From: [j n r] at [igc.apc.org] (Jim Rosenfield)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.drugs
Subject: Hoover Inst/Drug Law Policy
Date: 17 Mar 93 03:57:00 GMT


/* Written  6:45 am  Mar 13, 1993 by jnr in igc:norml.hemp */
/* ---------- "Hoover Inst/Drug Law Policy" ---------- */
NEW TACTICS URGED IN U.S. DRUG WAR

Stanford luminaries send message to Clinton

(San Jose Merc News, March 11, 1993, posted without permission)

The United States' war on drugs is a billion-dollar bust that needs to
be replaced with preventive education and treatment.

That's the message sent Tuesday to President Clinton and Congress by a
small but influential policy group that includes Nobel laureate Milton
Friedman, former Secretary of State George Schulz, ex-San Jose Police
Chief Joseph D. McNamara and Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke, a former
federal prosecutor.

They are among the 22 public leaders calling for an "objective"
congressional commission to make sweeping changes in national drug laws
that would focus on medical -- not criminal -- solutions, according to a
resolution signed Feb. 26 at the Hoover Institution at Stanford
University.  The changes could include legalization of some drugs, like
marijuana, according to McNamara, a Hoover fellow who helped organize
the late February gathering at the institution.  The resolution's
supporters range from a law-and-order judge to drug treatment experts.

McNamara said group members view drug use as destructive.  "What we're
saying," he explained, "is that there's better ways to discourage this."

The informal group sees a crucial "window of opportunity" to persuade
the new president to scrap the politically seductive, get-tough policy
and start attacking the drug crisis as a public-health problem.  The
resolution says the militaristic approach has "spawned a cycle of
hostility" between police and minority citizens while turning drug
dealers into billionaires.

"Despite the overwhelming evidence of failure, politicians keep voting
for more of what hasn't worked," McNamara said in announcing the
campaign.

"It's clear why the government can never win this war and that's simply
because $500 of cocaine in Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia or Peru will bring
$100,000 in the United States," he said.  "So you have an economic force
that's unstoppable.  As soon as the police lock up one pusher, there are
10 more ready to take his place."

Despite the drug war, an estimated 26 million Americans continue to
spend from $40 billion to $100 billion on illegal drugs annually --
making it the world's largest industry, McNamara said.

"We've filled up the prisons now to the point where state and local
governments are in fiscal crisis," McNamara said.  "What are the
taxpayers getting for all this money they're paying?  They're certainly
not getting less drug use, and all forms of crime keep going up.

"Here in California, we have the ultimate irony: We're broke. We're
closing schools while we're opening new prisons."

Meanwhile, the law enforcement crackdown has fueled aggressive searches
and seizures of people's cars, homes, businesses -- eroding
constitutional protections and alienating police authorities in their
communities, group members maintain, the report said.

"In a war, anything goes," McNamara said.  "We like to tell police that
you're peace officers.  You're not soldiers.  Your job is not to kill
the enemy.  The peace officer's job is to protect human life."

McNamara sees a direct link between the drug war that pitted police
against citizens and the beating of black motorist Rodney King by four
Los Angeles police officers whose acquittal sparked the nation's worst
urban rioting of this century.  An ardent critic of Los Angeles Police
Chief Daryl Gates, McNamara recalled that it was "Gates himself (who)
said before the U.S. Senate that casual drug users should be taken out
and shot.  And if the police chief is saying that, you can imagine how
it translates to the officer on the street."

In researching a book on the crisis, McNamara said he's surveyed some
450 judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys and found that more than
95 percent believe the drug war has failed and more innovative measures
are needed.

But before any change in public policy can occur, McNamara said, "the
politicians have to believe they can talk about this without committing
political suicide.  Right now, they feel that they have to be tougher
than anyone else on crime and the drug war."

Others who signed the resolution include Superior Court Judge James P.
Gray of Santa Ana; Dr. Herbert Berger of Staten Island, N.Y., who
pioneered methadone treatment in England; and other doctors, members of
the clergy and several private citizens.