Drug Policy Reform Strategies - Except from Judge James Gray

The following is an excerpt from Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It: A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs, by Judge James Gray. It is an amazing book told from a vital perspective, which is both thorough and easy/fun to read. Having reading some books on the issue, these are the most concrete conclusions or strategies to reforming our country's drug policies that I most agree with, personally...

• Education - Our drug education programs must tell people the truth, especially young people. We must treat our children like the real human beings that they are. Slogans may be okay for our young children, but adolescents and young adults need to have an honest and truthful presentation of risks and benefits. Educational programs must take into account that, dangerous as they are, these mind-altering drugs are here to stay, and all of us in varying ways will receive pressure to use them. But if we do take these drugs, there are risks involved, legally, socially, and physiologically. One way or the other, each of us will be held accountable for our actions.
  
  
• Needle Exchange - Lobby our governmental representatives to institute and support these proven programs. This is a "no-brainer." Needle-exchange programs have been proven materially to increase the health of the user while not increasing drug use or abuse. Further, they have the collateral benefit, just like the programs for recyclable bottles and cans, of removing them from our streets, thereby reducing the risk that we and our children will contract AIDS or other infectious diseases by coming into contact with dangerous hypodermic needles that are now thrown away as litter. And do not permit anyone to say in your presence that needle exchange programs "send the wrong message" to our children. The message we are sending under our current drug policy is, "Go ahead and die. We don't care about your health, your life, or even the lives of your sexual partners or your children if you use drugs.
  
  
• Send the Right Message - Help to end the federal subsidy on tobacco.
  
  
• Hemp - Lobby our governmental representatives to legalize hemp, that is, marijuana plants with a THC level of .3 percent or lower. This is also a no-brainer. A THC level of .3 makes the plant impotent as a mind-altering drug. But the hemp from the stalk of these plants can re-institute a historically profitable industry. The legalization of hemp will make a major positive impact on our job market and our environment. At a time in which more and more of our old growth forests are being withdrawn from logging operations, we can rejuvenate our industries for paper pulp, plywood, two-by-fours, rope, textiles, nontoxic paints and varnishes, and many other products from fast-growing hemp. Why cut down trees when hemp can do the job just as well?
  
  
• Medical Marijuana - Lobby our governmental representatives to pass legislation to allow licensed medical doctors to prescribe marijuana to their patients. The most expeditious route would be for the president to reschedule marijuana as a Schedule II rather than a Schedule I drug. If the president lacks the courage to take this simple step, then we must pursue the legislative course. It goes without saying that a doctor who over-prescribes this or any other drug must be held accountable under our current regulations. But the viability of marijuana to relieve the symptoms of cancer, AIDS, and other serious illnesses has been proved, and it is heartless, if not criminal, to deprive suffering patients the relief that this substance can bring.
  
  
• Medication - Allow our medical doctors, instead of police officers, to determine appropriate medications for various maladies and to relieve pain - and hold the doctors accountable for any possible abuses.
  
  
• The Eight-Percent Early Intervention Program - Significant studies have shown that 8 percent of all juvenile offenders commit about half of all juvenile offenses. These "eight-percenters" can be detected by screening them to determine if they have three or more of the following four profile factors: 1) significant family problems, such as abuse, neglect, criminal family members, or a lack of parental supervision and control; 2) significant problems at school, such as truancy, failing more than one course, or a recent suspension or expulsion; 3) a pattern of drug or alcohol use; and 4) delinquent peers, chronic runaway, or patterns of stealing. This screening should be done the very first time any juvenile offender is taken into the juvenile justice system. Then we must, if only for our own safety and preservation, provide more services not only to that juvenile offender, but also to that offender's entire family. This program reduces both crime and substance abuse.
  
  
• Community Policing - Policing programs that get the officers out of their patrol cars and back into the communities they are attempting to serve have been proven to work. Studies have shown not only that violence from the police begets community cooperation and peaceful conditions. In effect, this is a mentoring program for the entire community. Of course police must still arrest and jail offenders. But just as medical doctors use surgery as a last resort, police should use their powers of arrest in the same fashion.
  
  
• Strictly Administered Probation for Nonviolent Offenders - Strictly administered probation costs much less money than prison - and it is much more effective. And it can be combined with a strict program of restitution paid by the offender back to the crime victim. Unfortunately our present system punishes the victims of crime three times: first, when the crime is originally perpetrated against them; second, when they are forced to come to court on several occasions to testify; and third, when we force them to reach into their pockets and pay for the incarceration of the offender. Concentrate instead on a strictly applied program of restitution from the offender to the victim, which would be much more effective for the offender, for the victim, and for society itself. This would also allow us to reserve prison space for violent offenders, who simply must be removed from society for as long as possible.
  
  
• Drug Treatment - Make quality drug treatment programs available on demand for everyone. The Delancey Street treatment programs are a successful model in teaching self-sufficiency to heavily addicted people. Mentoring, caring, hope, and personal accountability are the keys. As long as we continue to incarcerate nonviolent offenders, their treatment facilities should be low-security institutions. These will cost the taxpayer much less money and achieve much lower recidivism rates. And if the person incarcerated is a single parent, a residential program should be available that would allow the family unit to stay together in appropriate circumstances.
  
