-------------------------------------------------------------------
Peasant Coca Growers Suspicious Of Bogota's 'Marshall Plan'
('The New York Times' Explains Why Colombia's Coca Cultivators
See American-Inspired Talk About 'Crop Substitution' As A Joke)
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1998 07:04:04 -0700
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: Columbia: Peasant Coca Growers Suspicious of Bogota's
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Peter Webster
Source: New York Times (NY)
Contact: letters@nytimes.com
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Pubdate: 21 August 1998
Author: Diana Jean Schemo, NYTimes Service
PEASANT COCA GROWERS SUSPICIOUS OF BOGOTA'S 'MARSHALL PLAN'
SAN JOSE DEL GUAVIARE, Columbia---The optimism of a fresh start. The sweet
talk of reconciliation. The promise of a respectable way to make a living
instead of growing coca. Dagoberto P. has heard it all before. And this
year, he is not buying.
Dagoberto, who owns 40 hectares (100 acres) planted with coca, remembers
"crop substitution " proposals that went by the names of "alternative
development" and "crop substitution." They never materialized. And now the
new president of Colombia, Andres Pastrana, is calling for a "Marshall
Plan" to bring the coca-growing hinterlands of Colombia into the present.
"It wasn't crop substitution at all," Dagoberto recalled of an earlier
administration's pledge. "It was forced fumigation."
There is still no highway from here to Bogota, a 440-kilometer (275-mile)
journey that takes a truck eight days, so vegetables are rotten by the time
they reach market.
Mr. Pastrana's modernization plan is part of an ambitious array of ideas he
has formulated to curtail drug trafficking and reclaim a nation reeling
from decades of war.
With government coffers empty, the new administration would like to raise
money by selling a new kind of bond. The money would bring electricity,
water, roads and technical expertise to forgotten rural areas where poverty
and government indifference have allowed coca-growing and rebel movements
to thrive.
Here in the coca-growing heartland, where the U.S.-backed war on drugs is
fought with herbicides and helicopter gunships, coca growers remain
skeptical. Any plan's first obstacle might well lie with the growers
themselves, embittered by years of fumigation and confrontation with
government authorities.
"In one way or another, they've been saying that for years, and we've been
asking for it," said Antonio R., another coca grower and father of five.
"But all we've ever had are expectations." Like other growers interviewed,
he asked that his full name not be published out of fear for his safety.
The Pastrana administration is asking for international help, and U.S.
administration officials appear willing to listen. Peter Romero, acting
assistant secretary of state for interAmerican affairs, said Washington had
"several hundred million dollars on the table for Colombia," some of which
could be available for alternative development.
"What Colombia has to do is put together a strategy," Mr. Romero said on a
recent visit here. "We're just waiting to see that strategy, to evaluate it."
Mr. Pastrana has also made a priority of negotiating with rebels who
protect coca growers. He acceded to their demands that government security
forces temporarily withdraw from five municipalities in an area twice the
size of El Salvador as a condition for beginning peace talks by early
November. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia is believed to number
15,000 combatants. Ten times as many quiet supporters provide logistic help.
The president vows that he will personally lead the talks with the insurgents.
The rebels are suggesting they would be willing to abandon their drug
revenues, which some analysts estimate at $100 million a year, as part of a
peace agreement that would provide other ways for coca-growing peasants to
make a livmg.
U.S. officials are skeptical about whether the rebels will actually give up
the coca revenues.
"There'd have to be some powerful reward and punishment algorithm to make
that happen," General Barry McCaffrey, the White House anti-drug chief,
said just before Mr. Pastrana's inauguration.
But Mr. Pastrana, who eluded his security guards to meet secretly with the
guerrillas' top commander last month, seems willing to take the rebels at
their word.
The potentially fatal stumbling block lies in the price for signing a peace
accord and pledging to control the drug trade. This would be a demand by
the rebels for local autonomy and control over the government budget in
their regions.
Although U.S. officials publicly contend they are interested in Colombia's
civil conflict solely because of the drug trade, privately they admit they
are also concerned about the conflict spilling over Colombia's borders and
causing regional instability. Officials in Bogota and Washington also balk
at the notion of funding a rebel state within Colombia.
"In the past, there hasn't been sincerity on the part of either side," said
Alejandro Ovalles, a restaurant owner who runs a local business association.
"War is a business in any part of the world," he said. "There's lots of
mistrust on all sides."
