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Police Officer Held In Fatal DUI Collision (The Seattle Times
says the name of the cop in Bellevue, Washington, was withheld
pending the filing of charges. He was arrested on suspicion
of vehicular homicide after his car crossed the median and collided
with an oncoming vehicle at 3:15 a.m. New Year's Day. At midnight,
tough new state laws went into effect that lowered the legal
blood-alcohol limit to 0.08 percent and increased penalties
for drunken drivers.)
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 1999 19:10:01 -0800
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: US WA: Police Officer Held In Fatal DUI Collision
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Jim Galasyn
Pubdate: 2 Jan 1999
Source: Seattle Times (WA)
Contact: opinion@seatimes.com
Website: http://www.seattletimes.com/
Copyright: 1999 The Seattle Times Company
Author: Jack Broom and Florangela Davila, Diedtra Henderson also
contributed to this report.
POLICE OFFICER HELD IN FATAL DUI COLLISION
Two off-duty law-enforcement officers were involved in one of the
first deadly crashes of the year involving drunken driving just three
hours after stricter DUI laws went into effect.
A 29-year-old Bellevue police officer was arrested on suspicion of
vehicular homicide after his car cross the median and collided with an
oncoming sport-utility vehicle on Coal Creek Parkway Southeast in
Bellevue at 3:15 a.m. New Year's Day.
Killed at the scene was Brian H. Grooms, 26, of Columbus, Ohio, a
passenger in the back seat of the sedan driven by the officer.
Sitting in the front passenger seat of the sedan was Jeremy Reid, a
26-year-old off-duty state trooper from Federal Way.
Reid suffered head and chest injuries and was listed in serious
condition last night in the intensive-care unit at Harborview Medical
Center.
The accident occurred on the one night of the year when the
law-enforcement community is particularly vigilant about cracking down
on drunken drivers. The stroke of midnight also triggered tough new
laws that lowered the legal blood-alcohol limit to 0.08 percent and
increased penalties for violators.
Bellevue police spokesman Mike Johnson said it's discouraging that a
police officer would be suspected of driving drunk because police
agencies are campaigning for a new awareness of DUI laws and penalties.
"It certainly won't make us look very good," Johnson said. "However,
this officer was off duty. . . . He makes his own decisions and in
this case it seems pretty obvious he didn't make good decisions."
Bellevue police said initial tests showed that both drivers in the
collision had illegally high levels of alcohol in their blood.
Johnson did not specify the Bellevue officer's alcohol level except to
say, "He had been drinking . . . preliminary indications are he was
over the legal limit."
The police officer, whose name was withheld by investigators pending
the filing of charges, was in satisfactory condition yesterday at
Harborview Medical Center with injuries to his chest and heart.
He has been placed under arrest on suspicion of vehicular homicide and
could face charges early next week, according to a statement from the
Bellevue Police Department. He has been a Bellevue police officer
since March 1996.
The second driver, a Bellevue man, 45, also was arrested on suspicion
of drunken driving. He was released but may be charged pending further
investigation, police said.
Grooms, the man who was killed, was on vacation visiting a childhood
friend from Ohio, said Samuel Grooms, his cousin. He grew up in
Washington Court House, Ohio, a farming town about 40 miles southwest
of Columbus.
Grooms, known as "Red" because of his red hair, was engaged to be
married.
Reid is originally from the Columbus, Ohio, area and had served some
time in the Army, said State Patrol spokesman Capt. Eric Robertson. He
had moved to Washington state for the trooper job that he has held for
2 1/2 years. He is assigned to the Tacoma office, where he patrols
Interstate 5.
At Harborview, state troopers, Robertson and Assistant Chief Robert
Leichner arrived to show their support for Reid.
At a news conference last night, Robertson said he did not know if all
three men knew each other, or what they had been doing before the accident.
He declined to comment on the irony of having off-duty law-enforcement
officers involved in a major drunken-driving accident on New Year's
Day.
"Our No. 1 concern right now is Jeremy's well-being," he
said.
The Bellevue Police Department is the lead investigative agency, but
the State Patrol is also participating. Robertson expressed confidence
that Bellevue police could objectively investigate an accident
involving one of its employees.
Witnesses told police that the Dodge Stratus driven by the Bellevue
officer was traveling south at a high speed on the four-lane road and
spun out of control, crossing into oncoming traffic, where it collided
with a Ford Expedition.
Evidence at the scene, including skid marks and the position of
wreckage, corroborates that account, said Johnson, the police spokesman.
The driver of the Expedition was not injured, but his 53-year-old wife
was reported in stable condition last night at Overlake Hospital with
leg and neck injuries.
A back-seat passenger, a 78-year-old man from Newport, Pend Oreille
County, was not injured, police said.
Law-enforcement and government officials statewide had just kicked off
an anti-drunken-driving campaign to coincide with the start of new
laws that lower the legal blood-alcohol limit to 0.08 percent and
increase penalties for violators.
The Bellevue officer will remain in custody at least until he is
released from Harborview, police said. In addition to the possibility
of felony charges, the officer has been suspended with pay pending "an
administrative review that's done to determine the future status of
his employment," Johnson said.
In a prepared statement, the department expressed its condolences: "We
deeply regret this incident and the involvement of one of our officers
who is suspected of driving his vehicle while under the influence of
alcohol which has resulted in the loss of life. We are committed to
conducting this investigation in a fair and impartial manner to ensure
that all parties are treated consistently with the ethical standards
of this department."
John Moffat, director of the Washington Traffic Safety Commission,
which is coordinating the statewide anti-DUI campaign, stopped by the
accident scene, about a half-mile from his home.
"Its very sad to see this thing with anybody . . . and very, very sad
that a police officer is involved," said Moffat, who was a Seattle
police officer for 25 years.
"What it gets down to is that everybody thinks the drunk driver is
somebody else," Moffat said. "The challenge is to get people to
recognize that this is something that can happen to you."
As a 29-year-old male, the police officer in the wreck is "right in
the classic age group of what we see with drunk drivers," Moffat said.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Police Keep Cash Intended For Education series (The first part
of a five-part article in the Kansas City Star says police in Missouri
routinely conspire with federal agents to circumvent if not violate state law
by diverting millions of dollars of forfeited cash and other assets away from
state schoolchildren. Under Missouri law, forfeited assets are supposed to go
to public school districts, but some police departments keep the money
for their own use by turning it over to a federal agency, which is not
subject to state laws. The agency keeps a cut and returns the rest of the
money to state or local police.)
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1999 18:35:10 -0800
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: US MO: Part 1 of 5 - Police Keep Cash
Intended For Education
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Laura Green, Kendra Wright and Keven Zeese
Pubdate: Sat, 02 Jan 1999
Source: Kansas City Star
Copyright: 1999 The Kansas City Star
Section: Special Report
Contact: letters@kcstar.com
Website: http://www.kcstar.com/
Author: Karen Dillon, The Kansas City Star kdillon@kcstar.com
Note: This 5 part special report is being posted with the same subject
line, even though each part has its own title. The Star lists as Web
Resources on its site:
National Drug Strategy Network:
http://www.ndsn.org/
Forfeiture Endangers American Rights:
http://www.fear.org/
POLICE KEEP CASH INTENDED FOR EDUCATION
Police and federal agencies have diverted millions of dollars from Missouri
schoolchildren.
Under state law, money seized in drug cases is supposed to go to public
school districts, but some police departments have found a simple way to
keep the money for their own use.
It works like this:
When police discover a cache of drug money, they turn it over to a federal
agency, which is not subject to state laws. The agency keeps a cut and
returns the rest of the money to police.
Police say some of that windfall is used to fight the war on drugs. But
such transfers to federal agencies hurt taxpayers, who must pay more for
schools. And they clearly violate state law.
"The full intent (of the law) was to give that money to the schools, or
most of it. They are not getting it," said state Rep. Jim Kreider, a Nixa
Democrat and an early backer of the state law.
"If the public knew this in a large scale, they would not like it."
Federal officials and some local police say that the seizures of money are
proper and that they've done nothing wrong.
Other law enforcement officials say they believe the law is not clear about
every situation that police confront.
"We are trying to determine who is right and who is wrong," said Capt.
James Keathley of the Missouri Highway Patrol, which often turns over money
to federal agents.
Still other departments won't talk at all about the way they handle federal
forfeitures, which is the legal term for the process of taking money.
For example, Kansas City police said state law did not require them to
answer questions from the media.
But a federal appellate judge, in a written opinion filed in 1998, said it
was clear that the federal Drug Enforcement Administration and the Missouri
Highway Patrol had "successfully conspired" in one case to keep forfeited
money.
That case led Judge James B. Loken of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
in his opinion to question whether federal agencies were "using their
extensive forfeiture powers to frustrate the fiscal policy of States such
as Missouri."
The Law's Intent
The state's fiscal policy was designed to keep forfeiture money out of the
hands of police to prevent a conflict of interest: When police benefit
directly from the money they seize, they might be tempted to conduct
illegal searches to seize assets.
In fact, that's exactly what has happened across the country, where most
states, including Kansas, generally allow police to keep drug money they
seize. Illegal searches and other abuses by police departments have been
well-documented in recent years in such places as California, Louisiana and
Pennsylvania.
"I am not so concerned where the money goes as I am concerned where the
money doesn't go," said Sen. Francis Flotron, a Chesterfield Republican who
helped write Missouri's forfeiture law.
"I don't want to create a situation where police have an incentive to stop
people for the benefit of getting stuff for their own departmental use."
If the money goes to schools, it not only removes a temptation from police
but also is put to good use, relieving a burden from school taxpayers,
lawmakers say.
So they set up a process. Police who seize money must report it to the
county prosecutor, who along with a judge must decide whether the money
should be forfeited. The forfeited money is sent to schools or, in special
cases, transferred to a federal agency.
But police have found a way to defeat lawmakers' wishes.
Their efforts to keep drug money have been no secret -- legislators tried
to fight them off with tougher laws in 1993 -- yet the police arrangement
with federal agencies has been almost invisible to the public.
That's no accident.
Police and federal agencies go to great lengths not to advertise their
arrangement. In fact, all those contacted by The Kansas City Star refused
to provide public records.
As a result, it's impossible to track how much money law enforcement has
diverted from schools.
But The Star was able to glimpse the windfall for law enforcement by
finding several police reports and court cases that show how police and
federal agencies work together.
In 14 cases in the Kansas City area in recent years, police and the Highway
Patrol seized more than $1.4 million and sent it to federal agencies. In
return, the federal agencies sent most of the money back to police and the
Highway Patrol, usually keeping about 20 percent of it for processing costs.
In each case, legal experts say, a state judge should have decided where
the money would go -- and that's usually to schools.
In one typical instance, Kansas City police stopped two men in 1996 because
their car did not have a front license plate. Officers searched the car
with a drug-sniffing dog and found a shoe box with $22,765 in the front
seat, according to police reports. Neither man was charged with a crime,
and although they protested the seizure, they gave up a challenge to it
because of legal costs.
