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The Week Online with DRCNet, Issue #160
Saturday 18 Nov 2000 Message-ID: <6gipP1BqjcF6EwcB@shuggie.demon.co.uk> Date: Sat, 18 Nov 2000 00:10:18 +0000 To: shug@shuggie.demon.co.uk From: shug Subject: The Week Online with DRCNet, Issue #160 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Turnpike Integrated Version 5.01 U The Week Online with DRCNet, Issue #160 - Nov. 17, 2000 A Publication of the Drug Reform Coordination Network Phillip S. Smith, Editor, psmith@drcnet.org David Borden, Executive Director, borden@drcnet.org -------- PLEASE COPY AND DISTRIBUTE -------- TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Interview: Federal Judge Denounces Drug War 5. Britain: Labour on Drugs, Wobbly and Confused 6. Sweden: Small Cracks Emerge in Drug War Consensus in Europe's Bastion of Reaction 9. Criminal Defense Lawyers Demand End to Drug War ================ 1. Interview: Federal Judge Denounces Drug War http://www.drcnet.org/wol/160.html#federaljudge Judge Scott O. Wright, a Senior Federal Circuit Court Judge for the Western District of Missouri, this week joined the ranks of drug war critics on the federal bench. Wright stands alongside luminaries like Jack Weinstein, Robert Sweet and John Kane in utilizing his standing on the bench as a bully pulpit to call for drug policy change. Last Sunday, Wright accepted an invitation to give the keynote speech at the Kansas City Jewish Community Relations Bureau/American Jewish Committee's human relations awards banquet. He took that opportunity to hurl thunderbolts at the nation's drug policies, telling a receptive audience that the war on drugs "is destroying our inner city communities," and denouncing mandatory minimum sentencing, asset forfeiture abuses, and the "annihilation" of Fourth Amendment protections against unlawful searches and seizures. Wright, a Nebraska native, served as a Marine Corps aviator during World War II before obtaining a law degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1950. His legal career alternated between private practice and stints as a prosecuting attorney. He was appointed to the federal bench by President Jimmy Carter in 1979 and served as chief judge from 1985 to 1990. He assumed senior judge status in 1991. The Week Online interviewed Judge Wright on Wednesday. Here are excerpts from that interview: WOL: What inspired you to speak out on drug policy? Judge Wright: I sit on the bench and see that the overwhelming majority of the people I sentence are minorities. In all of these cases, it's a black or a Mexican or a Latino these drug agents nail. I can't believe there aren't any white people carrying drugs. When they nail these people, I have to think they're engaged in racial profiling. It's the same damn thing with the Highway Patrol. In every case where defendants were stopped on the highways, they've been minorities. This has been grinding around in my head for a long time, so when I was invited to make a speech, I just unloaded. I've talked about this for some time, but who cares what a federal judge says? And my wife is tired of hearing about it, so I thought this was a chance to say publicly these things I've been concerned about for a long time. WOL: In your speech last Sunday, you went out of your way to criticize mandatory minimum sentences. What's wrong with them? Judge Wright: Don't get me wrong, it's not that these people may not deserve some time in jail, but these mandatory minimums are just draconian. I hate drugs and I recognize that drugs are a real problem, but these people are nonviolent criminals. These sentencing guidelines and mandatory minimums leave all the power in the hands of the US Attorneys. They are the only ones who can file for a downward departure [a sentence below the mandatory minimum], and they do so only when someone is cooperating. That's not all bad, because lesser offenders can help nail someone up the ladder. But if someone has no information with which to bargain, the US Attorneys won't file the departure and the judge is stuck with the mandatory minimums. It is worst in the cases of these drug mules. They may not have any previous convictions and they may not even know what or how much they're carrying, but they get hammered by the mandatory minimums while the guys who are supplying them get off scot-free. WOL: Have you attempted to sentence defendants to terms you thought were just but were beneath the mandatory minimum? Judge Wright: Oh, yes, I've done that. Then the US Attorneys appeal, and the Court of Appeals reverses me. That's the law, but in a lot of these cases, the law is an ass. WOL: Have you ever succeeded in getting around the mandatory minimums? Judge Wright: Rarely. There was one