Nevertheless people here say that the insurgents are the only actors with
the necessary presence, muscle and local respect to put a rapid end to coca
growing. They say that at one time the rebels banned commercial fishing at
a local river that was being rapidly depleted, and fishermen obeyed.
Another time, the insurgents forbade coca growers to cut down trees in a
part of the rain forest, and again nobody dared to defy them.
"It's about educating people," the local Roman Catholic parish priest, the
Reverend Jorge Vargas, said. "But it's based in fear."
Though their lives are intimately affected by U.S. policies, the growers
complained of feeling invisible to decisionmakers in Washington.
When General McCaffrey visited the antinarcotics base here recently, they
said, the town became "militarized" and people stayed shut in their homes.
"We're not the kind of people you like to deal with, but we're human
beings," Antonio said.
And though Washington this year doubled the pace of chemical fumigation to
kill coca crops, the governor of Guaviare, Hernando Gonzalez Villamizar,
does not expect results.
"After seven years of fumigating, there's more coca than ever," he said.
Growers say they would be eager to give up coca growing if they could earn
a livelihood elsewhere.
Since many of them started growing and processing coca 1 S years ago, the
cost of processing coca has soared, while the prices paid for cocaine have
stayed the same.
It takes 220 liters (55 gallons) of gasoline to process 1 kilogram (2.2
pounds) of cocaine, which Dagoberto said earns a grower $1,000.
Upon hearing that a gram of cocaine sells for $100 by the time it reaches
New York, he looked at the flocr and shook his head.
The state secretary of culture, Pedro Arenas, said that the rain forest
could not sustain the estimated 20,000 growers living in it.
The growers, many of whom came here to escape violence and hopelessness in
other parts of Colombia, should be sent back home and given land, he said.
"The Marshall Plan here would be called agrarian reform," Mr. Arenas said.
The jungle is scarred, burned and polluted with the astonishing quantities
of gasoline and other materials involved in the 240,000 kilograms of coca
paste produced in Guaviare each year.
"The white man," Dagoberto said, "doesn't know how to live in the jungle."
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The Week Online With DRCNet, Issue Number 55 (The Drug Reform Coordination
Network's Original News Summary)
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1998 13:11:40 -0400
To: drc-natl@drcnet.org
From: DRCNet (drcnet@drcnet.org)
Subject: The Week Online with DRCNet, Issue No. 55
Sender: owner-drc-natl@drcnet.org
THE WEEK ONLINE WITH DRCNet, ISSUE No. 55 -- AUGUST 21, 1998
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Prison, Probation and Parole Populations Growing Rapidly
http://www.drcnet.org/wol/055.html#prison
2. American Psychological Association Calls for Repeal of
Mandatory Minimums
http://www.drcnet.org/wol/055.html#apa
3. Conference: Beyond the Prison Industrial Complex,
Berkeley, CA, 9/25 - 9/27
http://www.drcnet.org/wol/055.html#resistance
4. Giuliani Carries out Methadone Threat
http://www.drcnet.org/wol/055.html#giuliani2
5. Methadone Conferences Coming Up -- In New York!
http://www.drcnet.org/wol/055.html#methconf
6. REPORT: Marijuana Prohibition Has Not Curtailed
Marijuana Use by Adolescents
http://www.drcnet.org/wol/055.html#report
7. West Australia Decriminalizes Marijuana On "Trial" Basis
http://www.drcnet.org/wol/055.html#ausdecrim
8. Peter McWilliams Released on Bond
http://www.drcnet.org/wol/055.html#bond
9. War on Drugs Blamed for Lapse in Ethical Standards of
Federal Prosecutors
http://www.drcnet.org/wol/055.html#standards
10. Driving While Black: Legislative Alert from the
American Civil Liberties Union
http://www.drcnet.org/wol/055.html#dwb
11. Editorial: One in Thirty-Five
http://www.drcnet.org/wol/055.html#editorial
***
1. Prison, Probation and Parole Populations Growing Rapidly
- Kris Lotlikar and David Borden
Recent reports from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics
reveal that the numbers of Americans in prison, as well as
those on probation or parole, have continued to grow rapidly
throughout the 1990's. "Prisoners in 1997," released on
August 2 (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/p97.htm on
the web), found that 61,186 men and women had been added to
the prison population during that year, bring the total to
1,244,554 state and federal inmates -- plus 567,079 men and
women held in local jails, either awaiting trial or serving
sentences of one year or less, bringing the total of
incarcerated adults in the United States to 1.7 million.