Police turned the money over to the DEA, which later returned more than
$18,000 to the department.
Those 14 cases indicate a pattern of conduct, one expert said.
"Reasonable inferences could be drawn that this is an attempt to circumvent
the state forfeiture laws to benefit the state agency," said Jimmy Gurule,
a law professor at Notre Dame University and co-author of a legal text on
forfeitures.
A few figures suggest how broad the forfeiture diversion by law enforcement
may be.
For example, the Missouri Highway Patrol seized $5.4 million from just four
vehicles in the last two years in southwest Missouri, said a patrol
official in the Springfield office. In each of those cases the patrol
called the DEA and turned over the money, he said.
Of all its forfeiture cases in the last three years, the Missouri Highway
Patrol sent more than half to federal agencies, according to patrol reports.
Since the 1993 laws were passed, federal agencies have sent more than $32
million back to Missouri law enforcement agencies, according to the U.S.
Department of Justice. Some of that money may have come from legitimate
joint investigations, but it's impossible to know how much, because neither
federal nor local agencies will release seizure reports.
At least one sheriff's official from the other side of the state spoke
frankly about the way his department treats drug money.
"We don't deal in state forfeitures at all, because law enforcement doesn't
derive any revenues from that," said Capt. Tom Neer of the St. Charles
County Sheriff's Department, which sends almost no money to the county
school fund.
"You won't find too many local law enforcement agencies participating in
state seizures at all."
It's no wonder then that schools aren't receiving much forfeiture money.
In the last three school years, districts in five area counties received
only $277,000 -- and that was all in Jackson and Lafayette counties.
Schools got nothing in Platte, Clay and Cass counties, officials said.
"It's pretty shocking,"' said Lance Loewenstein, a Kansas City school board
member. "The folks who are supposed to protect us are willing to steal from
children in order to build their budgets."
The Police Rationale
Police offer three basic defenses for not complying with Missouri law,
which flatly prohibits them from just giving seized money to a federal agency:
It's a joint operation.
If local and federal agencies are investigating the case together, they
say, the federal agency can take the money.
The crucial question is when federal agents become involved.
In the 14 Kansas City-area cases found by The Star, police didn't call in
federal agents until they had already found the money.
Take the case of Fontaine Jones, who was murdered in March 1997. With the
help of a drug-sniffing dog, Kansas City police at the crime scene found
$14,425 hidden in a storage compartment in his truck's engine.
Police seized the cash and later gave it to the DEA, according to court
records. In a settlement with Jones' widow in federal court, the law
enforcement agencies kept the money and the truck, which was valued at
$16,000.
"The bottom line is, if the federal government is not involved before the
seizure, the seizure must come through state court," said Claire McCaskill,
Jackson County prosecutor. "If that is not occurring, the law is not being
followed."
Even when police officers are working with a federal agency, they must send
any money they find through state courts, the law says.
State law is insufficient, police say.
Officers can seize drug money only if they believe a crime has been
committed or if the money is unclaimed. But some cases don't meet either
requirement, said David Hansen, attorney for the Highway Patrol.
Troopers sometimes stop a car for a traffic violation, search it and find a
bundle of cash that a patrol dog identifies as drug money. The driver says
he doesn't know where the money came from and doesn't want it, but that
doesn't give troopers authority to seize it if no crime was committed,
Hansen said.
"I don't think anybody really would say that that situation under (Missouri
law) was really contemplated," Hansen said.
In such cases, the trooper has no options but to give the money to a
federal agent or let the driver leave with it, he said.
But state law absolutely prohibits police from just turning money over to a
federal agency, said Sen. Wayne Goode, a St. Louis Democrat who helped
craft the 1993 laws.
"They're supposed to go to the (state) court in all of these cases," Goode
said.
Highway Patrol officials said they were now seeking an opinion from
Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon.
Taking money isn't the same as seizing it, police say.
And because Missouri law covers only money that is seized, police say, they
can give money to federal agencies if they hadn't really "seized" it.
The question of when a seizure is a seizure came up after Dennis Cole was
stopped in 1994 by the Highway Patrol for speeding on Interstate 70 near
Odessa.
In a search of the car, a trooper found a concealed compartment. The
trooper arrested Cole and called a Highway Patrol drug officer, who arrived
at the scene before calling a DEA agent.
The compartment was opened, and officers found more than $844,000. The DEA
agent took possession of the money.
The DEA returned $591,164 to the Highway Patrol and sent $126,678 to a
regional task force, keeping the rest.
Cole, who was never charged, appealed the forfeiture.
In a ruling last year, Loken, the judge, called it "pure fallacy" that the
DEA was part of the case.
"By summoning a DEA agent and then pretending DEA made the seizure, the DEA
and Missouri Highway Patrol officers successfully conspired to violate the
Missouri Constitution,... the Missouri Revised Codes, and a Missouri
Supreme Court decision," Loken wrote in his concurring opinion.
Although DEA officials provided The Star with their forfeiture policies,
they refused to answer questions.
Stephen L. Hill, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri,
protests Loken's opinion.
"We disagree with (Judge Loken's) observations both on when the seizure
took place and that there was some kind of effort to circumvent state law,"
Hill said.
A seizure doesn't occur just because police find the money, said Frances
Reddis, an assistant U.S. attorney.
"My analogy is, when does an arrest occur?" Reddis said. "Police officers
often stop people, question them and it is not considered an arrest until
they can't leave."
Gurule, the Notre Dame legal expert on forfeitures, strongly disagreed. A
seizure occurs when someone is stopped by police, he said.
"To suggest that the seizure of the vehicle and its contents, the money,
occurred sometime later when the DEA arrived at the scene is ludicrous,"
Gurule said.
Black's Law Dictionary defines a seizure as occurring "not only when an
officer arrests an individual, but whenever he restrains the individual's
freedom to walk away."
Despite Loken's opinion, Cole never got his money back -- he filed his
appeal of the forfeiture too late.
Reform In The Works
Public officials say they will press for reform on almost every front:
State Law -- Kreider and other legislators say they will push for new
measures when the General Assembly's 1999 session begins this week.
Some lawmakers would prohibit any drug money at all going to federal
agencies. Others suggest giving police an incentive to work with the state
by letting them keep 50 percent of forfeitures.
Penalties -- Sen. Ronnie DePasco, a Kansas City Democrat who was just
elected floor majority leader, said it might be necessary to enact
penalties for law enforcement agencies that do not follow the law.
"Since there is no penalty clause, they can do whatever they want to do,"
said DePasco, who also is a member of the Civil and Criminal Jurisprudence
Committee. "We'll probably have to put a penalty clause in there to put
some teeth in the law."
State Probe -- Some want the attorney general to investigate.
Nixon, however, has declined to comment on the issue. His office confirmed
that it had talked to the patrol, which asked for an opinion, but would not
elaborate because it regarded the patrol as a client.
State Audit -- Loewenstein, the Kansas City school board member, called for
an accounting by the state auditor's office.
"Those entities are going to have to give back... whatever they took if
they indeed did take it," he said. "This is going to be, I'm sure, not a
short affair."
McCaskill, who takes office as Missouri's new state auditor this month,
said she would review forfeitures. She said she was disappointed by the
pattern of forfeitures The Star had found.
Police guidelines -- Kansas City Police Board Commissioner Joe Mulvihill
said police needed to set up guidelines if they were not following state law.
Mulvihill said police hadn't told him about the forfeiture issue, even
after The Star had submitted written questions to the department.
"Since the Kansas City Police Department is the largest law enforcement
agency in the area, we have to be perceived by the public as complying with
the law," he said.
Federal Investigation -- Loken, in his opinion last year, called on
Congress and the Department of Justice to investigate whether federal
agencies were abusing state forfeiture laws.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The Case File - Police Keep Cash Intended For Education series
(The second part of the five-part article in the Kansas City Star
about police in Missouri circumventing state law by diverting forfeited cash
and other assets away from state schools. Although law enforcement agencies
refused to provide records showing how much money they were diverting
from Missouri schools, the Kansas City Star hints at the value of the plunder
by summarizing a few of the 14 recent cases it found in western Missouri.)
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1999 18:35:49 -0800
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: US MO: Part 2 of 5 - Police Keep Cash Intended For Education
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Laura Green, Kendra Wright and Keven Zeese
Pubdate: Sat, 02 Jan 1999
Source: Kansas City Star
Copyright: 1999 The Kansas City Star
Section: Special Report
Contact: letters@kcstar.com
Website: http://www.kcstar.com/
Author: Karen Dillon, The Kansas City Star
THE CASE FILE
Although law enforcement agencies refused to provide records that would
show how much money they were diverting from Missouri schools, The Kansas
City Star found 14 such cases in western Missouri.
Some of those cases were described in court documents, sometimes generated
when a defendant tried to regain money police had seized and turned over to
federal agencies. Most of the other cases came from police reports about
people whose names appeared on a Kansas City police list of 120 money
seizures.
A sampling of the cases:
In January 1997, two Minnesota men were driving on Interstate 35 in North
Kansas City when a Missouri Highway Patrol trooper pulled them over for
speeding.
When the men refused to let the trooper search their car, he called for a
drug-sniffing dog, first from North Kansas City, which did not have a dog,
and then from Kansas City police, whose dog was unavailable. The Clay
County Sheriff's Department provided a dog, which indicated the possible
presence of drugs toward the rear of the car.
Finally, at least an hour after the stop, officers opened the trunk and
found $473,790. When both men said the money did not belong to them, a
federal Drug Enforcement Administration agent was called, according to a
Highway Patrol report.
The DEA took the money, later returning more than $274,000 to the Highway
Patrol and more than $94,000 to Clay County. North Kansas City raised
donations to buy a drug dog so it wouldn't be unprepared the next time such
a windfall occurred.
Jason Higgs' pregnant girlfriend left the house after a fight in 1994 and
called Kansas City police. She told them Higgs kept drugs and a gun in the
house.
Police obtained a search warrant for the house, where they saw several
guns, cash, "expensive-looking furniture," electronic equipment and a
cornucopia of other items, including cocaine. Police obtained a second
search warrant to recover all of it.
Then they called the DEA.
"Given the totality of the above circumstances I contacted the DEA to see
if they would be interested in seizing the items inside the house,"
Detective Steve Christensen wrote in a report.
A DEA agent took the $3,925 in cash, a BMW and all the electronic
equipment, according to police records. Later the DEA returned more than
$10,000 to police.
Higgs pleaded guilty to drug charges in federal court.
Kansas City police arrested David Humphrey in 1992 and seized guns, drugs
and $21,576 in cash. The drug charges were dropped, and Humphrey was
convicted on a weapons violation.
Police held onto the money in a hidden account.
Soon after Humphrey was released from prison in 1996, he was charged in the
wounding of two Kansas City police officers and sentenced to 40 years in
prison.
