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Media Awareness Project
US: US Judges Call For Legalising Of Drugs
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n785/a06.html
Newshawk: The Legalise Cannabis Alliance <http://www.lca-
uk.org>
Pubdate: Sat, 10 Jun 2000
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Copyright: 2000 Guardian Newspapers Limited
Contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Address: 75 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3ER, England
Fax: +44-171-837 4530
Website: http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/guardian/
Forum:
http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/BBS/News/0,2161,Latest|Topics|3,
00.html|Topics|3,00.html
Author: Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
US JUDGES CALL FOR LEGALISING OF DRUGS
The restricted sale of heroin, cocaine and cannabis 'would break
the vicious cycle of violence' Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
American judges are growing so uneasy about their country's drugs
laws that they are to go public with their calls for change. The
judge who will publish the names of his concerned colleagues is
calling for the regulated sale of cocaine, heroin and cannabis as
the only way to break the current international cycle of violence
and imprisonment.
The move comes as an advertising campaign is launched advising
jurors to acquit people on drugs possession charges even when
they are guilty and as a citizen's commission publishes a report
calling for drugs to be treated as a medical and social rather
than a criminal problem. It also coincides with this week's
report on the enormous disparity between the numbers of black
and white people jailed for drug offences.
James P Gray, a superior court judge in Orange County, California
told the Guardian yesterday that his new book will contain the
names of more than 20 judges who favour a change in the policies,
some of whom support his call for legalisation, and are happy to
say so publicly. He said that three times that number of judges
had given him permission to quote them by name. Many others
had told him privately of their belief that a radical change to the
drugs laws was urgently needed.
Judge Gray, 55, has been on the bench for 16 years and was
previously a prosecuting attorney. His experience on the bench
convinced him that the drugs laws were causing more crime than
they were stopping and that the "war on drugs" had been a failure.
"There is an increasing number of judges who want change," said
Judge Gray, the author of the soon-to-be-published Why our Drugs
Laws have failed and What we can do about it. "The momentum is
truly building, we're making progress and it is no longer a
question of if there will be changes, but when."
Judge Gray, who is due to outline his views at a meeting in Los
Angeles later this month, is critical of the United States' drugs
tsar, General Barry McCaffrey, whose budget has just been
increased from $17.8bn a year to $19.2bn (UKP13bn). He
suggests that asking Gen McCaffrey whether the right policy is
being pursued is "like asking a barber if one needs a haircut".
The changes that Judge Gray would like to see include the
regulated sale to adults of heroin, cocaine and cannabis. No
advertising should be allowed, said the judge, so that drugs could
be "de-profitised". He also favours needle-exchange programmes.
He believes that the likeliest route for change would be for
individual states to be allowed to decide on what drugs policy
suits them best.
"First of all, we have to legitimise the discussion," he said. He
stressed that talking about change did not mean that he or fellow
judges condoned the use of drugs, merely that the existing laws
were causing more harm than good.
His move comes as the organisation Common Sense for Drug
Policy (CSDP) has been placing advertisements in magazines
headlined "Just Say Not Guilty".
The ad argues that "the jury right to say 'not guilty' is an
essential safeguard against injustice. [This] dates back to
English common law and the founding of the United States."
Doug McVay of the Virginia-based CSDP said yesterday that the
aim of the advertising campaign was to remind people that "justice
is not simply the application of the law. The current situation
violates common sense". He said that the FBI made 1,559,000
arrests for drug violations in 1998, 78% of them for possession
and the campaign wanted to "plant the seed" in the minds of
potential jurors that they could acquit people if they believed
that the punishment did not fit the crime.
The United States is now building a new prison every week to cope
with the people serving mandatory minimum sentences for drug
possession. The prison population in the US has risen from just
under 200,000 in 1966 to 2m today accounting for a quarter of the
entire world's prison population.
A further call for change has come from the influential Institute
for Policy Studies in Washington which has published the findings
of a citizen's commission on drugs policy entitled The War on
Drugs: Addicted to Failure. In the foreword to the report,
Professor Craig Reinarman states: "Drugs are richly functional
scapegoats. They provide the public with a restricted aperture of
attribution in which only the chemical bogey man or lone deviant
come into view and the social causes of a cornucopia of complex
problems are out of the picture."
The chairperson of the commission, actor, singer and civil rights
activist Harry Belafonte, said: "Having grown up in Harlem during
the Great Depression, I knew that the real roots of drug abuse and
addiction had more to do with poverty, alienation and despair than
crimes of malice."
He pointed out that in California five African-Americans were in
jail for every one in a state university. The commission has
called Gen McCaffrey's "war on drugs" a "monumental failure" and
recommends the ending of mandatory minimum sentences for drug
cases. It calls on President Clinton to revise the drug laws.
Belafonte's point was emphasised by this week's publication of a
report by Human Rights Watch saying that 482 out of every
100,000 African-American men are in prison for a drug crime
compared with 36 out of every 100,000 white men. In Illinois, a
black man is 57 times more likely to be jailed for drugs than a
white man.
The figures were described as a "national scandal" by the
organisation, whose report was funded by George Soros's Open
Society Institute.
Media Awareness Project Contact: Mark Greer
([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Porterville, CA 93258
(800) 266-5759 Webmaster:Matt Elrod
([EMAIL PROTECTED])
--
Kathleen
Frequent punishments are always a sign of weakness or
laziness on the part of a government.
- Jean Jacques Rousseau
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