State & Local Government

Supporters of an Illinois bill that would allow judges to divert low-level drug offenders into county "drug schools" instead of jail or prison are holding a series of public hearings across the state to drum up renewed support for the stalled measure. If the turnout in Chicago is any indication, public interest is high.

Illinois House Bill 4885, the Substance Abuse Management Addressing Recidivism Through Treatment (SMART) Act", would appropriate $3.5 million to allow state's attorneys' offices to open drug schools where low-level drug offenders could have their cases dismissed and arrest records expunged after completing an eight-hour course and -- depending on a mental health and addiction assessment -- possibly undergoing drug treatment.

The bill would allow counties to opt to follow the example set in Cook County (Chicago), where District Attorney Dick Devine pioneered the drug school idea. In the Cook County Drug School program, first-time drug possession offenders are offered mental health screenings, addiction assessment, and an eight-hour drug education program, and some -- depending on their assessment -- may be ordered into drug treatment. The county spends roughly $350 per person per year on the program, compared to the more than $21,000 it costs to incarcerate someone for a year.

After being introduced in January, the bill stalled in the legislature this fall, but supporters were able to pass a resolution calling on legislators to participate in a series of public hearings on alternatives to imprisonment and issue a report on those hearings. Hearings have already been held in Champaign, East St. Louis, and Chicago, with more set later this month for Decatur, Rockford, Rock Island, and Waukegan.

At the October 25 meeting in the Ashburn Lutheran Church in Chicago, the Southwest News Herald reported that "hundreds of people crowded into the church for the hearing, with some coming on buses from as far away as Rockford." Convened by the Developing Justice Coalition, a statewide alliance of community-based social service and religious organizations working on issues such as sentencing reform, prisoner re-entry, and public, the hearing featured several dozen speakers, including many ex-prisoners who said their drug arrest records had dogged them ever since. The coalition was organized by the Safer Foundation, which works to help ex-prisoners re-enter society.

Turnout for the hearing was "phenomenal," said Ashburn Lutheran pastor the Rev. Pam Challis. "It has been a long time since we had to put chairs in the aisles," said Challis, looking around at the standing-room only crowd after the meeting. "It is indicative of the fact that this is needed."

"I am a product of incarceration. I was in jail twice, and while I was incarcerated I learned absolutely nothing," said drug educator Armando Fox. After the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council gave him "a second chance" he was able to turn his life around. "Sometimes the choices we make aren't always the best, but we really shouldn't just throw people in prison. They don't learn anything."

But with its current drug laws, the state of Illinois throws quite a few people in prison. It spends nearly $250 million a year on its prison budget.

Attending the hearing were state Representatives Mary Flowers (D-31st) and Esther Golar (D-6th). Flowers, a 23-year veteran of the legislature, accused the body of passing "bad legislation" with its zero tolerance drug laws that set strict sentencing guidelines for drug offenses. "Some of those crimes should have been probational. The only thing we did was dig ourselves a bigger hole at your expense," she said.

The legislature is out of session now, but the SMART Act will probably come to a vote in January. Advocates are doing all they can do to show lawmakers there is broad public support, and packing hundreds of people into a hearing on a relatively obscure piece of legislation is a good start.

With a measure to legalize the possession of up to one ounce of pot on the ballot in Colorado and a measure to allow the regulated sale of marijuana and the possession of up to an ounce in Nevada, Tuesday could be the first time voters in any American state have embraced an end to marijuana prohibition. At this late juncture, most polls are painting it as an uphill fight, though organizers have reasons why they believe the polls may be off. The odds are looking better in Nevada than Colorado.

The only state in which marijuana possession is legal is Alaska. There, it was the courts, not the voters, who made the decision.

CRCM TV ad, posted to YouTube

In both states, however, organizers say the polls are undercounting support for legalization. In Nevada, spokesmen for the measure there told the Chronicle that the only poll that used the actual ballot language had the measure ahead by a margin of 49% to 43%. That contrasts with Nevada newspaper polls that showed the measure losing with between 37% and 41% of the vote.

"While I would say that it is unlikely the polling is that far off, we certainly expect greater support than what the polls are reporting," said SAFER Colorado's Steve Fox. "Many young people don't respond to polls or are not even reached by them because all they have are cell phones. While we can't claim that we're going to cruise to an easy victory," he told Drug War Chronicle, "other polls we have seen seem to indicate greater support than those media polls."

"The polls jibe," said CRCM campaign manager Neal Levine. "The Reno Gazette-Journal poll asked if people favored the legalization, use, possession, and transfer of marijuana, while our poll used the actual ballot language. The explanation of the difference lies in the wording of the question asked. The Review-Journal poll, while it shows us behind, shows a huge upward trend over their last poll. Their language wasn't as slanted, but it still didn't ask the question voters will be asked on the ballot. What is consistent is that the campaign is trending up," he told the Chronicle last month.

And it was still trending up, but also still trailing this week. "In a new Reno Gazette-Journal poll, we cut the gap by seven points," said campaign communications director Patrick Killen Thursday. "According to them, we're still behind 41% to 52%, but again, their question didn't address taxation and regulation or the many safeguards our measure has. Still, the good news is this shows the campaign is moving forward."

Both states have seen hard-hitting organized opposition campaigns led by establishment political figures, law enforcement, and the federal anti-drug bureaucracies. In Colorado, Denver DEA special agent in charge Jeffrey Sweetin has taken a lead position in opposing the measure, along with Gov. Bill Owens and Attorney General John Suthers. Owens and Suthers were among those who were surprised last Friday when nearly a hundred pro-legalization demonstrators showed up at their anti-legalization press conference.