Police asked the DEA to adopt Humphrey's $21,576 from the seizure four
years before, according to federal court records. Humphrey fought the move
in federal court, but a judge approved a settlement that gave $16,182 to
the DEA, which returned $12,763 of it to police. Humphrey kept the rest.
A Lafayette County sheriff's deputy stopped Bruce A. Wilson in 1993 on
suspicion of drunken driving. The deputy spotted white powder in a vial in
Wilson's shoe and arrested him.
The car was towed to the Odessa Police Department, where a police officer
found $13,328. Two months later a cashier's check was sent to the DEA. The
DEA didn't complete the process to keep the money, however, until three
years later, in 1996, according to court records. The records do not tell
how much the DEA returned to police.
Wilson was convicted the same year in federal court of drug trafficking.
In 1996, Kansas City police searched the home of a restaurant owner after a
confidential informant reported that the owner was selling marijuana,
according to court and police records. Police seized a couple of plastic
bags containing marijuana, $23,000 in cash and three cars.
A few months later, police arrested the owner at his restaurant and charged
him with two counts of distributing a controlled substance. During the
arrest at the restaurant, a friend was searched and police found more than
$3,000 on him, according to police records and an attorney in the case.
That money also was seized.
Police sent all the money to the DEA, which returned $21,000.
The state appellate court recently overturned the restaurant owner's
conviction, ruling that the search of his home was illegal.
But the cash and cars have not been returned to him.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Schools Can Lose, Even If The Law Is Followed - Police Keep Cash Intended
For Education series (The third part of the five-part article in the Kansas
City Star about police in Missouri circumventing state law by diverting
forfeited cash and other assets away from state schools. Missouri law
requires police departments to send drug money they seize through state
courts. But even when they do, police have used the court system to get the
money back. In seven cases the Kansas City Star found in Jackson and Pettis
counties, police turned a total of $263,000 in drug money over to county
prosecutors. In each case, the prosecutor apparently violated state law by
asking a judge to send the money to a federal agency, which then sent most
of it back to the local police.)
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1999 18:37:07 -0800
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: US MO: Part 3 of 5 - Police Keep Cash Intended For Education
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Laura Green, Kendra Wright and Keven Zeese
Pubdate: Sat, 02 Jan 1999
Source: Kansas City Star (KS)
Copyright: 1999 The Kansas City Star
Section: Special Report
Contact: letters@kcstar.com
Website: http://www.kcstar.com/
Author: Karen Dillon, The Kansas City Star
SCHOOLS CAN LOSE, EVEN IF THE LAW IS FOLLOWED
Missouri law requires police departments to send drug money they seize
through state courts -- and sometimes police do it.
But even when they do, police have used the court system to get the money
back.
Although that may not be a clear violation of state law, it violates the
intent of sending drug money to state schools, legal experts say.
"They are, in fact, circumventing something that is as important if not
more important than the war on drugs, and that is the education of our
youth," said Larry Schaffer, a defense attorney who also has worked as a
prosecutor.
The law requires police to report seized money to the county prosecutor,
who may choose to file a petition to forfeit the money. The law then allows
a judge to transfer forfeitures to a federal agency, rather than the
schools -- if it appears the case would be better pursued under federal law.
In seven cases The Kansas City Star found in Jackson and Pettis counties,
police turned a total of $263,000 in drug money over to county prosecutors.
In each case, the prosecutor asked a judge to send the money to a federal
agency, which then sent most of it back to police.
None of the documents in the six Jackson County cases outlined why a
federal agency would be better able to handle the case.
Dana Ford's case is typical.
In 1996, Kansas City police, through a confidential informant, made three
drug buys, which led detectives to a house in the 3300 block of Norton
Avenue. Police searched the house, seizing more than $11,000 worth of cash
and other property.
Ford was charged by the Jackson County prosecutor's office and convicted in
Circuit Court of trafficking in drugs.
But the money took a separate route.
Twenty-four days after police searched the house, Kansas City Detective
Steve Christensen contacted assistant prosecutor Melissa Rodriguez.
Christensen told her that the federal Drug Enforcement Administration had
opened an investigation of Ford and that police wanted to transfer the
forfeiture to the DEA, according to court records. (The request did not
comply with state law, which requires police to report a seizure to
prosecutors within four days.)
Rodriguez filed the request with the state court.
Schaffer, Ford's attorney, pointed out in a brief that the prosecutor had
failed to provide any evidence that the case would be better prosecuted
under federal law. There also was no evidence of a DEA investigation, he
wrote.
To allow the transfer "simply because the Kansas City, Missouri, Police
Department... may receive a 'kick-back' from the Federal Government," the
brief said, "circumvents the Missouri Constitution."
But Judge Ronald R. Holliger of the Jackson County Circuit Court signed an
order to transfer most of the forfeiture to the DEA after Ford and the
prosecutor had reached a settlement.
Kansas City police received $7,449. The DEA kept $4,000.
Holliger said it was difficult for him to remember the case, but after
rereading Rodriguez's motion, he thinks he had considered the statement
that the DEA was investigating Ford. He said he did not know that Ford was
being tried in state court, not federal court.
Rodriguez, who now works for the Jackson County counselor's office, said
she would not comment on the case. Christensen did not return phone calls.
Prosecutor Claire McCaskill said the transfer shouldn't have happened.
"If I had been the judge, I would have ruled against my office on that
transfer," she said.
She added, though, that she didn't have time to monitor each of the
hundreds of cases that come through her office each year.
McCaskill did get involved in one strange case.
In 1995 a Kansas City police officer spotted Daniel Gonzales burying
$87,300 in the woods along Cliff Drive. After fighting with police,
Gonzales was charged with misdemeanor assault.
The next day, in a newspaper article about the incident, police said they
had given the money to the FBI because they thought it was linked to drugs.
When McCaskill saw the story, she immediately called police to tell them
they could not just give the money to the FBI.
"I asked them, 'What in the world are the feds doing with that money?' "
McCaskill recalled.
So police simply sent the case through McCaskill's office, which asked a
judge to transfer the money to the FBI. Again, the judge did.
McCaskill said she did not supervise the case, but she speculated that it
might have involved interstate trafficking of drugs.
A year later, Kansas City police got $52,272 back from the FBI, which kept
$35,028.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
On Permanent Parole: A Special Report - Days on Methadone,
Bound by Its Lifeline (A lengthy New York Times article
examines the controversy in New York City over methadone maintenance
for heroin addicts while recounting the disparate experiences
of three methadone patients.)
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 1999 06:48:09 -0800
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: US: NYT: Days on Methadone, Bound by Its Lifeline
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: DrugSense
Source: The New York Times
Copyright: 1999 The New York Times Company
Pubdate: Sat, 2 Jan 1998
Contact: letters@nytimes.com
Forum: http://forums.nytimes.com/comment/
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Author: N. R. Kleinfield
ON PERMANENT PAROLE: A SPECIAL REPORT
DAYS ON METHADONE, BOUND BY ITS LIFELINE
Shortly after 9 A.M., Pamela Carlo arrived at the tiny, nondescript clinic
in Chinatown for her daily deliverance. It was a cool day, with a packed
gray sky. The tang of fish was in the air.
She displayed her ID card at the check-in window, consulted the blackboard
to see who had to give a urine sample (she didn't), then waited on the
scuffed linoleum floor until her name finally crackled over the loudspeaker.
At the third of four dispensing windows, a nurse proffered a plastic cup
partly filled with the reddish liquid known as methadone. The nurse was
required to watch her drink it. Ms. Carlo diluted it with water to mask the
taste and swallowed it in three gulps, grimacing and stamping her right
foot. "Oh, that's evil," she howled. "It never tastes any better."
The nurses ask patients to say something, to insure they aren't "slagging,"
stowing the liquid in their mouths so they can sell it on the street. One
man used to conceal a plastic bag in the hood of his sweatshirt; he would
raise his cup past his ear and pour the methadone in. The nurses trust Ms.
Carlo; in any event, she is rarely quiet for two seconds. "O.K.," she said.
"That's that."
Days on methadone begin like this -- this ordered, schoolmarmish protocol
at the clinic window. The grinding privations of life on methadone are why
the former heroin addicts who take it speak of being "tied by a rope" or
"on permanent parole." They love the drug, and they hate it -- for the vise
grip of its rules, and for its vise grip on them. Methadone frees, but it
also imprisons. It is magical at blocking the yearning for heroin, but much
less effective against the simple craving to get high. It is highly
addictive in its own right, with fiendish withdrawal symptoms. At more than
moderate doses, it can leave some patients in a barely functional daze.
Methadone is one bridge to a new life, but there are many other rivers to
cross.
All of which helps to explain why methadone has long been caught in the
crosscurrents of social policy, though never more so than right now in New
York.
Over the years, methadone has become the favored treatment for heroin
addiction, and the Federal Government has lately pledged to make it more
accessible. That view was endorsed by a recent report in The Journal of the
American Medical Association, which said that methadone can help curb crime
and reduce the spread of infectious diseases like AIDS.
Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, on the other hand, has declared his desire to
eliminate methadone-maintenance programs in New York and instead wean
patients quickly to abstinence, though it is unclear how much power he has
to do that.
Like others scornful of methadone, the Mayor feels that addicts too weak to
confront the pathology of their past are simply shedding an illegal habit
for a legal one. Indeed, to many people in mainstream society, there is
something unsavory and almost contemptible about methadone. But, in truth,
few people uninvolved with it know much about it. And then there are the
patients, for whom methadone is virtually an occupation.
In the community of methadone users (population 115,000 nationwide, 36,000
in New York City, according to Federal and state officials), there is a
continuum of dependence. On this day in the autumn of 1998, Pam Carlo
occupied the vast middle; methadone allowed her to work on and off, but the
employees at the clinic doubted she would ever leave it behind.
Beth Griffin, a fellow patient, was almost weaned from methadone; she could
already taste life on the other side. Jamil Muhammad continued to abuse
drugs; he was what the clinic workers call a "resistant" patient, who
requires great effort but gives little in return.
Mostly, they were simply three people who took methadone to stop wanting
heroin. They couldn't possibly untangle all the arguments. But they could
illustrate something of the nuanced complexities of life on methadone, of
what it can do and what it can't. As for the policy debate, each of their
lives holds powerful arguments for both sides.
Their weeks revolve around 46 and 62 East Broadway, the methadone treatment
units of the Lower Eastside Service Center, a nonprofit substance abuse and
mental health agency. One of the better regarded methadone programs, it
offers a full array of counseling and detoxification services. And yet its
aspirations are limited by the vagaries of addiction and methadone itself,
by those who continue to take other drugs and who can't find a renewed
life. The clinic would like people to achieve abstinence, but it imposes no
time limit; many patients may be on methadone forever. The accent is on
avoiding heroin, not graduating from methadone, an emphasis that sometimes
frustrates patients who dearly hope to stop.
