul F. Rothstein, a Georgetown University Law Center professor who has served as an adviser on criminal law policy to both the U.S. House and Senate judiciary committees, said Sonner's proposal reflects a quietly emerging trend in law enforcement -- one that Rothstein applauds.

"It's a new wave and an accelerating wave," Rothstein said. "Sonner's [proposal] is among the more specific that I have heard; some of them are quite general. The decisions are being made quietly because they are not very popular. People do not like to hear that drug users and petty thieves are not being arrested when in some neighborhoods people might feel that is the primary problem."

He went on to say: "This is a good idea, and it should be encouraged. We are as a society very much in the position of emergency medics on a battlefield, where priorities have to be adopted because there are not enough resources to go around. You have to decide what are the most compelling and needful cases and devote your medical attention to them. As a society, we're going to bleed to death if we spread our resources around to both important and unimportant cases."

According to a draft of Sonner's proposal obtained by The Washington Post, Montgomery drug arrests would have to meet at least one of five criteria to be considered for prosecution in Circuit Court. Cases would have to:

• Involve violence or a lethal weapon.
• Occur in a school zone where officials are working to deal with a drug problem.
• Occur near a recreation or community center whose drug problem is getting official attention.
• Occur in a high-crime neighborhood where officials have developed a "weed and seed" anti-drug program.
• Involve a suspect who is clearly identifiable as a career criminal with a history of arrests and incarceration.

Sonner tried yesterday to distance himself from past politics, saying the new policy is the fairest way of allocating his office's resources in terms of both law enforcement and economics.

Sonner said 383 of the 1,270 cases his office prosecuted in Circuit Court last year were drug cases.

He said police originally presented 524 drug cases, many of which were not strong enough for prosecutors to take to Circuit Court.

He would not speculate, however, on how his new policy might affect the numbers of arrests and prosecutions for Montgomery drug cases.

Duncan said Sonner's proposal "just formalizes what he's been doing for a long time. The feeling among our police department is that, on drug cases, the state's attorney from Montgomery County is more of a defense attorney than a prosecuting attorney. . . . If anything, he should be doing the reverse and stopping the low-level criminals before they get to a higher level."

United Methodist Church Conference Endorses Medical Marijuana Initiative

Farm Bureau News: 'Hemp Could Be A Promising New Ag Commodity'

Research from the Colorado Hemp Initiative Project (CHIP) shows that industrial hemp, harvested at a profit of $514 per acre, would add $87 million to the state's farm economy annually. Those figures were based on estimated production of 5 percent (170,000 acres) of Colorado farmland currently devoted to wheat, corn or lying fallow.

CHIP pegged non-farm impact, through creation of textile production and manufacturing, product trade and advancement of allied products, at $20 million, for an overall impact to Colorado's economy of $107 million.

According to CHIP, research shows industrial hemp, while classified as Cannabis sativa, contains less than 1 percent THC and has no psychoactive properties. Many new, registered varieties of the plant, available throughout Europe, contain less than 0.3 percent THC, even in the flowers. CHIP information says that European farmers have been growing hemp for over 20 years without any problems related to marijuana.

Used for centuries around the world for its strong, wear-resistant fibers, hemp provided the rigging and sails for the world's ships form the discovery of America through World War II. Until the late 1800's, most of the cloth produced in the United States, and nearly all its paper, was made form hemp, grown primarily in regions of Kentucky and Wisconsin.

According to CHIP research, invention of a machine to mechanically separate hemp fiber form the stalk in the 1930's prompted magazines of the time to hail hemp as the "New Billion Dollar Crop" and "The Most Desirable Crop That Can Be Grown."

But production, research and further development of hemp's industrial uses in the United States were halted abruptly by passage of the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act, which established a tax of $1 per ounce on hemp manufacturers and distributors as well as on hemp transactions.

Bob Winter, Weld County (Colo.) Farm Bureau president, offered five acres of his land for the Colorado test plot, and worked closely with researchers to develop a cultivation and fertilization plan.

"Industrial hemp could be the alternative crop farmers are looking for now," he said of the plan. He noted industrial hemp is currently grown in China, India, Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia and Canada, among other countries. The United States imports raw product from many of those countries for manufacture here.

"The lion's share of products made from industrial hemp is here in the United States," Winter said. "It's a shame that we continue to import the raw product in the form of hemp pulp, and that we cannot grow this crop on our own soil."

Note: Debra Hood is an agricultural Journalist in Canon City, Colo. She produces the Colorado Farm Bureau News for the Colorado Farm Bureau.

Editorial Comment

Clearing the smoke on industrial hemp By Bob Winter

Industrial hemp provides a window of opportunity for U.S. agricultural producers to take advantage of a highly profitable fiber crop whose many uses include clothing, rope, paper, cosmetics, livestock feed, insulation, wood-substitute particle board, plastics and fuel. It costs about $300 an acre to grow and can yield a profit of more than $500 per acre. Those facts got my attention in a hurry!