case where a guy was operating a crack house, a big operation. When the police went in with a warrant, there were two guys outside selling rocks. They were addicts, just selling enough to keep themselves supplied. The crack house owner cooperated and got a downward departure from the US Attorney. He got 18 months. The two guys outside, however, the US Attorneys charged them with conspiracy and made them liable for all the drugs in the house, with mandatory minimum 10-year sentences. I said, "I'm not going to do that." I only found them liable for the drugs they had on them. WOL: And what happened on appeal? Judge Wright: The US Attorneys did not appeal. The case was so inequitable that even they didn't want to fight me on it. WOL: What would you recommend in terms of reforming drug policy? Judge Wright: Look, we've been at this for years and we're not getting anywhere. We're just putting a bunch of people in jail, while drugs are just as plentiful as ever. Again, let me say I think drugs are bad and it is sad to see these people hooked on drugs. But we can do better. First, spend more money on treatment. I think we could get some of these people off drugs. If we spent for treatment what we spend to put people in jail, there could be some successes. Second, we need to emphasize drug education. We need to start drug education at an early age. We need to work with children and parents so they realize the dangers. But it is the parents who are most important. Many don't seem to realize their kids are using, and that's a damned sad commentary on these parents. WOL: Some European countries have adopted decriminalization or legalization models where, for instance, heroin addicts can have access to a legitimate supply. Would you favor something like that? Judge Wright: I'm not saying that. When you're talking about legalization, maybe you're going a little too far. The problem is, nobody can talk about this. In the campaign, neither candidate mentioned drugs at all. They're afraid to mention it. Politicians are afraid to say the policy is wrong; they're afraid their opponents will label them "soft on drugs." There is something of a shift, though. Look at California, where they just passed that sentencing reform initiative. It will put people into treatment instead of prison. That's a good sign, a very good sign. WOL: Very few judges, federal or otherwise, have spoken out on this issue. Do you have any sense that your position has support among other judges? Judge Wright: A lot of federal judges are really upset about the mandatory minimums and sentencing guidelines, but they are reluctant to speak out. They ought to speak out. I talk to my fellow judges here, we have conversations over lunch, for example, and these things come up. There isn't a judge on this court who doesn't think mandatory minimums create very serious problems. WOL: In your speech, you also bemoaned the erosion of the Fourth Amendment as a result of the war on drugs and mentioned the Supreme Court's "cascading exceptions" to Fourth Amendment protections, among them "allowing police helicopters to peer into windows, highway troopers to search passengers in cars whose drivers seem suspicious, and, most notoriously, state agents to smash down doors without warning or evidence of crime." Judge Wright: Absolutely. The Fourth Amendment is in trouble. You have Highway Patrolmen stopping people and they always use the excuse that the guy had a driving infraction, he crossed the center line or something, and you know that's a damned fraud. WOL: Are you suggesting that these officers are lying to the court? Judge Wright: Yeah, I'm suggesting that they're not completely telling the truth. WOL: You also addressed asset forfeiture in your speech. What are your reservations about asset forfeiture? Judge Wright: Judges here have been really upset about asset forfeiture abuses for some time, but there was no movement until the Kansas City Star did their series on forfeiture (http://www.kcstar.com/projects/drugforfeit/). That series made it clear that what police are doing may not be illegal, but it sure is unethical. Here in Missouri, if local or state police seize money it is supposed to go to the school system. The police would get around it by turning the seizures over to the federal government, which in turn would kick most of it back to the police here. The police got the money, not the schools. Now, however, if the police want to give the money to the feds, they have to get a state court order, and state judges aren't going to go for that. This whole thing makes the police and Highway Patrol look bad because the money was supposed to go for schools and they were keeping it for themselves. The big problem with asset forfeiture and with the