Every social class is represented on methadone, but those low on the social
index are predominant. About 30 percent of Lower Eastside's 950 clients
work, and pay $2 to $56 a week, based on their income. The others,
including Ms. Carlo, Ms. Griffin and Muhammad, are covered by Medicaid. No
private insurer pays for methadone. About 65 percent of the patients are
men; about 20 percent are H.I.V. positive. Roughly a quarter leave in the
first year: they return to other drugs, are arrested or simply vanish.
Ms. Carlo, Ms. Griffin and Muhammad lead lives that intersect on East
Broadway and then radiate in very different directions. Methadone
punctuates their days; it goes down in a gulp but seeps slowly into
everything they do. Though they are not proud they are on it, they are
persuaded of its necessity.
"Society has made methadone into an evil, and that's tragic," Ms. Carlo
said. "If Giuliani got rid of methadone, there would be tens of thousands
of people on the street with guns in their hands."
The Veteran: A Warm Glow For 20 Minutes
Methadone's effect lingers for 24 to 36 hours, and Pam Carlo likes to take
it soon after she awakens. Most patients do. Even before the clinic opens,
there is a line outside. This is methadone rush hour.
At first, she senses nothing. After about a half-hour, she feels no actual
high but a sort of warm glow that endures for 20 minutes. Her speech slows.
Otherwise, she is more or less her effusive, chatty, insouciant self.
Ms. Carlo is one of methadone's elder stateswomen. She is 54, the last 28
on methadone. Even after all those years, she still feels like a specimen
under glass. Methadone gives a lot, but it also takes a lot. There are many
rules to being on methadone, perhaps the most tightly controlled drug in
the nation.
All methadone patients take it every day. Because of fears about diversion,
patients, with few exceptions, must go to a clinic to get it. At Lower
Eastside, one starts by visiting six days a week (the clinic is closed
Sunday) and getting a take-home bottle on Saturday. This can fall to as
little as one pickup a week (and six take-home bottles) if one has been on
the program for three years, is working and has been "clean" from drugs for
at least a year. (Pam Carlo goes three days a week.)
Patients are forbidden to drink alcohol or use any other addictive drug.
They are required to see a counselor at least once a month. Group therapy
is mandatory at first, then voluntary. (Ms. Carlo skips it. "I've heard it
all," she said.) A patient who goes out of town is limited to a two-week
supply. Because of community anxiety, the clinic does not let clients
loiter within a four-block radius.
Habitual offenders can be dropped from the program, though few are.
Pam Carlo did not linger. She and her fiancé, Earl Meares, headed east to
his room in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn. The sky hung low over the
city. Meares will be husband No. 6. Ms. Carlo has had poor luck with
husbands. One died of a heart attack and two of AIDS (by sheer luck, she
never got the virus); the others were mistakes.
Back at his room, they made themselves comfortable. They got out their
artwork. She is a freelance commercial artist, and has been illustrating a
book on mice. Meares, who is on workfare, sweeping up around the court
buildings in TriBeCa, has been laboring on a comic strip called "Heroin
Chic," based on Ms. Carlo's life.
Meares has never had a drug habit. He doesn't fully understand addiction.
She does. Her vision of drugs is dark. "See a sunny day like this?" she
said. "I hated sunny days when I was using. I thought everything was so
black. I thought there was no way out."
She was born in Jamaica, Queens, an only child. Her mother lived off an
inheritance. Her father, who was in the cemetery business, abandoned her
mother for his secretary before Ms. Carlo was born. Growing up, she and her
mother bickered constantly.
"My mother hated everything that wasn't high class," she said. "And so I
had to try everything that wasn't."
She was smart, skipping two grades, starting college at 16 at Texas Western
in El Paso. She felt too young, and drifted into the wrong crowd and into
heroin. "When I found heroin, I thought it was what I was searching for my
whole life," she said. "It was like drowning in a big black sea. And it was
warm and comfortable and safe and nobody could touch me. I thought I had
found God."
A weekend thing evolved into a daily habit. She enrolled at Cornell
University Medical College, she said, and met a doctor who was addicted to
morphine. She moved in with him. She gave him sex; he gave her morphine. A
year and a half short of graduation, she nodded out during a lab and
collapsed onto a cadaver. She was suspended for using drugs.
Furious, she sank into the shadows of the East Village and the unthinkable.
Desperate to support her habit, she turned $10 tricks on the "day shift."
She was a streetwalker for four years. She got just about anything you
could get, including syphilis and jaw cancer. She shrank to 80 pounds and
was less in demand.
Homeless, she visited Woolworth's and bought a sign that read, "Bathroom
Out of Order." At night, she trooped to the Albert Hotel in the West
Village and affixed the sign to the door of a hallway bathroom. She
arranged her fur coat in the bathtub, wiggled in and went to sleep. The
next night, she chose a different bathroom. She did this for six months.
In 1970, with no foreseeable future, she was drawn to a new treatment that
was all the talk: methadone. "Methadone got me to feel again," she said.
"We used to hear about the ring concept. People who are addicts, our lives
are rings. There is a link that is either missing or improperly attached.
With methadone, the ring is whole."
Ms. Carlo drinks 66 milligrams a day. (The dose is determined by the
patient's physical characteristics and the quantity and longevity of drug
abuse.) Early on, her dosage was as high as 180. "I was wasted," she said.
"I was walking into walls."
Outside Meares's room, the sky had darkened. How did his fiancée's being on
methadone affect him?
"Sometimes she will take her dose and freeze in place."
"Yes," she said quietly. "We'll go to the coffee shop and I'll reach for my
tea and I'll just freeze in that position. Methadone freeze. It's
embarrassing to him. I realize that."
She does not like to discuss her condition. "I don't tell squares," she said.
Once, visiting a friend of Meares, she slipped. She said she was on
methadone. "His face froze," she said. "So did his wife's. Suddenly,
disaster had struck. They had a junkie in the house."
The ones who understand are her friends from the program. Methadone
mornings, they get together at the Aten-Ra International Gourmet Deli,
walking distance from the clinic. She sometimes refers to them by their
names and doses: JoAnn, 60 milligrams; Tony, 8; James, 70, the size of the
dose fixing them in the hierarchy of methadone.
On a recent day, a couple of former members of the klatch tried to intrude
but were ignored. They abused pills and were not welcome. James uses pills,
too, but was down to half a pill a day from six, so he was O.K.
"Anxiety," he said in explanation.
Ms. Carlo said: "Anxiety problems are common for people on methadone. They
have agoraphobia and claustrophobia. It's caused by their life styles."
Pam Carlo has taken methadone for 28 years, 18 years longer than she took
heroin. To an extent, she has made it a career. Chris DeLuca, the clinic's
assistant director, doubts she will ever retire. She hopes he is wrong.
"Before I die, I want to know what it feels like to be clean," she said.
"You see, I don't remember. Imagine that: forgetting what it feels like to
be straight. But I don't remember. And I want to feel it. I really do want
to feel it."
The Rule-Breaker: Admitting 'I'm Not A Prime Example'
In the landscape of methadone are many people who straddle the world of
drugs and the world of treatment, who continue to live by their own rules
rather than methadone's. Jamil Muhammad is one of them.
He is a lanky, hard-bitten man of 46, with a neatly trimmed beard and
mustache. He has his own story of a defeated life, and he knows exactly
where he stands. "I'm not a prime example of an addict who has gotten it
together," he said.
He went to Lower Eastside five years ago, and in every sense he got off to
a bad start. At first his concept of being on the program meant to get his
methadone and then take pills and shoot cocaine. He robbed apartments. He
sold his methadone on the street. Several times, he ended up on Rikers
Island. "I was crazy," he said. "Maybe I had a death wish."
Addicts are used to being high, and once on methadone often gravitate to a
substitute for heroin, generally cocaine or pills. Some pills combine with
methadone to produce a euphoria. These days, the pill of choice is the
sedative Xanax. "It makes you feel better with your meth," Muhammad
explained.
Methadone stops the thirst for heroin, but nothing more. Escape from
addiction involves a protocol of methadone and counseling and ambition.
Lower Eastside offers counselors and weekly group sessions to help
resurrect aspirations, but patients take what they want, and sometimes it
isn't much. Muhammad goes to group meetings with some regularity, but often
sits there with a vacant look.
"You have to deal with a lot of ignorance," he said. "I don't like it when
someone starts running their mouth." He doesn't much like his counselor,
either. The counselor, Anthony Badger, does nothing for him, he said.
Badger said Muhammad had not accepted what had happened to him.
"He tends to play people against people and put himself in the role of the
victim," he said.
Badger also said he had 56 patients. The state finances only one counselor
for every 50. Badger said he monitored himself so he didn't burn out; he
can do only so much.
Over a burger at Rokka's Coffee Shop near the clinic, Muhammad gave a
capsule version of his road to methadone.
He was born in Orange, N.J., and raised mostly by his grandmother, who
owned a prospering antique store. Talented at basketball, he received a
scholarship to Providence College, but in his third year was caught dealing
marijuana and expelled.
He became a Muslim. He married and moved to Brooklyn. He went to Saudi
Arabia and studied Arabic, hoping to teach it in American mosques. He had
two sons. Back in Brooklyn, he taught Arabic for a while. He got hooked on
pills and his marriage cracked apart. After the divorce, his descent was
fast. "I was losing everybody," he said. "And so I turned to drugs."
He snorted heroin and then he shot it, his life draining into his arm. He
lived on the streets. He dealt heroin to make money to shoot it. He used it
steadily for five years, as much as nine bags a day.
In 1993, unable to support his habit, wanting to be useful again, he sought
out methadone.
These days, he tends to follow a cycle of being clean for several months,
then taking cocaine or pills, then staying clean for several more months.
Between August and the end of October, however, cocaine showed up in five
consecutive urine samples. He was punished by having to show up five days a
week instead of four. Even so, he drinks two or three cans of beer a day,
in violation of clinic rules.
"I have moments when I get frustrated at myself," he said. "Sometimes it
gets so bad in my mind I feel like screaming. When I get disgusted, I'll go
out and get high."
Chris DeLuca said the clinic was highly permissive with patients who
violated the rules. If you are caught selling your methadone or other
drugs, you are generally dismissed, but the clinic grudgingly puts up with
patients abusing drugs. Probably 30 percent do, DeLuca said.
"We have a lot of patience because we found that if we kick them off, they
go to another program or they go to the street and start shooting and
sharing needles," he said. "We try to work with them on behavior
modification. Sometimes this takes years. We can't succeed 100 percent."
A flat, dull day. Muhammad was stacking books at the Angel Street Thrift
Shop on West 17th Street. The Lower Eastside Service Center owns the shop
and Muhammad works there three days a week, at $6 an hour. Mostly he waits
for some stroke of luck, some act of legerdemain, to turn his world around.