In Nevada, CRCM has been busy challenging interference in the campaign by federal officials and Nevada elected officials. In mid-October, the group filed a lawsuit against Clark County and Las Vegas officials seeking an injunction to stop them from campaigning against the measure on the tax payers' dime. The following week, CRCM supporters confronted deputy federal drug czar Scott Burns, who flew in from Washington, DC, to oppose Question 7 at a small-town forum. "Czar, go home! Leave Nevada alone!" they chanted.

While CRCM is engaged in TV, radio, and web-based advertising, the lead opposition group, the ironically named Committee to Keep Nevada Respectable has limited itself to a late radio ad, which CRCM attacked Thursday as full of lies. "They say it would bar employers from doing drug testing, when the measure explicitly says they can," complained Killen. "It says we favor street use of drugs, which is simply wrong on two counts. First, this isn't about 'drugs;' this is about marijuana. Second, again, the language of Question 7 explicitly bars the public consumption of marijuana."

The ad wars may not matter that much in the end, said University of Nevada Las Vegas political science professor Ted G. Jelen. "The commercials are not very effective," he told the Chronicle. "People aren't paying that close attention. Also, I think this measure is a little bit complicated. Most people don't take these issues very seriously, so the message has to be simple. They keep talking about taxation and regulation, but it might be better if they just said we're going to treat it like booze."

Jelen pronounced Question 7's chances of passage as "unlikely," although he predicted it would get a respectable showing. Still, he said, given the national political landscape and scandal-driven, unexpectedly competitive gubernatorial and US House of Representatives races in Nevada, turn-out could be high -- and that could affect the outcome.

CRCM is counting on that. "We've got all kinds of volunteers, and now it's time to get people to the polls," said Killen. "We're counting on non-traditional voters -- young voters, new voters, disenchanted voters -- who aren't showing up on the radar. We're doing early voting through Friday, and then it's the final push toward Tuesday."

With both measures trailing in most polls, organizers are starting to take a longer view. "Certainly, the polls being released by the media indicate that we are far behind," said SAFER Colorado's Mason Tvert. "Whether that will be the case after actual voting takes place remains to be seen. But it is important to remember that this is just one step in a long battle to educate the public about the fact that marijuana is less harmful than alcohol. Through the course of this campaign, our basic message has resonated across the state and in national publications like USA Today and the Washington Times. Despite the fact that we have spent less than $60,000 after the signature drive, we have generated hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of earned media coverage. We have taken recreational marijuana policy reform from basically nowhere and have made it a major topic of discussion and debate in the state. This campaign is not the end of our efforts in Colorado. If we lose, we will continue to educate the citizens of the state until the time is right for another initiative."

There is now less than a week until the voters hit the voting booths. It is now looking uncertain, but not impossible, for 2006 to be the year voters said no to marijuana prohibition.

Democratic Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate Deval Patrick has, according to recent polling, a huge lead on his opponent, Republican Lt. Gov. Kerry Kealey. It isn't because of the clarity of his position on marijuana policy.

At the fourth and final gubernatorial debate October 26, both major party candidates and two minor party candidates were asked the following question by the debate moderator: "Since the 1970s at least a dozen states have decriminalized the possession by adults of small amounts of marijuana for personal use. Massachusetts is not one of them. In a 2003 Boston University study estimated that the thousands of arrests for pot possession each year cost more than $24 million in law enforcement resources. There's a bill before the legislature that would reduce the penalty for possession of less than an ounce to a $100 civil fine. Would you sign it if it reached your desk?"

After saying that he hoped the bill never reached his desk because that was not his priority, Patrick added that law enforcement should emphasize large drug traffickers and that the same person who provided marijuana to his drug addict uncle also provided him with heroin. He concluded his initial response by saying, "I'm very comfortable with the idea of legalizing marijuana. I just don't think it ought to be our priority."

The moderator was reduced to asking Patrick directly if he would veto the bill. "I would veto that," he responded.

Republican candidate Healey didn't dance around in her response. "I would veto that proposal," she said, citing the cost of drug addiction and the "tragedy" of kids in the social service system because of drug-addicted parents. "Anything that leads to drug addiction should be absolutely off the table and I would never legalize drugs."

Independent gubernatorial candidate Christy Mihos joined the consensus, saying that he supported medical marijuana, but would veto a decrim bill. Only Green-Rainbow candidate Grace Ross gave any positive indication about the decrim bill, but that was vague too. "I'm not big for throwing people in prison for small amounts of marijuana but what the real issue is -- drug addiction, and every other industrialized nation doesn't have as many people in prison and there's a reason because when someone's addicted to something they can get treatment on demand, they can get treatment immediately because universal health care means when you know you need treatment you go in and you get it. So I think if we're going to talk about drugs lets catch the big folks who have the big amounts of money who bring them into communities, not the small fish."

Still, Ross refused to say whether she would sign or veto a decrim bill, saying she would want to see the context of other "much more important" policy changes. She did, however, obliquely attack Healey's comments about drug-addicted parents. "I think we have got to be real here because it's not about what's legal and what's not legal completely because a lot of those kids in DSS their parents are addicted to alcohol, not to illegal substances and I think that the one piece about this kind of question that's legitimate is that addiction is not connected with which substances are legal or not. And so we need to be honest here. I think the question of where marijuana sits in comparison to alcohol is a legitimate question and we need to deal with addiction as addiction and not about criminalizing people who are addicted. We need to deal with it as addiction."

In local ballot questions in the 2000, 2002, and 2004 general elections, more than 410,000 Massachusetts residents have voted for marijuana law reform.