Throughout the 1990's, the number of incarcerates in US
prisons has been grown at a rate of roughly 64,000 inmates a
year -- more than the number of Americans who perished in
the Vietnam War.
An analysis by the Sentencing Project, a Washington, DC
think tank, found that two million people will be behind
bars in this country by the year 2000, if current trends
continue. (The Project's analysis is posted on their web
site at http://www.sentencingproject.org, News section.)
Compounding the prison population are the 3.9 million
Americans on probation or parole in the United States. At
the end of 1997, one out of every 35 adults in the United
States was either in prison, jail, or on probation or
parole, according to a BJS report released August 16,
"Nation's Probation and Parole Population Reached New High
Last Year," http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/press/papp97.pr
on the web.
Since the massive growth of the prison industry began to
take place in the 1980's, continuing this decade, the United
States has led the world in the percentage of its population
that it incarcerates, trading off for first place with
Russia. The question arises, why in the land of the free,
has the prison population risen to such a shocking level,
during such a short period of time?
One of the main factors, according to the Sentencing
Project, is mandatory minimum sentencing. "Mandatory
minimum sentencing policies that now exist in every state
have been used disproportionately for drug offenders", the
above-mentioned report states.
Julie Stewart, president of Families Against Mandatory
Minimums (FAMM), explains that mandatory minimum penalties,
along with so-called "truth in sentencing" laws, have
directly led to the rapid growth of U.S prison populations.
Truth in sentencing, under which defendants must serve
typically 85% of their sentences, has been driven by a 1994
financial incentive passed by congress for states which pass
such laws. "We are filling our prisons up and not letting
the prisoners out and it has shown no impact on crime",
Stewart told The Week Online. "Mandatory Minimums have
sparked this prison growth. It is an indictment of the
American judicial system."
(It is important to note that the sentencing schemes in
place prior to the truth in sentencing laws, were enacted as
part of a system that included probation and parole, through
which it was assumed that many if not most inmates would be
released early -- e.g., 20 years wasn't intended to be 20
years, except for those deemed to be truly incorrigible. By
enacting truth in sentencing laws, without modifying the
corresponding sentencing laws that they affect, Congress and
state legislatures have dramatically increased sentence
lengths based on a soundbite as opposed to a thoughtful
analysis. This is nothing new -- the 1986 mandatory minimum
laws, for example, were passed by Congress without so much
as a hearing.)
"Prisoners in 1997" reports that 25% of the growth of the
prison population since 1990 is accounted for by drug
offenders. But this figure may understate the magnitude of
the impact that the war on drugs has had on the prison
system. Marc Mauer, assistant director of The Sentencing
Project, explained to the Week Online: "It's true that the
proportion drug offenders comprise of new incarcerations has
leveled off during the 1990's. But that doesn't negate the
enormous climb in the number of drug offenders incarcerated
during the 1980's, many of whom are still in prison, serving
mandatory minimum sentences. In 1980, drug offenders
comprised a mere 6% of the incarcerated population.
Furthermore, the fact that violent offenders are being
incarcerated at greater rates than previously, doesn't
negate the fact that the number of drug offenders in prison
is growing rapidly in and of itself, and that many of
offenders are not true threats to society, and could be
dealt with in other ways."
For further information, visit the web sites of The
Sentencing Project, http://www.sentencingproject.org, and
Families Against Mandatory Minimums, http://www.famm.org.
***
2. American Psychological Association Calls for Repeal of
Mandatory Minimums
A resolution calling for the phasing out of mandatory
minimum sentencing laws on the federal and state level was
passed by the American Psychological Association at a
Council of Representatives Meeting of its 50 divisions, in
San Francisco on August 16. The APA is the world's largest
association of psychologists, with a membership exceeding
155,000. The resolution was sponsored by Div. 32,
Humanistic Psychology, and co-sponsored by Div. 50,
Addictions, Div. 27, Community Research & Action, Div. 36,
Psychology of Religion, and Div. 28, Psychopharmacology and
Substance Abuse. APA is online at http://www.apa.org.
***
3. Conference: Beyond the Prison Industrial Complex,
Berkeley, CA, 9/25 - 9/27
Critical Resistance: Beyond the Prison Industrial Complex,
a National Conference and Strategy Session. September 25 -
27, 1998, University of California, Berkeley. Building a
campaign to resist the expansion of the punishment industry.