war on drugs in general is that there's so much money involved it makes law enforcement dishonest and unethical. WOL: What sort of reaction have you had to your speech? Judge Wright: Very favorable. The only chilly reception was from the US Attorney. You know, when I first came on the bench here, there were 14 Assistant US Attorneys. Now there are 48 of them, and they're prosecuting drug cases. At least 80% of the cases I hear are drug cases. I'm so sick and tired of trying drug cases. WOL: Are you willing to speak out again on this issue? Judge Wright: The general public needs to be informed about this. I will speak anywhere, anytime. Anything I can do to help. If you could read the politicians' minds, they know that what they're doing is not productive, but they're afraid their opponents will savage them as "soft on crime." The Clinton administration was afraid to do anything because the Republicans owned this issue. Maybe the Republicans will have to be the ones to undo this mess. ================ 5. Britain: Labour on Drugs, Wobbly and Confused http://www.drcnet.org/wol/160.html#labourondrugs DRCNet last reported on changing attitudes toward cannabis use and the resulting reverberations for British politics in late October (http://www.drcnet.org/wol/157.html#britain). Since then, Britain's cannabis controversy continues to tie the Labour government of Tony Blair in knots. In the wake of a rash of "I smoked it" confessions by Conservative Party leaders and even some members of the Blair cabinet, Blair issued an edict ordering his cabinet to no longer discuss past cannabis use. But Dr. Mo Mowlam, Cabinet Office Minister and head of government drug policy, had already joined the ranks of the confessors. Mowlam made waves again last week when, in a break with longstanding Labour cannabis policy that could signal a softening of the Blair hard line, she told BBC's On the Record TV program that the Labour Party could consider relaxing the laws on recreational use of cannabis if the scientific evidence showed it was not harmful or addictive. In the interview, she said that the Blair government did not condone cannabis use, but that she did not consider it a "gateway" drug. Instead, she told BBC, it could be that "drug pushers persuaded cannabis users to try heroin." Later, in an appearance on BBC radio, Mowlam added that the cabinet was now reconsidering its posture toward cannabis in light of recent shifts in public opinion. "What is going on is not just a cabinet discussion," she said, "what is going on is what we want to see, which is a more open discussion of the impact of cannabis." "But," she hastened to add, "our position on cannabis has not changed." Mowlam's comments came just days after Ian McCartney, a Cabinet Office colleague whose son died of a heroin overdose, attacked the government's "just say no" policy as a failure and called for a "new realism" on drug policy. But stiff opposition to drug policy reform remains, as evidenced by the savaging undergone by drug tsar Keith Hellawell in some quarters of the media, after he had the temerity to challenge the gateway theory that cannabis leads to hard drug use. "I have never subscribed to the view that if you take cannabis you end up taking heroin," he told an interviewer. "There's no research I know of that proves the link." The tabloid Daily Mail promptly lined up a host of "experts" to denounce Hellawell, headlining its critical op-ed piece, "What is the Point of This Man? Employed as Drug Tsar, He Says Cannabis Does Not Lead to Harder Drugs." Within two days of that slash and burn attack, Hellawell recanted. He is now once more convinced that "cannabis is a gateway drug," he told reporters on November 8th. Lost in the hubbub over gateway drugs and possible legalization were Mowlam's remarks indicating that the Labour government is preparing to move forward on medical marijuana. She told the BBC News that action could come soon, depending on the results of scientific trials. "I hope that by the end of next year those scientific results will be out and then we can make a clear evaluation in relation to medicinal use," she said. When asked if this meant the Blair government might back legalization for medical use by the end of next year, Mowlam gave a qualified affirmative answer. "Yes, but legalize it in the form of cannabinoids which is a kind of derivative so people don't have to smoke it." If cannabis policy is giving the Blair government fits, Labourites can take some solace in the fact that it is also breeding nasty conflicts among the Tory opposition. Last week, James Bercow, a Tory home affairs junior spokesman, attacked his boss' policy on drugs. Conservative shadow cabinet member Anne Widdicome, had ignited the current