International trade agreements (GATT and NAFTA) recognize the designation of 0.3 percent tetrahydrocannibinois (THC) as the distinction between industrial hemp and marijuana. But current U.S. law does not differentiate between industrial hemp and marijuana. Thanks to these laws, the United States lags behind other world powers in hemp production and must import raw hemp pulp for manufacture here, while U.S. farmers are prohibited from growing a highly profitable crop without government subsidy.

Canada is finishing its third year of test research on the crop, and will soon shift to commercial production. Industry will then move to Canada to build processing facilities. Now that Canada is on the verge of growing industrial hemp, with NAFTA opening North American trade, we will not be able to compete if we don't get on the bandwagon soon.

Hemp production could be a boon to American farm communities all across the country. Industrial hemp could be the alternative crop farmers are looking for, as they rethink their crop and marketing practices in light of the end to farm support payments under the 1996 farm bill.

NOTE: Bob Winter is a farmer in northeastern Colorado and president of the Weld County Farm Bureau.

[End quotes]

Drug Czar Revises 'Gateway' Theory

The 1996 National Drug Control Strategy (NDCS) is the first strategy that the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) has produced under its new director, former Army General Barry McCaffrey. Calling the national illicit drug situation a "cancer" that will take at least 10 years to cure, McCaffrey offers a similar strategy to those of his predecessors.

The ONDCP is an office of the executive branch of the federal government, established to guide and coordinate the efforts of all federal drug control agencies. The annual NDCS evaluates the national drug situation and sets the tone and pace of all national drug control efforts. It functions primarily as a guide for Congress to use in preparing the federal drug control budget. ...

Clinton's strategies dress the wolf in sheep's clothing. In actuality, the NDCS allows the drug war to continue unabated. Though McCaffrey has repeatedly stated that "we cannot arrest our way out of this problem," no part of his strategy would curb the 500,000 annual marijuana arrests in the United States.

Later in the report, domestic marijuana cultivation is discussed. The report claims that "as much as 25 percent of the marijuana consumed in the United States is domestically grown," while acknowledging that such estimates are uncertain because no national cultivation surveys exist. The report implies that all domestically grown marijuana is intended for sale, completely ignoring the fact that many people grow it for their own consumption.

To further analyze domestic marijuana cultivation, the ONDCP will be forming a working group comprised of representatives from federal law enforcement agencies and the departments of defense, interior, and agriculture. It has been predetermined that "[t]he group's mission will be to decrease the availability of domestically produced marijuana through eradication."

If a study group is to be formed, why not include people who don't have a financial stake in eradication efforts? Why not leave open the possibility that an objective study group may discover that domestic cultivation just might be a step in the right direction that the harms associated with marijuana could be *reduced* if adults were allowed to grow their own marijuana?

Interestingly, the 1995 NDCS explained why marijuana use was "considered problematic" -- interference with short-term memory, pulmonary damage, and so on -- but this year's report does not. The only mention of the harmful effects of marijuana is found in the accompanying "Program, Resources, and Evaluation" volume, which states, "Marijuana has not been proven to be a gateway drug; once an individual initiates marijuana use, the individual already has 'stepped through' the gateway." Yet the "gateway" phenomenon was cited as the primary harmful effect in 1995.

In general, the 1995 report briefly mentioned marijuana's specific harms but did not delve into specific marijuana policies, while the 1996 report does the opposite. This year's report periodically lists the societal costs of "drug abuse" -- health-care costs, crime, homicide, and so on -- without exploring how much of this harm is worsened or even directly caused by prohibition. Moreover, it assumes that marijuana shares equal responsibility for most of these problems, though the real culprit is sometimes other illicit drugs like cocaine and heroin -- but most commonly alcohol.

Nowhere does the report discuss the many problems directly caused by the drug war, such as police corruption and widespread civil liberties abuses. Furthermore, the medicinal marijuana issue is conspicuously absent. ...

The 1996 NDCS calls for a record $15.1 billion in federal drug control spending for 1997. This is a 9.3% increase over the estimated 1996 spending of $13.8 billion. Last year's NDCS requested $14.6 billion, but only $13.8 billion was appropriated by Congress. The cuts came primarily from treatment and prevention programs.

The NDCS budget is divided into "supply" and "demand" categories. "Supply reduction" -- which includes all efforts to intercept and eradicate illicit drugs at home and abroad and to arrest and incarcerate users, manufacturers and traffickers -- comprises 67% of the budget. "Demand reduction" -- which includes all treatment, research, and prevention efforts combined -- comprises only 33% of the budget.

For all the talk about a public health approach, ONDCP Director McCaffrey is asking for a higher ratio of supply to demand spending than did his immediate predecessor, Lee Brown. After all, this is an election year.

To order the "National Drug Control Strategy: 1996," and the accompanying "National Drug Control Strategy, 1996: Program, Resources, and Evaluation," call the Drugs and Crime Data Clearinghouse at 800-666-3332.

[End excerpts]

The Carroll O'Connor Story

Dole's Golden Chance to End the Drug War;
His libertarian tobacco philosophy should apply to legalizing narcotics

Finally, a reason to vote for Bob Dole: He will call off the war on drugs. Here at last is a leader with the insight to end a destructive drug policy that has accomplished nothing but the waste of tens of billions of dollars while leaving our nation with the highest percentage of its citizens in jail. Dole will set them free.