For further information, contact: Critical Resistance, P.O.
Box 339, Berkeley, CA 94701, phone: (510) 643-2094, fax:
(510) 845-8816, mailto:critresist@aol.com,
http://www.igc.org/prisons/critical/ on the web. DRCNet is
attending, and we recommend this free conference to those of
you who reside in the Bay Area or can get there.
***
4. Giuliani Carries out Methadone Threat
Citing the "moral superiority" of abstinence over reliance
on methadone, New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani announced
this week that the 2,000 patients who are currently enrolled
in city-funded methadone programs will have 90 days to wean
themselves from the medication after which it will no longer
be offered. Numerous drug treatment experts, including some
providers of methadone-to-abstinence programs, have
criticized the mayor's action, as flying in the face of
years of research showing that methadone is by far the most
effective path to a stable and productive life for the vast
majority of recovering addicts. Studies show that only a
small percentage of opiate addicts can successfully become
abstinent, while the majority will return to the street in
search of relief from their withdrawal in the form of black
market methadone or, more likely, heroin.
Ty Trippet, spokesman for The Lindesmith Center, a New York-
based drug policy think tank, told The Week Online, "The
shortsightedness of this decision is astounding. With
virtually every credible medical professional in the world
in support of greater access to methadone, Mayor Giuliani
has taken it upon himself to play doctor, or, more
disturbingly, to play god. Methadone is the single most
effective tool at our disposal to stabilize the lives of the
addicted. History shows that almost 90% of those who are
forced off of methadone will relapse into heroin use. It is
difficult to see the logic here."
Keith Cylar, Co-executive director of Housing Works, a full-
service harm reduction agency serving formerly homeless
people with AIDS told The Week Online, "This is simply
outrageous. Giuliani is sentencing these people to yet
another plunge back into heroin addiction. The majority of
them will wind up with a needle in their arm. Many of them
will wind up in jail, whereas with methadone, they could be
gainfully employed and rebuilding their lives." Cylar
continued, "the devious part of this, of course, boils down
to money. New York City pays twenty-five cents on every
federal dollar they receive for Medicaid. By pushing 2,000
people off of methadone, you are guaranteeing that their
lives will revert to chaos. Couple that with the fact that
public assistance in New York is very high-threshhold. In
other words, they make you jump through numerous hoops in
order to keep your status. Methadone clinics, for a lot of
these people, become case-management centers, helping
clients to do what they need to do to keep their Medicaid
cards valid. By disordering their lives in this manner,
Giuliani has found a back door to push these people off of
the public rolls, both in terms of Medicaid, and the city's
contribution to that, and for local assistance. These
people, back on the street, will no longer exist in that
system. There are legitimate ways to help people off of
public assistance. But cutting them off at the knees and
making it impossible for them to function at a high enough
level to claim their benefits is pure evil."
E-MAIL THE MAYOR! Don't be rude, but do let Giuliani know
that you've read the evidence on the Internet and that he is
clearly misinformed on the issue. Send e-mail to
giuliani@www.ci.nyc.ny.us, or click on
mailto:giuliani@www.ci.nyc.ny.us if your e-mail reader
recognizes URLs. Or, call the Mayor at (212) 788-9600 or
write to: Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, City Hall, New York,
NY 10007. As always, send us copies of your letters, or a
note letting us know what actions you've taken, to alert-
feedback@drcnet.org (mailto:alert-feedback@drcnet.org).
(A few weeks ago, during the midst of our technical
troubles, when many of you didn't receive The Week Online,
we published an interview with Dr. Robert Newman, one of the
world's leading authorities on methadone maintenance,
commenting on the Mayor's threat and what Dr. Newman views
as the self-inflicted wounds of the methadone establishment.
Check out this fascinating discussion on our web site at
http://www.drcnet.org/wol/051.html#newman. You can also
read our news coverage from that issue at
http://www.drcnet.org/wol/051.html#giuliani. For further
information on methadone maintenance, we recommend the
National Alliance of Methadone Advocates (NAMA), at
http://www.methadone.org, and The Lindesmith Center's
methadone focal point, online at
http://www.lindesmith.org/library/focal3.html.)
***
5. Methadone Conferences Coming Up -- In New York!
The First Methadone Advocacy Conference, Saturday, 9/26,
9:30am - 5:00pm, Roosevelt Hospital Auditorium, 1000 Tenth
Avenue, New York City.