He had a lottery ticket in his pocket, banking on "587" to return him $500.
He has played the same number for three years. It was the street address of
a high school friend who was killed in a car accident on her prom night.
His dosage is 100 milligrams, and it hasn't changed. Because of the stigma,
he doesn't tell people about being on methadone, he says. "People have
heard the stories about selling methadone and about still doing drugs."
Of course, he still does drugs. Of course, he has sold his methadone. When
he is broke, which is fairly often, he is tempted to sell it again. He can
get $30 for a 100-milligram bottle, a lot when your pockets are empty. "I
was tempted last week," he said. He doesn't want to get arrested. "If a
friend of mine wanted some, I'd sell it to him," he said. "Not to a
stranger."
Muhammad has tumbled from Providence College to the Providence Hotel, a
$10-a-night flophouse on the Bowery. He put some books in order and a
doubtful look came across his face. He did not pretend to have any answers.
"I'm not standing here and saying I'm outside of the problem," he said.
"Maybe I'm the cause of the problem. I don't know. Maybe I'm the cause of
it."
The Fighter: 'People Stay Zombies For a Long Time'
The Power of Hope group therapy session began at 10 A.M.
Jamie Holder, the group leader, talked about the recovery process: "It is
as complicated as the relapse process. Beth, you've spoken of what pressure
you're under from your mother and your brother -- 'Are you still on that
thing?' "
"Yes," Beth Griffin said. "They want to know am I well yet." Her mother,
she said, kept telling her, "I hope you'll be off methadone soon so I can
put you back in my will."
When the hour was up, Ms. Griffin headed for the East Village. She is 36,
with frizzy blond hair. There are scars on her face; once when she was on
speedballs she cut her face open with a razor because she thought there
were spiders and worms beneath her skin.
She trudged up the three flights to a studio she shares on East 9th Street.
She does her art there, collages and paintings built around words and
numbers. After a while, she went over to the Margaret Bodell gallery, where
she had recently had a show and sold some of her work.
"I'm starting to get a little following," she said. "Most of my life I've
had really good jobs and stuff. More than anything else, I want to support
myself again."
She grew up in Laurence, S.C., where her father ran a gas station and her
mother was a secretary. She graduated from the Ringling School of Art in
Sarasota, Fla., and became an art director at Dancer Fitzgerald Sample in
New York, working on Luvs diapers, Wranglers, Almond Joy. She said
Advertising Age anointed her one of the 10 brightest young people in
advertising. She butted heads with her boss and quit after nine months. Her
resignation letter said, "Enough." She modeled for art students and
sculptors, and then did typography for ad agencies.
In 1988, she went with a friend to the Mars Bar in the East Village. Her
boyfriend had just left her. She had had an abortion. Her parents had just
divorced. At the bar, her friend asked her, "You want to do some?"
In the bathroom, Ms. Griffin snorted half a bag of heroin.
The first thing she did the next day was go out to get more. In four
months, she knew the face of addiction.
For nearly four years, she only snorted heroin because needles terrified her.
But in time, to get a better high, she began to shoot. In the bathrooms of
some of the city's best-known ad agencies, she shot up.
Her sister, Laura, a drug- and alcohol-abuse therapist in South Carolina,
tried hard to get her off. Heroin was more persuasive. Three times she
quit, but it didn't last. Her life traced the familiar downward path. In
December 1993, she looked to methadone and hoped it would be a lamp to
another life.
"When I came to the clinic I felt about as bad about myself as you could
feel without killing yourself," she said. She kept taking Valium and Xanax.
Even without pills, her dose of 90 milligrams a day knocked her out.
Mainly, she slept, often 18 or 19 hours a day.
Two years later, her sister was killed by a car while jogging. The driver
was a lawyer high on drugs and alcohol. Ms. Griffin contemplated taking her
own life. She sought therapy and took sedatives. The world moved on, while
she slept.
"I was a zombie for like four years," she said. "That is the dirty secret
of methadone -- a lot of people stay zombies for a long time, for years.
Not until you get below a certain dose does the fog lift."
Methadone, she said, has saved her, but the drill has grown old. "I'm sick
of being a slave to methadone," she said. "I'm sick of going down there and
seeing all the same old faces."
If Ms. Griffin has a criticism of the program, it is that no one ever
pushed her to get off. "I know a lot of people who told them they wanted to
come down in their dose, and they would say, 'We don't think you're ready,'"
she said. DeLuca, at the Lower Eastside methadone clinic, said perhaps 20
people a year get off methadone there, though patients say far fewer truly
do. Methadone is a psychological crutch as well as a physical one. It is
something going in the body, day after day, a palliative routine that is
hard to shake.
Ms. Griffin said it took her own initiative for the clinic to start
reducing her dose a milligram or two a week in pursuit of getting off. By
Thanksgiving, she was down to three milligrams a day. She was feeling some
withdrawal symptoms, but with her dose so low, it was as if she had been
rebuilt. "It's like I'm on a faster speed setting," she said. "I do in a
day what I did in a month."
She lives with a cat named Amtrak in the Times Square Hotel, a single room
occupancy hotel. She plays the piano in the lobby almost every morning. She
was on welfare for about two years and is on S.S.I. now because she was
classified with a psychiatric disability after her sister's death. She has
been painting a lot, and hopes one day to live off her art.
Soon she was planning to drink the red liquid for what she hoped would be
the last time. She was going home for the holidays and would be gone a good
three weeks. She didn't want the methadone rope pulling her back.
On Wednesday, Dec. 2, Ms. Griffin drank a one-milligram bottle of
methadone. It was her final dose. The removal of methadone from her life
led to a nightmarish week. She found herself waking up by 4 A.M. She was
achy and twitchy. Every second seemed like an hour. She felt old yearnings
for heroin. On Sunday, she dragged herself down to the Museum of Modern
Art. She stayed exactly 17 minutes. "I had no attention span," she said.
As the days passed, she perked up somewhat, though she remained jittery and
restless. "There are times I feel I can't get through this," she said.
When they go off methadone, ex-addicts often feel a profound sense of loss.
State rules allow six months of post-methadone care at the clinic. And so
she will continue to go there. She will give her weekly urine sample and
see her counselor.
A few weeks ago, she wrote down some ramblings about methadone: "For me it
was impossible to jump from dope life to straight life. I needed the gray
shades of methadone in between. Dope life and straight life are as
different as animals being in a cage or out in the jungle. I'm not sure
which one is really 'free' but it takes a while to switch from one to the
other. Without methadone, chances are I would be dead now."
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Not-So-Tricky Fix (A relatively lengthy review in the Capital Times,
in Wisconsin, of the book "The Fix," by Michael Massing, says Massing
concludes that the Nixon administration's dramatic expansion
of drug-treatment programs in the early 1970s resulted in less crime,
fewer overdose deaths and fewer drug-related visits to hospital emergency
rooms. Not only would the Nixon plan work today, Massing believes,
but it also would cost less.)
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1999 20:40:32 -0800
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: US: Not-So-Tricky Fix
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Frank S. World
Source: Capital Times, The (WI)
Contact: tctvoice@madison.com
Website: http://www.thecapitaltimes.com/
Copyright: 1999 The Capital Times
Pubdate: 2 Jan 1999
NOT-SO-TRICKY FIX
Journalist Michael Massing has devoted a decade to investigating America's
war on drugs. He has talked with peasants in remote coca-growing regions of
Colombia. He has combed through dusty boxes of federal archives. He has
documented the heroic struggle of treatment workers at a drop-in center in
Spanish Harlem. He has watched a heroin addict shoot up in a New York City
tenement.
And this is his conclusion:
Richard Nixon was right.
Now there's a sentence you don't see every day. But Massing argues in "The
Fix," his fascinating and unforgiving account of U.S. drug policy, that the
Nixon administration's approach in the early 1970s resulted in less crime,
fewer overdose deaths and fewer drug-related visits to hospital emergency
rooms.
Not only would the Nixon plan work today, Massing believes, but it also
would cost less.
Interested? Here's the catch: Nixon's drug-fighting strategy included
treatment for every hard-core drug addict who wanted it. Massing believes
the country could -- and should -- offer the same today.
Still interested?
"I've learned that the c-word -- compassion -- is a real red flag for
people," Massing says. "I'm stressing that this is a much more effective
and promising approach.
"When you lay out the research and how affordable and generally successful
treatment is compared to other approaches, that rings in people's ears."
With "The Fix," recently published by Simon and Schuster, Massing presents
a meticulously researched, fact-filled account of U.S. drug policy since
the Nixon years. Although the country now spends more than $17 billion a
year to fight drugs, and prison populations and costs are soaring, there
still remain an estimated 4 million hard-core abusers of cocaine and heroin.
Something's not working.
"It would be hard to think of an area of U.S. social policy that has failed
more completely than the war on drugs," Massing writes in the book's
opening sentence. The answer, he writes later, is a "new public-health
approach to the nation's drug problem, one based not on the punitive powers
of the law but on the healing powers of medicine."
Massing, 46, is a 1970 graduate of Polytechnic Institute in Baltimore.
Although he now lives in New York, he didn't have to look far from his
former home to find the person most responsible for crafting the Nixon
administration's successful drug-fighting strategy.
Jerome Jaffe, who lives in Towson, was the nation's first drug czar. A
psychopharmacologist, Jaffe had created a network of treatment programs in
Illinois when he was picked by Nixon in 1971 to run the newly created
Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention.
"I wanted treatment to be so available that people could not say they
committed crimes because they couldn't get treatment," Jaffe says. "If
somebody becomes dependent, and there's no option for them, and they steal
something, society faces a moral dilemma. They didn't provide an
alternative, but they're holding them accountable."
Well-founded Worries
As Massing's book indicates, it certainly wasn't sympathy for drug addicts
that led Nixon's advisers to Jaffe. A heroin epidemic at home, combined
with press reports of increasing drug addiction among American GIs in
Vietnam, produced well-founded White House worries of a political problem
before the 1972 election. Nixon hoped Jaffe would help solve it.
To Massing, this is yet another example of the Nixon paradox. The
anti-Communist president who went to China also was the law-and-order
champion who did more to help addicts than any president since.
To Jaffe, "Nixon was the ultimate pragmatist. He certainly had strong
feelings about drugs. He felt that they corroded the fabric of society. How
do you deal with that? One way is to get supply under control. I think he
came to realize that you have to deal with the demand side as well."
"The Fix" is much more than a public policy analysis. Massing also tells
the gripping stories of Raphael Flores, the obsessively dedicated worker at
Hot Line Cares, a walk-in center in Spanish Harlem where addicts could walk
in off the street and get help, and Yvonne Hamilton, a cocaine and crack
addict.
While visiting a "shooting gallery," Massing says, he was talking to some
addicts when a man casually rolled up a sleeve, wrapped a belt around his
arm to make a vein appear and plunged a needle into his skin.