cannabis furor in early October when she called for mandatory fines and criminal records for cannabis consumers. In an interview with the New Statesman magazine, Bercow said that Widdicome's plan for "a vast clampdown" on cannabis was unrealistic. "The idea that the police should raid every home in the land looking for dope-smokers is transparently absurd," argued Bercow, who is a member of the socially liberal Portillo faction within the Conservative Party. "Personal use has been effectively decriminalized... In this country we police by consent," he continued. "The police are not interested in launching an all out war on soft drugs. As far as I can see, alcohol and violence are closely related. It is not at all clear to me that cannabis and violence are." Finally, readers of last week's Sunday Times were titillated by news that the paper had found traces of cocaine in parliament lavatories, prompting one Labour Member of Parliament, Paul Flynn, who has advocated the legalization of cannabis, to make the following remarks linking the discovery to the gateway drug controversy. "Cocaine has become the social drug. But those addicted should be treated as patients, not as criminals," he told the Times. "At least the myth has been destroyed that if people start out on a soft drug, they end up on heroin. That they end up on the Tory front bench is not an enviable fate, but it is not quite as bad as lying in a gutter with a needle sticking out of you." ================ 6. Sweden: Small Cracks Emerge in Drug War Consensus in Europe's Bastion of Reaction http://www.drcnet.org/wol/160.html#sweden While Sweden's hard-line stance on drugs, the toughest in Western Europe, will remain the law of the land in the foreseeable future, events in the last few weeks suggest that change may be looming just beyond the horizon. In the 1990s, while most of Europe was moving toward harm reduction and decriminalization strategies toward drug use, Sweden went in the opposite direction. In 1988, Sweden criminalized not just the possession but also the use of drugs. Five years later, it increased the maximum sentence for being high to six months in prison and empowered police to force suspected drug users to submit to blood and urine tests in order to arrest them for consumption of drugs. Now, a new report from the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention has called that policy's tactics and effectiveness into question. As reported in the newspaper Dagens Nyheter, the council found that arrests for minor drug offenses had increased 70% from 1991 to 1997, that the number of drug tests of suspected users had more than doubled, but that youth drug use continued to rise. "On the basis of the information that is available regarding the development of illegal drug use there are no clear-cut signs that the criminalization of drug use and the more stringent laws have had any deterrent effect," the report stated. Criminologist Henrik Tham, a longtime critic of Swedish drug policies, told the Nyheter, "The statistics show that our tough legislation has not had any effect, even though the police are inspecting body fluids in their search for illegal drugs." Critics may have an ally in the new Justice Minister, 38-year-old Thomas Bodstrom, who was appointed in mid-October. Two years ago, Bodstrom penned a critique of Swedish drug laws in the policy journal Liberal Debatt in which he described the criminalization of drug use as "completely meaningless" and criticized his predecessor, Laila Freivalds, for engaging in a "boring" debate with opposition drug warriors over whose policy was toughest. In an October 15th interview with the newspaper Expressen, Bodstrom also detailed his own hash-smoking history. He smoked hash "many times" in his teenage years, "at parties and things like that," he said. Bodstrom took pains to point out that he did not have a criminal record because of hash-smoking and, when asked whether he should have been imprisoned, he responded, "No, I could not have been because it was not illegal." But this potential ally was backtracking within days as he faced mounting pressure from supporters of the status quo. Choosing his words carefully, he told the Nyheter, "What I was addressing in the Liberal Debatt article is the oversimplifying and caricaturizing that the Moderates [conservative opposition party] stand for with their belief that punishment is all that is necessary to fight crime. And that is absolutely not the case." Bodstrom also parsed his earlier remarks about "meaningless criminalization," telling the Nyheter that he now supported criminalization. "Yes, it is important. But we should not rest with that. It is rather meaningless to have only criminalization. The authorities must work