"The voice of the methadone patient has been excluded from
methadone treatment for too long. This conference will
discuss the empowering of methadone patients, stigma and
important issues that impact the lives of methadone patients
such as physician prescribing."
This is a Methadone Patient Organized Conference for
Methadone Patients. To register, send NAMA a coupon with
your name, address, and phone number, with 1) a check or
money or order for $25.00; or 2) a photocopy of your patient
ID card and a donation of whatever you can afford. Mail it
to: NAMA, 435 Second Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
American Methadone Treatment Association Conference 1998,
9/26-29, Marriott Marquis, New York City, registration $360.
For more information and to register visit
http://www.assnmethworks.org.
***
6. REPORT: Marijuana Prohibition Has Not Curtailed Marijuana
Use by Adolescents
The Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) has released a report
examining the government's data and concluding that criminal
penalties have had no net effect on adolescent marijuana
usage rates.
Key findings of the report are that:
* "Annual surveys since 1975 have consistently found that
about 85% of the nation's high school seniors consider
marijuana easy to obtain. Fluctuations in the severity of
penalties and the number of arrests during this time period
have had no effect on availability."
* "The removal of criminal penalties for marijuana
possession in several states 'has had virtually no effect
either on the marijuana use or on related attitudes' among
young people, according to government-funded researchers."
The MPP report, which can be read online at
http://www.mpp.org/adolescents.html (news release at
http://www.mpp.org/nr082198.html), is full of useful and
revealing graphs, including comparisons of marijuana use
rates in the U.S. vs. the Netherlands and in Australian
provinces that have decriminalized marijuana vs. provinces
that haven't; the increase in youth marijuana use since
before marijuana prohibition was enacted (negligible) to the
present time (more than half of all youth); availability of
marijuana to young people, by year and compared with the
availability of alcohol; relationship of penalty increases
to use; federal budget figures.
Taken as a whole, the sheer totality of the failure of the
government's vast effort to end marijuana use by force is
astounding. For further information, visit the MPP's web
site at http://www.mpp.org, e-mail mpp@mpp.org, or call
(202) 462-5747.
***
7. West Australia Decriminalizes Marijuana On "Trial" Basis
(reprinted from the NORML Weekly News, http://www.norml.org)
August 20, 1998, West Australia, Australia: Government
officials announced last week that first time marijuana
users will no longer face criminal charges for possessing
less than 50 grams of the drug. West Australia is the fifth
state to enact marijuana decriminalization in recent years.
Police Commissioner Bob Falconer said that the new policy
will take effect October 1 on a trial basis in the
Mirrabooka and Bunbury police districts. If the trial
proves successful, leaders will extend the measure
statewide.
"Western Australia's experimental marijuana policy is
similar to the laws of ten U.S. states where marijuana users
face a civil 'violation' rather than criminal penalties for
possessing small amounts of the drug," NORML Executive
Director R. Keith Stroup, Esq. said. "It is encouraging to
see other regions around the globe adopt these reforms. It
is our hope that West Australian political leaders will
adopt this policy statewide and not just in select regions."
Under the new system, individuals will receive a warning for
possessing marijuana as long as they attend a lecture on the
potential misuse of the drug. "It's not synonymous with
being tough on drugs to crunch people for small quantities
of cannabis when it's essentially about an education issue,"
Falconer said. He and other law enforcement officials
lobbied the government for the policy change, arguing that
valuable police and judicial resources were being wasted
prosecuting marijuana smokers.
Other Australian states to recently adopt a marijuana
"caution" system are the Australian Capitol Territory (ACT),
the Northern Territory, South Australia, and Victoria. This
spring, the Drug and Alcohol Council of South Australia
concluded a two year national study finding that the
decriminalization of marijuana does not lead to increased
use.
For more information, please contact Paul Armentano of
NORML, (202) 483-5500.
***
8. Peter McWilliams Released on Bond
Best selling author and medical marijuana activist Peter
McWilliams, held for over a month on a nine-count federal
indictment will finally be released from custody tonight
(8/19) after posting a quarter of a million dollar bond.
McWilliam's attorneys and supporters had argued that the
bond was excessive, and McWilliams himself had previously
offered to turn in his passport to insure that he would
indeed appear for his court date, but these efforts were
unsuccessful in getting the bond reduced.
During his incarceration, McWilliams was forced to file an
appeal to the court in hopes of ordering his jailers to
provide him with his complex regimen of AIDS medication,
which he takes six times daily.