"At that moment, looking at him, I fainted," Massing says. "I've always had
a thing about needles. I felt totally chagrined. Here I was, the tough
reporter, going in and fainting."
But Massing's work in Spanish Harlem -- he spent four years there -- showed
him the similarity between what Jaffe was doing in Chicago 30 years ago and
what workers such as Raphael Flores were trying to do today.
Both believed help needed to be available as soon as addicts requested it.
Otherwise they may never be seen again. And both discovered that different
addicts require different methods of treatment. Some require structure.
Heroin addicts might require methadone, a synthetic narcotic that allows
some to lead productive lives. Some addicts reject formal programs. And
some don't get better the first time. Or the second. Or the third.
Today, Jaffe says, "it's clear that there's a certain sense that treatment
doesn't work, and I think it's more an issue of values than it is an issue
of facts."
In fact, Massing says the research is clear: Treatment is the most
cost-effective method of reducing drug addiction. He cites a 1994 RAND
study that showed treatment is seven times more cost effective than
arresting people, 10 times more effective than keeping drugs from entering
the country and 23 times more effective than attacking drugs at their source.
The effects of treatment
"It's amazing to think that even while somebody's just in treatment, it
pays for itself, dollar for dollar, in reduced crime, reduced medical
problems, reduced havoc in the country," Massing says. "It pays for itself.
Everything else is a bonus."
With Jaffe as drug czar, thousands of addicts sought treatment in 1972. The
amount of time they were forced to wait for a bed decreased dramatically.
And so did crime. FBI figures in 1972 showed that crime rates dropped in 94
of 154 U.S. cities with a population of more than 100,000. Nationally, the
crime rate decreased for the first time in 17 years.
Although Jaffe says other factors likely contributed to the lower crime
rate, he notes that 90,000 people entered treatment programs when he was in
charge. "An awful lot of people stopped behaving the way they did."
Despite the successes, the Jaffe method was an easy target. Methadone
treatment always has been controversial, and no politician has ever won an
election by advocating more treatment for addicts. Mandatory prison
sentences for drug offenders have proven more popular among voters than
reducing the wait for a hospital bed. The Reagan administration eventually
cut the treatment budget by 25 percent.
"If you have a population that's tougher to treat at the same time you cut
the resources in half, you make it very tough to get good results," Jaffe
says.
Massing says an estimated 1.7 million people, nearly half of the nation's
hard-core addicts, couldn't get help today even if they wanted it because
of a lack of treatment beds. If Congress did nothing more than balance the
money spent on supply and demand (law enforcement vs. treatment), those
addicts could get treatment, he says. "It's not radical," he says. "It's
do-able."
But Massing says it will take another president with strong law-and-order
credentials -- "I hate to say it, a Nixon-like figure" -- who can shift the
emphasis from law enforcement to treatment. He says governors complain
privately about the high cost of imprisoning drug offenders.
"Money is going from education into prisons," he says. "I think people are
going to start saying this is not a good development. They're going to see
that drug abuse continues to plague us. My hope is that there will be a new
openness."
The answer, he says, is neither drug legalization nor throw-away-the-key
sentencing.
"This policy has been a disaster in political and human terms," he says.
"We're seeing hundreds of thousands of people locked away. I would like to
see a more humane policy."
Jaffe left the White House in 1973. He later served as director of the
Addiction Research Center in Baltimore and as acting director and senior
science adviser at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Now 65, he's a
visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University and a professor of
psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore.
He helped create a drug policy that worked in every respect except
politically. It must be frustrating for him.
"Not frustrating," he says. "That's not the right word. It's sad. I guess
you get used to the way that public policy doesn't always follow a logical
path, at least as I saw that logical path."
Science and public policy rarely move in lockstep, he says. He refers to a
research paper that says even though it was known in 1601 that three
teaspoons of lemon juice would reduce scurvy deaths, it took the British
Navy almost 200 more years to give citrus juice to sailors on a regular
basis. Change takes time.
"I don't take it personally," Jaffe says of U.S. drug policy. "I did the
best I could as God gave me the ability to see the light. When it's your
turn, you step down and let others take it from there."
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Drug War Key May Lie In Past (A shorter version in the Everett, Washington,
Herald, indicates the review is originally from the Baltimore Sun.)
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 1999 19:09:58 -0800
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: US WA: OPED: Drug War Key May Lie In Past
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: John Smith
Pubdate: Saturday, 2 January 1999
Source: Herald, The (WA)
Contact: letters@heraldnet.com
Website: http://www.heraldnet.com/
Copyright: 1999 The Daily Herald Co.
Author: Ken Fuson, The Baltimore Sun
DRUG WAR KEY MAY LIE IN PAST
Veteran observer of failing struggle finds Nixon's strategy to treat
addicts worked.
Journalist Michael Massing has devoted a decade to investigating the
U.S. war on drugs. He has talked with peasants in remote coca-growing
regions of Colombia. He has combed through dusty boxes of federal
archives. He has documented the heroic struggle of treatment workers
at a drop-in center in Spanish Harlem. He has watched a heroin addict
shoot up in a New York City tenement.
And this is his conclusion:
Richard Nixon was right.
Now there's a sentence you don't see every day. But Massing argues in
"The Fix," his fascinating and unforgiving account of U.S. drug
policy, that the Nixon administration's approach in the early 1970s
resulted in less crime, fewer overdose deaths and fewer drug-related
visits to hospital emergency rooms.
Not only would the Nixon plan work today, Massing believes, but it
also would cost less.
Interested? Here's the catch: Nixon's drug-fighting strategy included
treatment for every hardcore drug addict who wanted it. Massing
believes the country could - and should - offer the same today.
Still interested?
"I've learned that the 'c' word - compassion - is a real red flag for
people," Massing says. "I'm stressing that this is a much more
effective and promising approach."
With "The Fix," recently published by Simon and Schuster, Massing
presents a meticulously researched, fact-filled account of U.S. drug
policy since the Nixon years. Although the country now spends more
than $17 billion a year to fight drugs, and prison populations and
costs are soaring, there still remain an estimated 4 million hard-core
abusers of cocaine and heroin.
Something's not working.
"It would be hard to think of an area of U.S. social policy that has
failed more completely than the war on drugs," Massing writes in the
book's opening sentence. The answer, he writes later, is a "new
public-health approach to the nation's drug problem, one based not on
the punitive powers of the law but on the healing powers of medicine."
Massing, 46, is a 1970 graduate of Polytechnic Institute in Baltimore,
Md. Although he now lives in New York, he didn't have to look far from
his former home to find the person most responsible for crafting the
Nixon administration's successful drug-fighting strategy.
Jerome Jaffe, 65, who lives in Towson, Md., was the nation's first
drug czar. A psychopharmacologist, Jaffe had created a network of
treatment programs in Illinois when he was picked by Nixon in 1971 to
run the newly created Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention.
"I wanted treatment to be so available that people could not say they
committed crimes because they couldn't get treatment," says Jaffe, who
is a visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University and a professor of
psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore.
As Massing's book indicates, it certainly wasn't sympathy for drug
addicts that led Nixon's advisers to Jaffe. A heroin epidemic at
home, combined with media reports of increasing drug addiction among
U.S. soldiers in Vietnam, produced well-founded White House worries of
a political problem before the 1972 election. Nixon hoped Jaffe would
help solve it.
To Massing, this is yet another example of the Nixon paradox. The
anti-communist president who went to China also was the law-and-order
champion who did more to help addicts than any president since.
To Jaffe, "Nixon was the ultimate pragmatist. He certainly had strong
feelings about drugs. He felt that they corroded the fabric of
society. How do you deal with that? One way is to get supply under
control. I think he came to realize that you have to deal with the
demand side as well."
"The Fix" is much more than a public policy analysis. Massing also
tells the gripping stories of Raphael Flores, the obsessively dedicated
worker at Hot Line Cares, a walk-in center in Spanish Harlem where addicts
could walk in off the street and get
help, and Yvonne Hamilton, a cocaine and crack addict.
Massing's work in Spanish Harlem - he spent four years there - showed
him the similarity between what Jaffe was doing in Chicago 30 years
ago and what workers such as Flores were trying to do today.
Both believed help needed to be available as soon as addicts requested
it. Otherwise, they may never be seen again. And both discovered that
different addicts require different methods of treatment. Some
require structure. Heroin addicts might require methadone, a synthetic
narcotic that allows some to lead productive lives. Some addicts
reject formal programs. And some don't get better the first time. Or
the second. Or the third.
Massing says the research is clear: Treatment is the most cost
effective method of reducing drug addiction. He cites a 1994 Rand
Corp. study that showed treatment is seven times more cost effective
than arresting people, 10 times more effective than keeping drugs from
entering the country and 23 times more effective than attacking drugs
at their source.
With Jaffe as drug czar, thousands of addicts sought treatment in
1972. The amount of time they were forced to wait for a bed decreased
dramatically. And so did crime. FBI figures in 1972 showed that crime
rates dropped in 94 of 154 U.S. cities with a population of more than
100,000. Nationally, the crime rate decreased for the first time in
17 years.
Although Jaffe says other factors likely contributed to the lower
crime rate, he notes that 90,000 people entered treatment programs
when he was in charge. "An awful lot of people stopped behaving the
way they did."
Despite the successes, the Jaffe method was an easy target. Methadone
treatment always has been controversial, and no politician has ever
won an election by advocating more treatment for addicts. Mandatory
prison sentences for drug offenders have proven more popular among
voters than reducing the wait for a hospital bed. The Reagan
administration eventually cut the treatment budget by 25 percent.
Massing says an estimated 1.7 million people, nearly half of the
nation's hard-core addicts, couldn't get help today even if they
wanted it because of a lack of treatment beds. If Congress did
nothing more than balance the money spent on supply and demand (law
enforcement VS. treatment), those addicts could get treatment, he says.
But Massing says it will take another president with strong law-,
and-order credentials - "I hate to say it, a Nixonlike figure" - who
can shift the emphasis from law enforcement to treatment.
The answer, Massing says, is neither drug legalization nor
throw-away-the-key sentencing.
"This policy has been a disaster in political and human terms," he
says. "We're seeing hundreds of thousands of people locked away. I
would like to see a more humane policy."
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Ending The War On Drugs (The Economist, in Britain, insightfully recounts
the history and pitfalls of modern drug prohibition in a review of several
recent books about drugs and drug policy, including "Drug Crazy,"
by Mike Gray; "Opium: A History," by Martin Booth; "The Encyclopedia
of Psychoactive Substances," by Richard Rudgley; "Buzzed," by Cynthia Kuhn
and others; "Ending the War on Drugs," by Dirk Chase Eldredge,
and "The Fix," by Michael Massing.)
Date: Wed, 06 Jan 1999 22:45:59 +0000
To: vignes@monaco.mc
From: Peter Webster (vignes@monaco.mc)
Subject: The Economist: Ending The War On Drugs
Source: Economist, The (UK)
Contact: letters@economist.com
Website: http://www.economist.com/
Copyright: 1999 The Economist Newspaper Limited.