preventatively and follow up punishment with care. Punishment alone means drug users are excluded from society," he said. Where Bodstrom will end up on drug policy remains to be seen, but he is now in the hot seat. Meanwhile, latent tensions over drug policy found expression in a teapot tempest over the kind of police presence required to control an MTV festival at Stockholm's suburban Globe theater scheduled for Thursday evening. According to reports in the newspaper Aftonbladet, local police authorities graciously declined offers from the country's "Rave Commission" drug squad and the Stockholm drug task force to help police the event. The festival features a number of global pop music stars and is expected to draw thousands of fans from across Europe. "Thank you for your interest, but we don't see any need for your services," local police commanders wrote in their reply to the eager narcs. "The risk for drugs is not bigger during the MTV festival than for other concerts," police commander Bruno Jarlestad told Aftonbladet. "Why should I presume that the world's elite artists are a bunch of junkies?" Such an attitude did not sit well with either the drug squads or their civilian cheerleaders. Drug police accused local commanders of trying to avoid drug scandals and said they had 20 officers "ready to march." Still, responded Jarlestad, "The Globe is within our jurisdiction. We have people who know the arena and can uphold law and order. There is no need for drug squads from the city to go there and show off and look for people under the influence of drugs." Anti-drug crusaders such as Malou Lindholm, who has exported her brand of wisdom to drug squabbles as far away as Australia, and Torgny Peterson, the head of European Cities Against Drugs, are up in arms. Peterson went so far as to send an open letter to the Stockholm police commission reminding authorities that police "are obligated to enforce existing narcotics legislation." Peterson accused local police commanders of "arrogance but also an extensive ignorance about the presence of drugs in this type of event." Peterson and his allies, however, got no succor from the police commission. Chairwoman Kristina Axen Olin told Aftonbladet that no special police presence is in place during concerts at the Globe. "Therefore, it's not unusual if the local police department has made the judgment that extra help is needed," she said. "All policemen are trained to handle drug issues." By Wednesday, however, local police commanders reversed course in the face of the criticism, allowing the drug squads to be present during the festival. Local police spokesman Jarlestad remained unconvinced that the narcs were needed. "The Rave Commission wants to come and we might need to bring in the marine police if it rains a lot. Then in case of a hostage drama I guess we'll have to bring in the national crisis team and some negotiators as well," he sneered to Aftonbladet. Swedish drug war zealots can also rest easier knowing that Swedish Customs has brought in the drug dogs at Arlanda airport to ensure that visiting fans and musicians are coming in clean. As of press time, DRCNet had no reports of drug-addled music fans rampaging through Sweden before, during, or after the festival. ================ 9. Criminal Defense Lawyers Demand End to Drug War http://www.drcnet.org/wol/160.html#nacdl (courtesy NORML Foundation, http://www.norml.org) Washington, DC: The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers' (NACDL) board of directors unanimously approved a resolution on November 4th calling for the end of the war on drugs. In its resolution, NACDL, the nation's largest specialty bar association representing the interests of criminal defense lawyers, stated that drug use should be considered a health problem, and that the government should "repeal all laws criminalizing the possession, use and delivery of controlled substances." The resolution also calls for a regulated and taxable system for selling controlled substances with a portion of the revenues going towards drug treatment clinics, drug education and research. "As a nation, we've stood by and watched this 'war on drugs' lock up a whole generation of young African-Americans," said Fred Leatherman, the NACDL board member who drafted the resolution. "All the evidence says it's a sham and a failure. And everybody else who makes money from it thinks we should escalate the war. We do not agree." "Both of our presidential candidates committed 'youthful indiscretions' in their day," said NACDL president Edward Mallet. "Would they, or we, be better off if they had been sent to prison like so many blacks and Latinos are these days?" ================
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