Groups Offer Exit Strategy for the War on Drugs

By Gene Johnson, The Associated Press
Source: Associated Press

Seattle -- A group of Washington doctors, religious leaders and lawyers offered an "exit strategy" for the war on drugs Thursday, a proposal that would aim to dry up the black market for heroin, marijuana and other substances by having the state regulate their distribution. "How we respond to drug abuse should not be more costly and cause more problems than the drugs themselves," said John Cary, president of the King County Bar Association, which is leading the effort. "We've got to find another way."

For now, the group is merely asking the Legislature to form a commission to recommend ways the state could regulate the drug trade. A bill introduced in the state Senate would do just that, though the idea faces serious opposition.

But the bar association also released a report that outlined what such regulation might look like: Registered addicts would be able to obtain limited quantities of heroin at state-licensed clinics or doctor's offices. That model has proved successful in some European countries, proponents said.

The drugs would be cheaper than on the street, providing incentive for addicts to turn to the state- drastically reducing drug-related crime and public availability. The drugs would also be free of unhealthy additives found in street drugs, and could be provided in a safe environment. Treatment would be offered simultaneously.

Because late-stage addicts consume the vast bulk of heroin sold on the streets, simply identifying those users and enrolling them in a prescription-type program would go a long way toward drying up the demand that fuels the illegal drug trade, Cary said.

Supporters include the Church Council of Greater Seattle, the Washington Academy of Family Physicians, the Washington State Pharmacy Association and Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility. They were quick to distance their proposal from "legalizing" drugs, a term that suggests "you can go to Wall Drug and get your heroin. That's not the case," said Roger Goodman, director of the bar association's Drug Policy Project. He prefers the term "medicalization."

Having the state put criminal gangs out of business and impose strict regulation of the drug trade would make the drugs scarcer, Goodman said. It would also dramatically cut how much the state spends imprisoning nonviolent drug offenders every year, a figure that tops $100 million, according to the report.

The report suggested regulating marijuana with a system similar to state liquor stores or by simply allowing people to grow their own - just as the state allows the production of home-brewed beer.

The report also offered legal reasoning for getting around federal drug laws, which are rooted in the federal government's power to regulate interstate commerce. The state could withdraw from the war on drugs by ensuring that only Washington state residents register as addicts. Stiff penalties would be provided for anyone caught reselling the drugs, especially to minors.

The bar association argues that states have power to oversee the health of their own citizens - an argument similar to the one being put forth to justify California's medical marijuana measure and Oregon's assisted-suicide law before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Switzerland has a heroin program allowing about 1,300 addicts to shoot up at approved centers with government-provided heroin, and the annual cost of about $8 million is covered by the state's health insurance system on the grounds that addiction is an illness rather than a crime. Swiss authorities say the result has been a drop in drug-related offenses, and that overdose-related fatalities fell to a 16-year low of 167 in 2002.

A clinic providing free heroin to addicts opened last month in Vancouver, British Columbia. The U.S. government would not back a similar program, David Murray of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy in Washington, D.C., told The Associated Press last month.

King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng said Thursday he disagreed with the proposal, but he credited the bar association for creating a dialogue that has helped lead to shorter prison terms and increased treatment for drug offenders in the past few years.

Chris Vance, chairman of the state Republican Party, called the proposal "the kind of thing the looney left supports in Europe."

"As long as I've been in politics, people have wanted to surrender the war on drugs rather than fight the war on drugs. I think that's completely out of step with where the people are," Vance said.

The bar association argued that the current war on drugs borders on insanity. There were 67,000 drug offenders in federal prison in 2001, compared to 3,400 in 1970 - and yet the availability and purity of drugs have increased while prices have fallen, indicating that drug trafficking organizations have become more sophisticated, the report suggested.

By contrast, the report pointed to a serious drop in tobacco use over the past two decades - a public health victory achieved without imprisoning a single smoker.

"It's easy to say, 'War on drugs, criminalize it, throw them all in jail,'" said Nancy Eitreim, president of the Seattle League of Women Voters, which supports the bar association's effort. "It's easy to say, 'Legalize it.' We're looking to find some middle ground."

Complete Title: Washington State Groups Offer 'Exit Strategy' for the War on Drugs

The full report is available on the 'Net: http://www.kcba.org/druglaw/index.html

Source: Associated Press (Wire)
Author: Gene Johnson, The Associated Press
Published: Thursday, March 3, 2005
Copyright: 2005 The Associated Press
Link to article: http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread20315.shtml

 

By TRACY JOHNSON
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

The state should take the control of drugs away from gangs and street dealers -- manufacturing them and distributing them to addicts instead of locking up users and letting the black market thrive, according to the King County Bar Association.

Proponents of the controversial idea, outlined in a report released yesterday, say continuing to deal with drug addiction as a crime instead of a medical problem is not only expensive, it simply doesn't work.

They say letting the state regulate now-illegal drugs would curb all kinds of problems in society that the so-called war on drugs has failed to address, including gang violence, petty crime and drug use by kids.

"It's time for us to take a fresh look at how we are dealing with the use and abuse of drugs in our society," said the Rev. Sandy Brown, executive director of the Church Council of Greater Seattle, which also stands behind the proposal.

"Our solutions aren't working. ... They've actually created injustices that need to be fixed."