Pubdate: 2 Jan 1999
ENDING THE WAR ON DRUGS
The war against drugs is either not working or succeeding at too high
a cost, several recent books agree. What should replace it is harder
to be certain of.
DRUG CRAZY. By Mike Gray. Random House; 240 pages; $23.95.
OPIUM: A HISTORY. By Martin Booth. St Martin's Press; 381 pages; $24.95.
Pocket; $6.99 (paperback).
THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PSYCHOACTIVE SUBSTANCES. By Richard Rudgley. Little,
Brown; 302 pages; $18.99.
BUZZED. By Cynthia Kuhn, Scott Swartzwelder, Wilkie Wilson with Leigh
Heather Wilson and Jeremy Foster. Norton; 317 pages; $25 and $18.95.
ENDING THE WAR ON DRUGS. By Dirk Chase Eldredge. Bridge Works; 207 pages;
$22.95.
THE FIX. By Michael Massing. Simon and Schuster; 335 pages; $25
WAR is a dirty business, and the war on drugs involves plenty of
filth: deceit, corruption and damage to civil liberties, not to
mention outright violence--and that's just from the good guys. Every
struggle has to have heroes, and America's anti-drugs campaign makes
its casting billboard-clear. The white hats are enforcement agents
stamping out narcotics at home and abroad, police sweeping dealers and
users off the streets, judges jailing drug offenders, not to mention
plucky little civilians who just say no. The black hats are
shadowy figures: greedy drug barons, mostly foreign, who exploit their
own countrymen and corrupt America's children. Congress and Hollywood,
spurred on by alarmed parents, have created such a drugs mythology
that the good and evil of narcotics is now as distinct, to many, as
Mother Teresa and Saddam Hussein.
Yet today's highly militarised drugs campaign originated in more than
medicine and morality. From the start the war has involved political
interest and financial gain, as well as frequent misunderstanding--not
to mention downright misrepresentation--of the best evidence about
drugs' medical and social effects.
If these were novel or incidental mistakes, the war might be more
understandable. But, along with social concern and good sense, modern
drug policy has from the start involved fear and unreason, often
directed against foreigners or outsiders. It is almost 125 years since
authorities in San Francisco launched an early salvo in the western
war on drugs by clamping down on opium use among the growing
population of Chinese labourers. In the years leading up to the
Harrison Act of 1914, which amounted to the first federal ban on
non-medical narcotics, its drafters played on fears of drug-crazed,
sex-mad negroes to win support in the South.
Then 20 years later, the spectre of the sky-high, violent Mexican
immigrant was played up to sell the public on the criminalising of
marijuana. At several times since the 1930s, governments have used the
drug card, whether to lean on dispensible foreign dictators or to
brush back homegrown countercultures.
One thing that has changed, though, are the high stakes that America
is willing to play. In 1980, the federal government spent around $1
billion on drug control; federal, state and local spending last year
exceeded $30 billion, which includes much expanded programmes of crop
eradication, border patrolling and sting operations. Only a third of
the federal government's drug-control spending goes on drugs education
or drugs treatment.
How much success this money buys depends on your definition. According
to United Nations estimates, Americans are spending almost $60 billion
on illegal drugs a year, mainly on the soft drug, marijuana, and
its hard counterparts, cocaine and heroin. These are,
unavoidably, guesstimates. But nobody seriously contests that drugs
continue to pour into America and that prices have fallen. Cocaine
costs half or less what it did in the early 1980s and heroin sells for
just under $1,000 a gram, three-fifths of its price a decade ago.
Purity has also increased. In the 1980s, street heroin was so
adulterated that injecting straight into the blood was the surest way
to achieve a high. Now fixes are commonly more than 50% pure, which
means that users who might be deterred by needles can smoke or snort
the drug instead.
A third of all Americans admit to having tried drugs and at least 13m
are occasional users. Drug arrests were 1.1m in 1995, double the 1980
figure. There are 400,000 Americans behind bars for drug offences,
eight times the number 19 years ago.
Those who fight the war on drugs, with its strict penalties at home
and sharp punishment abroad, point to seizures of both drugs and their
users as victories. In their terms, they are. And if slowing the
spread of hard drugs is a sensible goal, which it seems to be, there
is indeed good news. Nationwide studies of drug use, such as the
University of Michigan survey of high-school students, suggest that
although teenage marijuana use has risen in recent years,
experimentation with cocaine or heroin among young, first-time users
has stayed fairly steady. Those who question or oppose the drugs war,
however, reckon that this is the wrong body count. Although casual
hard-drug consumption may be dropping, the number of hard-core hard
drug users--those most directly associated with the private and
collective misery of drugs--has scarcely budged since the war began.
Instead the war's critics propose an entirely new approach that drops
or downplays military means and abandons unconditional surrender as
the goal. The anti-war doves, as will be seen, form a growing and
disputatious camp. Yet whether they favour disapproval or toleration,
continued prohibition or legalisation, most doves accept that core
drug abuse is not going to be eradicated at an acceptable price, that
crusading moralism is counterproductive and that drugs policy should
be refocused on education for the young and harm reduction for
habitual users--for example, methadone programmes, needle-exchange
centres or prescription heroin.
It sounds like common sense. But good sense alone will not end the war
on drugs. Both the law makers and law breakers have too much invested
in the conflict for either to lay down arms easily. Even amid falling
prices, drug producers continue to profit from the risk premium that
prohibition puts on their multi-billion dollar industry. The anti-drug
warriors' jobs and budgets depend on expensive enforcement and
lucrative asset seizures. Having demonised their foes, they can only
with great difficulty now make peace with the devil.
Back to the future
Neither side is above massaging the drugs statistics. But anyone who
suspects that the critics of the drugs war are toying with the facts
should read Drug Crazy. This book describes the origins and
consequences of America's present narcotics policy. It moves from
gangland drug busts to Colombian coca plantations to Mexican border
patrols. This is reportage from the front line, told with all the
verve of an action film, a style which no doubt owes much to the fact
that its author, Mike Gray, is a Hollywood screenwriter and producer.
Mr Gray does not shrink from describing the violence of the drugs war,
from shoot-outs in the ghettoes of Chicago to explosions on the
streets of Bogota. But the legal burden of America's current drug
policy comes through most clearly in his description of how drug
dealers are brought to justice. Chicago's county court, which has seen
its caseload quadruple in the last 20 years largely because of
continued tightening of policy on drugs, now runs round the clock.
Although most people who take crack cocaine are white, 96% of the
crack defendants in federal courts are black or Hispanic. This is
largely because white people, being richer, do their deals behind
closed doors, while blacks and Hispanics tend to trade on the streets,
where they are more easily watched and arrested.
The night shift at Cook County court catches only the foot soldiers of
such drug armies as Chicago's Gangster Disciples. The officers stay
out of sight and, generally, out of jail. Justice is summary, and
baffling: ten-minute trials lead to five-year sentences for possession
of a fifth of an ounce of crack, while the same amount of powdered
cocaine lands its owner a few weeks in prison. Crack is cocaine mixed
with baking soda to make it smokable and stronger. But concentrating
the drug also concentrates the penalty, introduced during the crack
scare of the 1980s. As blacks use more crack than powdered cocaine,
the punishment falls disproportionately on them. Arrest and
imprisonment are scarcely deterrents. A young lawyer at the county
court is quoted as saying, We're not producing justice here. We're
manufacturing revolutionaries.
On a continent once famous for revolutionaries--Latin America--the
tough position of the United States has had mixed effects. The Bush
administration spent $2 billion on crop eradication and substitution,
spraying the jungle and bribing peasants to plant passion fruit rather
than coca plants--with little success. By 1992, cocaine production had
grown by 15% and the business had spread across an area the size of
the continental United States. It had also become frighteningly
efficient, first dominated by Pablo Escobar (a ruthless killer,
as Mr Gray describes him, with a pleasant side) in Medellin and
then the Rodriguez Orejuela brothers in Cali. The high-tech barriers
America erected along its borders have succeeded in diverting entry of
South American cocaine from Florida to California and Texas via
Mexico, thereby drawing another country into the violence and
corruption which has plagued Colombia. And the high premium that the
criminalisation of drugs places on them means that South America has
turned its eye to heroin, a far more profitable drug than cocaine.
None of this, as Mr Gray stresses, should come as a surprise.
America's last concerted effort at substance control, prohibition of
alcohol in the 1920s, had similar effects. It inflated prices, drove
bootleg suppliers to organise, encouraged the spread of guns and
crime, corrupted a quarter of the federal enforcement agents--and
doubled the consumption of hard liquor, all within a decade. Nor does
Drug Crazy neglect the influence of stubborn or strong-minded
individuals. It is full of outsize characters from the past: Hamilton
Wright, for example, an American doctor turned diplomat, who tried to
bully the world into drug prohibition, crafted the Harrison Narcotics
Act and was later sacked for drinking on the job. Or Harry Anslinger,
head of drug enforcement from 1930 to 1962, who perfected the sledge
hammer school of narcotics control and invoked every menace from
axemen to communism.
Drugs in history
Because the drugs war is so noisy and so visible, it is often easy to
forget that drugs are not just an American issue. Martin Booth's Opium: A
History charts the rise of heroin from its ancient origins in the poppies
of Eastern Europe to modern-day trade on the streets of America. The book's
wealth of detail is remarkable: all aspects botanical, political, economic,
cultural and pharmacological are discussed (including the unexpected
etymology of such slang as hip, hype and junkie). Unlike Drug Crazy
which is mainly focused on the Americas, much of Opium is set in Europe
and Asia, giving the book a more international perspective and more
comprehensive feel.
Although Mr Booth's accounts of famous addicts, from Clive of India to
John Pemberton, the inventor of Coca-Cola, make for interesting
reading, the real fascination of Opium is in its account of the
common man's habit through history. Until the Harrison Act, morphine
and opium--mainly in the tincture laudanum or as patent medicine--were
freely available in America, as they were in Europe. Opium was a
sovereign cure in Victorian England for afflictions ranging from
diarrhoea to depression. Babies were fed the drug in soothing syrups
such as Godfrey's Cordial, leading to claims of physical and mental
retardation, exactly the same concerns voiced about today's crack
babies.
In 1868, British public health authorities took most opiates out of
the hands of grocers and put them into those of dispensing doctors and
pharmacists (as, in America, did the Harrison Act). Starting with the
International Opium Commission of 1909, American efforts to curtail
world manufacture, sale and distribution of opium and its derivatives
met with lively resistance from Europe, India and other countries with
a stake in the international trade. Yet from the 1920s to the 1980s, a
series of international treaties forced countries to clamp down on the
production, trade and consumption of opiates, whether for ritual, for
fun or as self-administered medicine. In that time, the penalties for
peddling and possession tended to climb, especially in America.