The charges against McWilliams stem from his involvement
with Todd McCormick, another medical marijuana user and
activist, to whom McWilliams had advanced money to write a
book on the medical uses of cannabis. McCormick was
arrested last year when police found over 4,000 plants in
his rented home. McCormick, already free on bond on state
charges, is now also under federal indictment for the same
offense.
"Peter McWilliams is a threat to no one," McCormick told The
Week Online. "His incarceration, and the deleterious impact
that it has had on his health, is exactly what California
voters wanted to avoid when they passed Proposition 215.
Peter is an outspoken advocate, and therefore an inviting
target. But he is also a man who suffers from both cancer
and AIDS. What kind of a government locks up its sick and
dying people over something like this? He's not accused of
diverting medical marijuana to the street. He's never hurt
a soul. The mistreatment of Peter McWilliams by the justice
system is the real crime here."
McWilliams distributed the following note to his supporters
on the Internet, late last night:
Hello.
I am out,
I am home.
I am okay.
I am going to bed.
Take good care,
Enjoy,
Peter McWilliams
Visit http://www.marijuanamagazine.com and
http://www.marijuananews.com for ongoing coverage of the
McWilliams case.
***
9. War on Drugs Blamed for Lapse in Ethical Standards of
Federal Prosecutors
(Reprinted from the Drug Policy Foundation's monthly Network
news. Subscribe online at http://www.dpf.org.)
Federal prosecutors will have to follow the same ethical
standards and rules that govern other attorneys in the state
in which they are practicing if new legislation gets signed
into law. The provision, the "Citizens Protection Act of
1998" (Title VIII), was authored by Reps. Joseph McDade (R-
PA) and John P. Murtha (D-PA), and passed by the House on
August 6 as part of the Justice Department appropriations
bill (H.R. 4276).
Until 1994, federal prosecutors were governed by state
ethics rules, but in that year the Justice Department issued
a regulation that exempted federal prosecutors from certain
provisions of the rules. At this time, according to the
American Bar Association, state disciplinary authorities are
prevented from taking action against a federal prosecutor
for violating a state ethics rule until the Attorney General
finds a prosecutor guilty of a willful violation.
In addition to requiring federal prosecutors to be subject
to state ethics rules, the McDade/Murtha bill establishes
punishable conduct for Justice Department employees,
penalties for violations, and a "Misconduct Review Board" to
investigate alleged prosecutorial misconduct. Such
misconduct includes, among others: seeking the indictment of
a person in the absence of probable cause; intentionally
misleading the court as to the guilt of a person; knowingly
misstating evidence; and offering sexual activities to a
government witness.
On August 6, the Washington Times published an op-ed
("Reclaiming Justice," p. A19) by syndicated columnist Paul
Craig Roberts praising the McDade/Murtha legislation.
Notedly, Roberts blamed the war on drugs for an increase in
unethical behavior among federal prosecutors. He wrote, "A
former U.S. Attorney confessed to me that the Justice
Department lost its prosecutorial integrity when the
conservatives' war on drugs resulted in an increase in the
number of assistant U.S. attorneys from 1,200 to more than
7,000 almost overnight. Swamped by new infusions, the old
guard was unable to moderate the career ambitions of the
newcomers by inculcating the respect for truth that
restrains prosecutorial power."
***
10. Driving While Black: Legislative Alert from the
American Civil Liberties Union
(The alert is reprinted from the ACLU's cyber network.
Though it doesn't specifically bring up the drug issue, the
"Driving While Black" problem is driven in substantial part
by the police mandate to find illegal drugs, that are
naturally hidden from view and can only be found through
intrusive searches. Feeding into this is the mistaken
belief that African Americans use or traffic in drugs at
higher rates than other Americans. You can subscribe to the
ACLU's alert list through their web site at
http://www.aclu.org.)
Among far too many measures aimed at curtailing civil
liberties that await consideration when the Senate returns
to Washington at the end of the month is HR 118, a positive
first step toward eliminating traffic stops based only on
the race and ethnicity of the driver.
Scores of African-American males - including prominent
athletes, Members of Congress, actors and business leaders -
have experienced the humiliation of being stopped on the
nation's roads for no other reason than the alleged traffic
offense derisively referred to as "Driving While Black."
Yet no agency has ever attempted to document how widespread
the problem is, even though 1995 Maryland survey found that
73 percent of the cars stopped and searched were driven by
African-Americans, although they make up only 14 percent of
the people driving along the interstate.