Supporters acknowledge the idea is too new and controversial to get off the ground this year, despite a state Senate bill that proposed a first step. Bar association President John Cary said the idea, for now, is to get a discussion going about a sweeping drug-policy overhaul.

Under the bar association's proposal, drugs -- particularly hard drugs such as heroin -- would be produced in state facilities, offering better guarantees of purity.

The state could then regulate who gets them in various ways, including requiring people to prove they are addicted, limiting drug use to a restricted place, or even having users undergo training programs to learn more about drug-related health issues, such as blood-borne illness and sexually transmitted disease.

The idea of providing drugs to addicts makes little sense to some, but the strategy has shown great promise in European countries including Switzerland and the Netherlands, said Roger Goodman, director of the bar association's drug-policy project.


Goodman said "bringing addicts indoors" has made them less likely to commit crimes to support their habits, and regulated doses have allowed many people to decrease their drug use or, in some cases, quit.

In Vancouver, B.C., health officials are giving free doses of heroin to a small group of addicts with hopes of stemming drug-related crimes and eventually treating their addictions.

Different drugs should be regulated in different ways, giving the state more control over drugs that have more potential for harm, according to Goodman. Cocaine and heroin, for example, might need ultra-strict regulation; lawmakers might need to consider different methods to regulate marijuana because nearly anyone can grow it, according to the report.

The proposal shuns the politically explosive term of drug "legalization," pushing a concept of "strict regulation and control." Supporters hope to dispel images of heroin being sold over the counter, or street dealers doing the same thing they've always done without worrying about police.

The whole idea has drawn skepticism -- even from those who have been supportive of focusing on treating instead of incarcerating drug users and low-level dealers.

King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng said the way drug cases are handled "continues to be an important issue that deserves further discussion and study."

In a written statement yesterday, he said, "While I don't agree with the Bar Association's proposal, it's important to note that we have made significant changes in our criminal justice system with regard to decreasing sentences and increasing treatment options for drug offenders."

(Note: The preceding statement by Norm Maleng was misquoted in the original version of this article.)

Tom Riley, a spokesman for the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy, said he didn't see how "making drugs less difficult for addicted users to get stems the problem." He suggested the idea would also invite a flood of lawsuits.

"A state or municipality would have to be crazy to take on the legal liability that would come with distributing products with such known, catastrophic health consequences," Riley said.

Supporters of the plan -- including the Seattle League of Women Voters, the Washington State Public Health Association and the Washington State Pharmacy Association -- say current drug policy is a tragic failure.

Studies in recent years have shown that drug-crime prison sentences have fallen disproportionately on blacks and that more than three-quarters of the $40 billion spent on drug abuse in the United States each year goes toward punishment, not treatment.

Sen. Adam Kline, D-Seattle, sponsored the now-dead bill that would have created a panel of experts to decide how to implement the sweeping policy changes. He favors shifting the emphasis to drug-treatment but said many of his fellow lawmakers would not support such drastic changes to the state's drug policy.

"I think the King County Bar Association is light-years ahead of the Legislature in assessing the need for a radical sea change in the policy on drugs," Kline said.


Link to article: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/214530_drugs04.html

 

By Michael Ko
Seattle Times staff reporter


The "War on Drugs" failed a long time ago and it's time to create a new policy to control drug abuse, one based more on treatment and education and less on punishment, members of a coalition of local doctors, lawyers, church leaders and public-health officials said yesterday during a joint news conference.

"We are spending an enormous amount of money on drug issues at present," said John Cary, president of the King County Bar Association, which is spearheading the coalition. "This expenditure has a great impact on our justice system at every level. And it's not paying off for us."

Coalition members said a more effective approach could begin with the state Legislature creating a commission filled with experts from medicine, education and law enforcement, among others, to study what they consider the shortcomings of the current drug-policy approach and make recommendations for change.

"Opening up such a discussion is a socially responsible endeavor," said Sunil Aggarwal, president of the Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility, "as it allows for frank and public discussion of how we should best allocate scarce taxpayer resources in a manner that best protects public health and safety."

The bar association, concurrent with the news conference, released a 145-page report three years in the making, authored by the association's "Drug Policy Project."

It begins with a history of drug enforcement in the United States and ends with suggestions for foundations for a new drug policy, specifically state-level government regulation and control of drugs, but not legalization or commercialization of them.

In between, the report discusses international trends in drug policy and provides examples from Canada, Australia and Europe, including countries that provide drugs to qualified addicts in controlled settings, or have decriminalized and decreased penalties for certain drugs.

The report also says the current drug-control system facilitates an underground "black market" for drugs that is controlled by criminals.



The coalition agrees to certain principles. For example, the way society responds to drug abuse should not be more costly and cause greater harm than drugs themselves, and there is too heavy an emphasis on putting drug users in prison.

"It's an injustice to try to solve deep social and psychological, spiritual and physical problems with one solution: incarceration," said the Rev. Sanford Brown, executive director of the Church Council of Greater Seattle. "We believe it's smarter social policy to be treating addicts than just to be warehousing them."

However, coalition members stopped short of endorsing any specific plans. That's in large part because the coalition continues to grow and there isn't yet consensus among each of the groups about what the best specific plans are, said Jeff Mero, president of the Washington State Public Health Association.

Copies of the report are available from the bar association by calling 206-267-7001.


Link to article: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002196406_drugreport04m.html