Political
Earthquake
Alert:
California
Drug
Reform
Initiative
Passes
First
Big
Hurdle
6/9/00
California voters will break ranks with the war on drugs if they approve a state initiative that has now qualified for the November ballot. The California Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act of 2000 has garnered more than 713,000 signatures, almost 300,000 more than needed. The initiative mandates probation rather than jail for people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses, and it would substitute community-based, state-funded treatment programs for jail time. Such programs would include vocational training, family counseling, literacy training and other job skills as well as maintenance therapy. "Treatment is tougher on crime than prison because it addresses the underlying problem," Campaign for New Drug Policies (CNDP) spokesman Dave Fratello told the Orange County Register. "The war on drugs has failed to do anything. Drugs are plentiful, our prisons are full of users and dealers, but nothing has changed. We feel it's time for a new direction." The Campaign for New Drug Policies is the Santa Monica, California-based group that led the ballot drive. The group includes several veterans of the 1996 Proposition 215 medical marijuana campaign. That initiative succeeded with California voters, but has since been nearly nullified by the federal government's unrelenting opposition. There are, however, significant differences between the 1996 effort and this year's initiative. "This is not at all like 215," said CNDP' s Whitney Taylor when asked about the possibility that the current initiative would be emasculated if it conflicts with federal law. "We've drafted this measure much more tightly, keeping current case law in mind the whole time. There's no conflict with federal law at all." Taylor also pointed out that a significant number of state legislators have come out in favor of this year's initiative, including Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco) and state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica). "We have major players on board already, which means the legislature is much less likely to try and overturn the initiative," Taylor pointed out. "It also means that, if the program works as it should, we shouldn't have to worry about future funding." The initiative received a potentially significant boost last week with an endorsement from Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Campbell, who is running for the U.S. Senate against Democrat incumbent Dianne Feinstein. "I think treatment for a first offender is far more likely to be helpful than incarceration," Campbell told the San Jose Mercury News. "It's less costly and far more beneficial." Drug warriors wasted no time in attacking the ballot initiative. On June 2, drug czar Barry McCaffrey said, "We're on the verge of having a poison pill inserted into the revolution. I hope California, with its trend-setting ideas, will not let drug courts be dismantled from within." McCaffrey argued that the big stick of possible jail time was needed to force drug users to stop. "If you think you can deal with changing drug addicts without holding them accountable for their behavior, you don't understand the nature of this brain disease," he said. "You have to have a reward and a punishment for people whose chaotic lives are completely out of control." CNDP's Dave Fratello sharply challenged McCaffrey's criticisms. "Instead of dismantling the drug courts, the initiative builds on and expands a statewide system," Fratello told DRCNet. "We are baffled" by McCaffrey's remarks, he added. Fratello concedes that there are differences, but points out that while the initiative has no provisions for short-term "shock" incarceration for probation violators, it does allow for imprisonment for people who don't follow the treatment program. Also, noted Fratello, unlike the drug courts, which demand that defendants sign away all rights to contest rulings, under the initiative, "Every defendant will have the right to counsel and all standard constitutional rights." CNDP has issued detailed responses to such criticisms, available on the CNDP web-site at http://www.drugreform.org/pr060100.tpl. Despite a message as mangled as his syntax, McCaffrey's alarm was a hit with his audience, the National Association of Drug Court Professionals, who were meeting in San Francisco. Drug courts, which number more than 600 in the United States, including 101 in California, currently allow nonviolent offenders to avoid jail if they pass regular drug tests and check-ins with judges. McCaffrey's attack is only the opening salvo in what promises to be a forceful effort to sink the initiative. Law enforcement groups have denounced the measure as a first step toward drug legalization, and California voters are almost surely facing five months of well-worn scare tactics. The bigger unknown is to what degree the initiative will become an issue in the Campbell-Feinstein race or even the fall presidential campaign. The stakes are considerable. "If the measure passes, its impact will be revolutionary," Franklin Zimring, a law professor at the University of California-Berkeley, told the Sacramento Bee. "This is not a sort of incremental step. As a policy experiment, if you consider medical marijuana to be a 1 on the Richter scale, this is a 10." So what can Californians do to detonate that sort of positive earthquake? "We think people should act locally and speak up," said Taylor. "Contact your local officials -- your mayor, the chief of police, members of the board of supervisors. Write letters to the editor. Let your elected officials know that you support the initiative." (Note: Although the mandatory treatment provisions of the California and other initiatives are certainly an improvement over prison sentences, and may make the measures more politically feasible, DRCNet opposes coerced drug treatment in principal and does not support it as anything more than a necessary compromise in some cases. We will explore this issue, and the larger issue of the drug courts, in future editions of The Week Online.)
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