  
• Drug Courts - These take more judicial resources and patience; but they work with addicted people and give them hope. But again, just as with alcohol, the mind altering drug does not have to be illegal in order to use the criminal justice system effectively to coerce the problem user into treatment. Use drug courts for appropriate nonviolent but problem drug users who find their way into the criminal justice system because of their misdeeds, just as we do now for nonviolent problem alcohol offenders.
  
  
• De-profitize the Drug Market as Best We Can - Bring the use and possession of these drugs back under the law! Of course these drugs are dangerous, but the money from their sale causes more harm than the drugs themselves. A black market of some kind will always be with us, but it can be severely diminished in size and power. Under our current system there are no controls at all on who can buy these drugs, on their quality or purity, or on quantities sold, except those controls enforced by the criminal drug sellers, who, of course, pay no taxes on the sales. And it is easier for our children to buy cocaine or heroin than it is for them to buy a six-pack of beer. The distribution of alcohol is controlled by the government. The distribution of drugs like cocaine is controlled by the mob. Virtually any system would be better than what we have now.
  
  
• Drug Substitution Programs - Take the governmental paranoia out of this area. Protect our communities more from the harmful actions of drug-addicted people, and a little less from the potential harms of drugs like methadone.
  
  
• Drug Maintenance Programs - Until our drug-addicted people will participate in drug treatment programs, maintain them under medical supervision on their drugs in as safe a manner as possible. Remember that "dead addicts can't get clean."
  
  
• Reform Asset Forfeiture Laws - Allow forfeiture of money and other property involved in drug law violations only after a criminal conviction, with the issue of forfeiture being submitted to the same jury. We obviously must fund our law enforcement agencies sufficiently for them to protect our people, but this funding must not come from sharing in the "plunder" of drug forfeitures.
  
  
• Reward Prison Wardens for Low Recidivism Rates - Changing the incentives to recognize and reward prison wardens for reduced rates of recidivism of their inmates would result in every one of then adopting drug treatment programs and other proven programs that would materially improve the lives of the inmates and their families, reduce the overall costs to the taxpayers, and make us all safer.
  
  
• Safe Passage to Seek Medical Care - Pass laws allowing people to seek medical care for other people who have overdosed, with no questions asked.
  
  
• Revise Our Spending Priorities - The federal government is spending more on TV commercials than on after-school programs for our children - even though these programs are the most effective way to prevent adolescent drug abuse.
  
  
• Mandatory Minimum Sentences - Repeal laws that take away discretion from judges in the sentencing of nonviolent criminal offenders. Instead, hold judges accountable by requiring them to specify the reasons for their sentences on the public record. Mandatory minimum sentences have filled our prisons with low-level drug offenders, have unnecessarily ruined thousands of lives, and have discredited the law in the eyes of hundreds of thousands of Americans - and rightfully so.
  
  
• Three-Strike Laws - Utilize these laws only for serious or violent felonies. Otherwise we will continue to fill up our prisons, at great human and financial expense, with low-level, nonviolent drug offenders.
  
  
• Prison Construction - Write frequent letters to your elected officials demanding a moratorium on all prison construction until the War on Drugs is repealed.
  
  
• Teach Classes in Addiction Medicine - Our medical schools should be encouraged to educate our future doctors in the area of addiction medicine.
  
  
• Prescription Drug Abuse - Focus on the problems of all drug abuse, including prescription drugs and alcohol, instead of only on drugs that happen to be illegal at the time.
  
  
• Alcohol Abuse - End the glamorization of alcohol through such things as advertising, particularly to our children. Today's sports events, rock concerts, and even political events often seen like on big beer advertisement. And tighten the restrictions that keep alcohol from being available to children and adolescents.
  
  
• Support and Encourage Research - There are some exciting studies that show, for example, that a substance called ibogaine reduces the problems of addiction, that a deficiency of manganese results in greater aggression and addiction, and the marijuana reduces the symptoms of several serious illnesses. Other studies are beginning to show that addiction may actually be a brain disease, or may be connected with genes associated with our "biological clocks." Encourage people to keep their minds open, and support the funding of this important research.
  
  
• Help Defend Our Civil Liberties - Raise the alarm about the loss of protections under the Bill of Rights as a direct result of U.S. drug policy. Ask yourself and others what Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine, Abraham Lincoln, or Theodore Roosevelt would have done under these circumstances.
  
  
• Send the Right Message - Prohibit the sale of all alcohol at gasoline stations.
  
  
• Federalism - Support the "federalism" instead of the "federalization" of drug policy. As we did after the repeal of Alcohol Prohibition, allow each state to address these problems in the manner best suited for its needs, and restrict the federal government to helping each state enforce its chosen laws.
  
  
• International Agreements - Revise our treaties with other nations to allow each country to adopt programs addressing its domestic drug problems in the way that best meets its needs.
  
  
• Stop the Political Charade - Put an end to the embarrassing and arrogant political game of certifying various nations around the world according to our perception of their "cooperation" in pursuing our War on Drugs.

These ideas, bibliographical references and more can be found in Judge James Gray's book, Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It: A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 2001.

I have copied this portion of the Judge Gray's book without permission. Upon reading it, I felt a need to scream it from the rooftops, and this was my closest appropriate method. I apologize if this copying is deemed inappropriate, and will remove the excerpt from this site if necessary. Also, as I copied this by hand, be assured and typos are my mistakes and not the author's.