How do I know this? Because Dole has said it is up to the individual and not the federal government to decide whether a particular drug is good or bad. Just look at Dole's continued insistence that we don't need additional federal regulation of tobacco, even for teenagers.

First, he argued that the risks to kids from smoking were comparable to drinking milk. Then last week, ABC newsman Peter Jennings confronted Dole with a 1988 internal document in which a Phillip Morris lobbyist called the former Senate majority leader "a valuable friend and a good supporter of tobacco," and Jennings asked Dole if tobacco was addictive. Dole replied: "Some people who've tried it can quit easily, others don't quit. So I guess it's addictive to some and not to others." Exactly the point made by those who want to legalize marijuana, which clearly is less addictive than tobacco. There are more than 60 million Americans who can attest that smoking marijuana did not prove addictive for them, and that includes the current president of the United States. That figure comes from the surveys of the Drug Enforcement Administration and represents the difference between those who have tried marijuana sometime in their lives and those who currently use it.

Legalizing marijuana will allow Dole to declare victory in the drug war, since potheads make up almost 90% of the regular drug-use population.

Some will argue that all illicit drugs are too dangerous to legalize. But as a matter of consistent health policy, if Dole can't justify a war against tobacco, surely he will want to go easy on cocaine, heroin and marijuana, which together claim only one life to every 60 lost to nicotine.

Dole could confront the misplaced emphasis of the drug war because he is not one of those antidrug crusaders who is also a nicotine addict, a prime example being Bill Bennett, who, before he was reincarnated as Mr. Virtue, commanded the drug war in the Bush administration.

As former Wall Street Journal reporter Dan Baum recounts in his new book "Smoke and Mirrors, the War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure," nicotine addicts are hardly in a position to make the case against illicit drugs: "The year chain-smoking Bennett became drug czar, tobacco killed some 395,000 Americans--more than died in both world wars. Alcohol directly killed 23,000 and another 24,400 on the highways. . . . Cocaine, on the other hand, killed 3,618 that year, heroin . . . 2,743. . . . And no death from marijuana has ever been recorded."

Perhaps Dole will see through Bennett's rationale that drugs are different because drug addicts commit crimes. If cigarettes were banned and cost a fortune, you can be certain nicotine addicts would commit crimes to pay for their fix, just as alcoholics did during Prohibition. Even with alcohol being legal, it is far more closely associated with the commission of crime than are drugs. Baum points out that alcohol is used by more than half of those who commit murder, while drugs alone accounted for less than 6% of that crime.

Baum's is a provocative, well-documented book that Dole will want to incorporate in his campaign speeches. He wouldn't want to miss this chance to introduce facts to the drug debate.

It won't come from Clinton, who is so chicken on the drug issue as to be terminally opportunistic. Remember Clinton's desertion of his surgeon general, Joycelyn Elders, for daring to suggest that "we need to do some studies" on the ramifications of legalization? Only last week, he said he wants to give $1,500 a year to college students as long as they maintain a B average and pass a drug test. What if the kid pulls straight A's and fails a urine test? Do you yank his money, turn him in or congratulate him?

This is Dole's opportunity to reach out to younger voters. End the war on the young, which is what the drug war has become, and treat all substance abuse the same, as a medical problem. Those who are addicted need help. Those who aren't, don't. Isn't that the point Dole's been trying to make about tobacco? Dole will want to be consistent on this if for no other reason than to prove that he was not swayed in his judgment on the benign effects of nicotine by the $477,000 he has received from the tobacco lobby that has long considered him such a "valuable friend."

'US Funds Drug Treatment Experiment'

By Josh Greenberg, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON - Grant: Clinton administration provides $1 million to see if mandatory therapy after arrests curbs abuse. Some critics say effort is doomed

The Clinton administration Wednesday awarded the University of Alabama a $1-million grant for a novel experiment in which every person arrested in Birmingham will be tested for illicit drug use. Those who test positive will be required to attend treatment programs.

Jeremy Travis, director of the National Institute of Justice, which will administer the grant, called the Birmingham program a "quantum leap" in national drug policy.

The grant reflects the administration's emphasis on drug treatment over interdiction, and it is sure to fuel debate over whether drug treatment is effective for those who do not enter into it voluntarily.

"It's not just volunteers [in the Birmingham program]. It's not just nonviolent offenders. It isn't just prior to a court appearance and a conviction," said Barry R. McCaffrey, director of the president's Office of National Drug Control Policy. "Every offender that comes in gets tested and, if he's positive, he's in the program. . . . It's not a maybe. He will receive treatment."

Portland NORML notes: "Quantum leap" is right. Extended to the rest of the United States, such a new "welfare" program would cover at least 12 million recipients, and bankrupt the war on drugs in short order. Probably the $1 million seed money will be spent in administrative costs before the first urine ever hits glass, leaving Birmingham on the hook for many millions more in operating costs down the road. Of course, the vast majority of pot smokers and other illegal-drug consumers are never arrested for anything, so the experiment is based on a false assumption anyway.

'In This Drug War, The Bad Guys Won'

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