The "Traffic Stops Statistics Act of 1997" (HR 118),
sponsored by Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), would encourage
police departments to keep detailed records of traffic
stops, including the race and ethnicity of the person
stopped. The Justice Department would be charged with
collecting the data and making a determination on the scope
of this problem nationwide.
While the House passed HR 118 last March, the Senate has yet
to take action on the bill. Urge your Senators to encourage
passage of this important legislation by sending a FREE FAX
from the ACLU website at:
http://www.aclu.org/action/drivingblack.html
(As always, please remember to let DRCNet know about what
actions you've taken in response to our bulletins. Please
send copies of your letters, or just a note letting us know
what actions you've taken, to alert-feedback@drcnet.org.
(If your e-mail reader recognized URLs, just click on
mailto:alert-feedback@drcnet.org.)
***
11. Editorial: One in Thirty-Five
A report released this week by XXXXX shows that one out of
every thirty-five American adults is either in prison or
jail, on probation or parole. After three decades of lock-
em-up drug policy, of street sweeps and the chipping away of
constitutional protections, of hard time for marijuana users
and jail rather than treatment for the addicted, we have
arrived at the point where fully one in thirty-five of us is
under the "supervision" of the criminal justice system. At
what point, exactly, does a society qualify as a police
state?
In 1972, there were approximately 200,000 incarcerates in
the U.S. Today that number is fast approaching 2 million.
And the prison boom continues. Has any of this made drugs
less available to our kids? Has it forced up the price of
cocaine? Driven down the purity of the heroin that is sold
on our streets? No. In fact, by any of these indicators
drugs are far more available today than they have ever been.
In fact, we can't even keep them away from the people whom
we've locked up, as drugs run rampant throughout our
prisons.
One in 35. And that doesn't even tell the whole story. If
that number were further broken down, we'd find that the
proportion of American males under supervision is more than
one in twenty, of African American men, more than one in
nine, and of young African American men, more than one in
three. And apparently, our esteemed leaders are not done
yet.
During the 1996 Presidential campaign, Republican nominee
Bob Dole took President Clinton to task for being "soft on
drugs." No matter that no president had ever spent so much
on enforcement, no matter that arrest rates were already at
their highest levels in history, no matter that prisons were
being built around the country at an astounding rate: "If
you elect Bob Dole, we'll have a real drug war in America."
Today, Dole's successors in the Republican leadership have
done him proud. They have a plan to "win" the drug war in
four years. They want to make it impossible for anyone with
a drug conviction, no matter how trivial, to receive
financial aid for college. They want to institute the death
penalty for increasing numbers of drug crimes, and they want
to imprison as many people, doctors and patients included,
as humanly possible in an effort to prove, once and for all,
that we can, in fact, arrest and terrorize our way out of
our drug problem. Oh, and the Democrats? Their platform
differs only in the details.
When is it enough? How many people do we have to imprison
to "win" the drug war? One in twenty-five Americans? One
in twenty? One in ten? In cities such as Washington, DC,
fully half of all young African American men are "in the
system." But Washington is not "drug free". Nowhere near.
Will two out of three do it? Three out of four? All of
them?
Is there no other way for an ostensibly free society to deal
with the issues surrounding substance use and abuse? Is it,
as our leaders would have us believe, the responsible thing
to do: criminalizing personal choice and addiction, creating
black markets which are not only criminal in their own right
but which also drive up rates of property crime in service
to artificially inflated prices, teaching our children that
the way to a safer society is to continue to raise the
number of people in cages? Have we, as a society, decided
that gulags are preferable to the vagaries and pitfalls of
liberty?
Today, in America, the land of the free, one in every
thirty-five adults is either in prison or jail, on probation
or parole. Our leaders scoff at the efforts of other
nations to find non-punitive ways to deal with their drug
problems, calling them "irresponsible" and "disastrous."
But what is the adjective to describe our own transformation
into a nation of jailers? Would the great leaders of our
past, Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Frederick Douglas,
John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, believe that mass
incarceration was the appropriate response to our current
problems? To any problem of which they could conceive?
Would the leaders of today have the courage, the gall to
look any one of those great men in the eye and explain to
him why this is the course we have chosen for America? One
in thirty-five... and rising. Now tell us, mighty drug
warriors, where do we go from here?
Adam J. Smith
Associate Director
***
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[End]
to the 1998 Daily News index for August 20-26