One clear historical lesson that emerges from Opium is that
people will take drugs whether or not they are proscribed, and they
will do so for all sorts of reasons--to escape life's burdens, for
adventure, for straightforward fun. In 19th-century Britain, Mr Booth
tells us, the Fens of East Anglia were awash in opium. Agricultural
labourers took their pennyworth of elevation along with a
nightly beer as a lift out of working drudgery. This is not so far
from the plight of crack addicts in America's inner cities, boxed in
by poverty, dead-end jobs and broken families.
What does vary widely with history, however, are official attitudes
towards the drug trade. As Britain followed America's line in the
1980s and got tough on drugs, complaints were regularly fired
against heroin-producing nations, such as Pakistan. Supply-side
control was seen as the solution to the drug problem; if only these
people would pull up their poppies, then Western drug use would
plummet. Ironically, exactly the same argument was used against the
British in the early 19th century, when they foisted opium from India
on the Chinese in exchange for tea. When China's then drug czar, Lin
Ts=EA-hs=FC, complained to the British that they were breaking
imperial edicts banning opium import and possession, the prime
minister, Lord Palmerston, replied that the opium trade was a Chinese
problem and that it should be dealt with by controlling consumption.
His logic sounds familiar today.
Such shifts are common in drug debates, according to Richard Rudgley,
a University of Oxford anthropologist. Which intoxicants are forbidden
and which tolerated has never added up to a very coherent story. How
many exasperated parents have lectured teenagers about drugs while
pouring themselves a third drink or lighting another fag? Some of the
most debilitating and addictive compounds, such as alcohol and
tobacco, are permitted while less obviously damaging drugs such as
marijuana are widely proscribed.
In The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Substances, Mr Rudgley
offers a quick history of almost 100 drugs, sacred and profane, from
the hallucinogenic mushroom amanita to the zombie mixtures of Haitian
folklore. Though dutiful on ordinary drugs, he is gripped when it
comes to the exotic or obscure. There are intriguing entries on
so-called psychoactive animals. Apparently members of the Humr tribe
in south-west Sudan dream vividly of giraffes after taking giraffe
liver extract or bone marrow. What heroin taker would swap its
orgasmic rush for a giraffe dream? As Mr Rudgley sweeps from soma of
the ancient Indo-Iranians to Ecstasy in the British rave scene, he is
careful always to put his psychoactive substances into a wider
cultural or even ritual context, an aspect that has been largely lost
in Western drug use.
A quick fix
Common to many of these books is the charge that American
administrations have tended to neglect solid evidence which might ease
their drug bind. This is most obvious with marijuana, which 70m
Americans over the age of 12 have tried, some for medical reasons, but
most for fun. Since the 1930s, blue-ribbon panels of scientists and
doctors have urged its decriminalisation, only to meet rebuttal from
influential voices, like Anslinger, that marijuana was a gateway
substance leading users to more damaging drugs such as heroin. Yet the
evidence to support marijuana's gateway status is remarkably
thin. Marijuana is not benign. There are legitimate concerns about its
effect on memory and on the lungs, among other organs. But by most
clinical (and personal) accounts, the drug is no more dangerous than
alcohol, a freely-flowing intoxicant.
Yet marijuana policy in America does appear to be softening. Half a
dozen states have voted to legalise the drug for medical purposes. By
contrast, the tough official policy on hard drugs shows little sign of
change. Nor do the anti-drug-war doves appear to be making much
headway in winning converts where it counts--among elected politicians
and in the criminal-justice system. Part of the trouble is that the
anti-war camp is divided, not least on something seemingly as basic as
the medical effects of hard drugs. This is not their fault: the issues
are complex and the evidence is often disputable. Yet given the sheer
weight of belief that hard drugs are very dangerous indeed, the burden
of disproof rests, politically, on the doves.
To take a glaring example of where well-informed, fair-minded people
can differ on what you might expect was observable fact: Mr Rudgley
describes the bleak prospects of America's 375,000 crack babies, born
to addicted mothers, who face a life of mental and physical
retardation. But Mr Gray claims that this figure is grossly
exaggerated and that most crack babies grow up to be quite normal and
not brain-damaged, unteachable monsters.
Any sensible approach to hard drugs ought to start with an
understanding of addiction. But addiction, too, appears to be a
bendable notion. Do drugs give addicts a habit or do addicts make a
habit of drugs? Not everyone who takes a hard drug spirals into
dependence. How destructive it is to be hooked depends a lot on your
circumstances. Cocaine is most certainly addictive for some, but many
users manage to limit their intake to the occasional snort. Heroin is
much harder to take or leave. But addicts can regularise consumption
and do jobs, as heroin-prescription programmes in Switzerland and
Britain have shown.
The best research seems to confirm most people's intuition that
addiction depends on a damaging mix of biochemistry and bad social
conditions. Much of this research is discussed in Buzzed, a
guide to the effects of legal and illicit drugs from coffee to
cocaine. The authors wrote it out of concern for what they take to be
a growing disconnect between advances in understanding of the
physiology of addiction and public perceptions of drug abuse.
Buzzed describes complex neurochemistry with admirable clarity
and its glossary of drug terms will raise smiles. Roche may be a
respectable Swiss pharmaceutical company. But Roche in street
slang is Rohypnol, the notorious date-rape drug. Prudential has
nothing to do with insurance but means a crack-user. Buzzed is
less clear about how much cocaine or heroin you can take without
risking addiction. This is not its fault. Even the best evidence on
this has an elusive, it-depends quality: instant, one-off addiction is
rare even with heroin, it seems, but repeated use over a few weeks or
less can create dependence. Yes, but what is the connection between
that first use and those few repeats?
Denouncing the war on drugs is the easy part. Finding a different
approach is trickier. The more radical anti-war doves believe in
sweeping legalisation. Dirk Chase Eldredge is one such and he makes a
fact-packed case in Ending the War on Drugs. Unlike Drug
Crazy, which views the war from the trenches, this book reads more
like a conference report from a chateau general.
Yet the author is not what you might expect. Mr Eldredge is a
life-long Republican and former campaign manager for President Reagan,
whose wife, Nancy, sponsored Just Say No. Within the party his
is very much a minority view: most Republicans in Congress who speak
out on the issue are unblinkingly pro-war and would like to see users
and pushers off the streets for good.
Undaunted, Mr Eldredge spells out how legalisation could be
accomplished. His preferred system would include state-run sales,
quality-and-price control and a ban on advertising. Revenue from drug
sales and a peace dividend (fewer prisoners and crop
eradications to pay for) would, he believes, provide money for
anti-drug education, drug treatment and research.
As a virgin-lands policy, this has strong appeal. Unfortunately,
America is not virgin soil and Mr Eldredge's proposal is beset by
several layers of difficulty. He himself acknowledges the problem
faced by the constitutional primacy of the states in criminal matters:
repealing federal drug laws would do little good if states did not
follow in concert. He imagines the black market that would persist if
for example one state legalised while its neighbour continued to proscribe.
A similar difficulty exists at the international level. America has
signed several drug treaties that prohibit trade in narcotics and
oblige countries to police its use. Either America must persuade much
of the world to decriminalise, having spent decades cajoling or
coercing other nations into adopting an opposite line. Or America must
abrogate treaties and legalise unilaterally, a step which could turn
it into a black-market drugs exporter. Politically, neither course
looks appetising.
A third problem is uncertainty about the use-and addiction-effects if
cocaine and heroin were decriminalised. It may well be that some
people will take drugs whatever the law says. Just as Mr Booth cites
history, Mr Eldredge cites recent opinion polls in support of the view
that drug laws have little visible effect on drug conduct. There are
strict drug laws and most people do not take drugs. But to treat the
second as a consequence of the first, he believes, is a mistake. The
reasons people give for why they do not take drugs include all sorts
of things--health effects, moral scruples, personal dislikes--but the
law seldom figures highly among them.
This is persuasive as far as it goes. But it skirts the main issue:
how many people would try hard drugs if they were legally available,
and how many new addicts would there be? Prohibitionists point to the
Dutch experience. The partial decriminalisation of cannabis there was
followed, they point out, by a sharp rise in use by teenagers.
Increased availability, in other words, inevitably means some
increased consumption. But the marijuana parallel is not relevant,
many doves insist, since soft and hard drugs are so different. Cocaine
and heroin, they seem to be saying, are their own best deterrent.
The truth is nobody can say with any confidence what would happen if
hard drugs were legalised. No country has yet dared to try and
addiction research has not yet given firm enough answers.
A middle way
Not surprisingly, many people are looking for a middle way between the
diehard warriors and the out-and-out legalisers. Last year, Foreign
Affairs published an instructive exchange between Ethan Nadelmann, who
favours harm-reduction for illegal hard drugs in a context of
marijuana decriminalisation (Commonsense Drug Policy;
January-February 1998 issue) and Herbert Kleber and Mitchell
Rosenthal, who favour continued proscription but think money should
also be invested in education, treatment and research on the home
front (Drug Myths from Abroad; September-October 1998).
In The Fix, Michael Massing describes in detail one of America's
few sustained attempts to relieve or cure addicts rather than punish
them. Early in the 1970s an estimated 600,000 Americans regularly used
heroin, a number swollen by addicted soldiers returning from Vietnam.
President Nixon asked Jerome Jaffe, a psychiatrist from Chicago, to
set up methadone centres and abstinence programmes across the country.
At their height, such demand-side initiatives received
two-thirds of the federal drug budget, and made considerable gains:
crime rates fell and fewer addicts died of overdoses.
But as the heroin crisis abated, so did government interest in the
Jaffe programmes. Subsequent administrations, Republican and
Democratic, turned to supply-side controls abroad and to locking
up users and pushers in America. Mr Massing is particularly critical
of a shift in resources under Presidents Reagan and Bush from the dark
heart of drug use--hard-core cocaine and heroin addiction--to teenage
marijuana use.
A few methadone treatment centres carry on Dr Jaffe's tradition, but
they have room for only 15% of America's 800,000 heroin addicts.
The Fix takes to the street with one service, New York's Hot
Line Cares, as it lives hand-to-mouth trying to get the city's crack
addicts into precious treatment slots. The reward is found, not only
in Mr Massing's accounts of wasted lives rescued through treatment,
but also in hard economics. According to a 1992 study conducted by
California's Rand Corporation, treatment is seven times better at
reducing cocaine consumption in America than domestic law enforcement
and an astonishing 23 times more effective than blasting foreign drug
sources. Mr Massing advocates a rebalancing of the nation's drug
budget, with half of its resources allocated to treatment and
education, out of the pocket of supply-side control. Drug warriors
certainly challenge this balance of power. An increased investment in
treatment or harm reduction will not singlehandedly solve the drug
problem. But at least they will not make matters worse, which the war
on drugs very arguably has.
to the 1999 Daily News index for Jan. 1-7