Drug
Reform
2000:
A
Ballot
Measure
Overview
1/15/00
The initiative process has become an effective tool for drug policy reform, as evidenced by the medical marijuana initiative victories across the country in 1996, 1998, and most recently in Maine in 1999. This year a new set of initiatives on drug treatment diversion and civil asset forfeiture reform is being planned for California and Massachusetts by a new national group, Campaign for New Drug Policies (CNDP). Like Americans for Medical Rights, the group that sponsored medical marijuana initiatives in six states, CNDP has received funding from philanthropists George Soros, John Sperling, and Peter Lewis. The California initiative would offer drug treatment instead of incarceration for non-violent drug offenses – and this treatment is more than just therapy. The services are to include literacy training, job training and family counseling. Like Arizona’s drug diversion law, passed in 1996, campaigners expect this initiative to save the state a great deal in incarceration costs. While in Arizona the program has saved the state $2.5 million with 2,622 non-violent offenders participating, the California state Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates that the measure would provide net savings to the state of between $100 million to $150 million per year with an additional $50 million net savings to the counties. By taking 25,000 people per year that would have served prison or jail time and putting them in treatment, the initiative may eliminate the construction of a new prison at a cost of $500 million. The initiative also goes beyond the Arizona law, in that treatment will be available to parolees caught with drugs, provided they have no violent felonies on their records. Campaign spokesman Dave Fratello said of the initiative, "This will help California end its dependence on punishment and prisons as our principal responses to drug abuse. In doing so, we can radically reduce spending on failed policies, and conserve jail and prison space for truly dangerous offenders." In Massachusetts, the Committee for Forfeiture Reform has qualified an initiative that not only calls for diverting money and property seized in drug busts away from the police and into drug treatment programs, but also protects property rights by requiring the government to prove that property was used to facilitate a drug crime. Finally, the measure expands the eligibility of drug offenders for drug treatment as an alternative to incarceration. The additional treatment costs will be paid for through asset forfeiture. Of great concern to the Massachusetts campaign is preventing the state’s police from turning asset forfeiture cases over to federal authorities in order to redirect the proceeds to themselves. According to federal law, local and state police departments who transfer forfeiture cases to the federal government stand to see as much as 80% of the value of the assets returned to them. When the state of Missouri passed a law mandating that seized asset forfeiture money go to education, that pipeline of educational monies vanished when state police federalized many asset forfeiture cases. The Massachusetts initiative will impose criminal penalties, which could include up to a year in jail, upon police who launder money through federal asset forfeiture. The police and District Attorneys in Massachusetts have already expressed opposition to the measure because they feel it will rob them of needed funding. In Arizona, a sweeping marijuana decriminalization initiative has been sponsored by The People Have Spoken, another Sperling, Soros and Lewis-backed group that successfully passed an initiative last year safeguarding the state’s 1996 drug policy reform initiative. The new initiative proposes changes in asset forfeiture laws, as well as marijuana decriminalization, and codifies a prescription and distribution system for medical marijuana. Under the initiative, the penalty for possession of less than two ounces of marijuana would be reduced from a misdemeanor to a maximum $500 dollar fine. Police would no longer arrest marijuana smokers, but would instead issue citations. Also, property forfeited from drug dealers would go to drug treatment and gang prevention programs rather than the police department. Police found violating this provision would be liable for civil penalties up to three times the amount seized. To improve access to medical marijuana, Arizona doctors would be allowed to prescribe it through a program supervised by the Arizona Attorney General. Under the new rules, the Attorney General’s office would keep a registry of qualified patients and deliver marijuana to patients from the Federal Compassionate Use program or tested, confiscated marijuana. Preliminary polling in Maricopa County, which includes the city of Phoenix, found 70 percent supported the initiative with only 21 percent opposed. Meanwhile, Americans for Medical Rights will manage campaigns for two medical marijuana initiatives begun in 1998. Nevada law requires that voters in that state, who approved a medical marijuana initiative in 1998, must vote again in 2000 to ratify the constitutional amendment proposed in that measure. And in Colorado, a judge has declared that the state must place a medical marijuana initiative on the 2000 ballot after it was wrongly disqualified in 1998. Exit polls conducted during the ‘98 vote, when it appeared on the ballot but was not officially tallied, indicated the initiative would have passed by 60%. Other possible drug policy reform initiatives on the 2000 ballot, which are not backed by Soros, Sperling and Lewis, include marijuana legalization and drug decriminalization in Alaska, a medical marijuana initiative in Arkansas that will allow patients to use up to six pounds of the drug each year, and a marijuana legalization initiative in Michigan (http://www.ballot2000.net).
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