COLUMBIA CITY - The message at last week's community forum, which featured such anti-prohibition speakers as former Seattle Police chief-turned-author Norm Stamper, was loud and clear: the United States' War on Drugs is kaput - a losing battle.
The May 17 panel discussion - which took place at the Rainier Valley Cultural Center in front of a standing room only crowd of 250-plus people - was a scathing indictment of the current legal policy against controlled substances, from marijuana and LSD to so-called harder street drugs like heroin and crack.
"The drug war has produced death, disease, crime and addiction," said Stamper, who admitted that the War on Drugs was "at the bottom of my priority list" while he was on the force.
"It was not a war on drugs, it was a war on people," he added. "Prohibition has not worked because it can not work. It never has and it never will."
Stamper, who recently published a memoir offering an insider's view of police work called Breaking Rank, cited several statistics supporting his claim that U.S. drug policy is as ineffective as it is dangerous. Notably, he pointed out that the percentage of the population addicted to controlled substances prior to prohibition in the early 1900s was about 1.3 percent; it was the same before President Richard Nixon's declared War on Drugs; and it remains about 1.3 percent to this day, Stamper said, a fact that renders drug policy pointless.
GETTING PERSPECTIVE
The forum - hosted by the American Friends Service Committee and sponsored in part by the Racial Disparity Project as well as Stamper's organization Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) - opened with a presentation of a new music video created by director Jim Jones for an upcoming documentary on the drug war; the video featured hard-driving rap music playing behind footage of DEA crackdowns on drug houses, scenes from penitentiaries and sound bytes of presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr.
Co-host Alexes Harris, an assistant professor at the University of Washington, said the aim of the forum was to "have a community discussion about the failure of the drug war." Harris was joined on stage by co-host Sunil Abraham, a public defender who is also a member of the Racial Disparity Project.
The panel members, each of whom gave brief introductory presentations before taking part in an extended question-and-answer period, was comprised of King County Councilmember Larry Gossett, University of Washington sociology professor Katherine Beckett, ex-addict and Village of Hope coordinator John Page, and Stamper, who served as the Seattle Police Department's chief between the tumultuous years of 1994 and 2000.
Gossett - who was a founder of the Black Student Union while studying at the UW as well as a former member of the Seattle chapter of the Black Panthers - leaned heavily on statistics to make his argument for ending current drug policy.
"It is our hope that by the info that we share with you, you'll be further conscious of the need to get involved," Gossett told the audience, "to put an end to the War on Drugs, nationally and locally."
The county council member pointed out that, of those individuals incarcerated in King County jails, one-third are in for drug-related charges; among those, approximately 40 percent are African-American - this, Gossett added, "in a state that's only 3 percent Black."
Of those incarcerated for narcotics possession, Gossett stated, 98.5 percent were holding on their person less than $50 worth of drugs. These individuals, he added, are facing on average between 3 to 8 years in jails.
"Class and race really matter in this battle that we're forging," Gossett said, urging the audience to "organize and change" this most pressing of social crises.
Beckett picked up where Gossett left off by pointing out the wide racial disparities in drug arrests and sentencing. For emphasis, the UW professor offered a historical perspective.
"Drug wars are not new," she said. "And they always fail. There seems to be something about these things that bring out all our racist tendencies."
Statistically, drug arrests for African-Americans tend to be 11 times more frequent than those of their White counterparts - a difference, Beckett said, of more than 1,000 percent.
"These are absolutely enormous racial disparities," she said of her research into drug-related crime and punishment. "They're huge... they're off the charts. We have a problem."
Beckett refuted the notion that such racial disparities simply reflect the rates of use - that Blacks are arrested at greater frequency because they make up a preponderance of society's drug users.
"The evidence overwhelmingly suggest this is not the case," she said.
Stamper also addressed this issue, noting that Whites make up about 70 percent of the demographic of those selling and using controlled substances.
"Drug use and drug sales are pretty evenly distributed across race," he said.
A FAILED POLICY
As for the idea that current drug policy works to remove drugs from the streets and reduce drug use, Beckett would have none of it.
"There's almost no evidence that waging a war on drugs reduces drug use," she said, adding that "it's really hard to make the case that the war on drugs is about helping people."
During his presentation, Page, a recovering addict who said he was marking his first year out of prison this week, tried to put a human face to all the statistics.
"I have personal history," he told the audience. "I'm not an expert," he said, adding that his goal was to inspire an "honest dialogue" about drug addiction.
"Healing is what needs to take place for people to stay sober," Page said to thunderous applause. "We have to really be honest and say, 'What's happening?'"
He urged people to pay attention not only to the rhetoric of activism but to remember all of those struggling with the pains and trials of drug addiction.
"In a lot of ways, we've forgotten the people out there on Third and Pine," Page stated, referring to the city's downtown population of dealers and users, many of whom are mentally ill and/or homeless. "We have to really be honest with ourselves about the people that are out there."
He added that "it takes a village" to begin any kind of successful healing process.
Stamper made the case that drug abuse is, above all else, a health issue and rarely a matter for police.
"We need to replace prohibition with a regulatory model predicated on a public health system," he argued, adding that drug addicts "are in need of medical assistance and not a jail cell."
Pointing out that the drug war costs the United States more than $69 billion each year, Stamper called for an examination of "the immorality of our current justice system." He also urged those in law enforcement to join LEAP as a means of combating the "utterly immoral" War on Drugs from the inside. Stamper said the LEAP is similar to the Vietnam vets who protested the war during the 1960s.
"We have modeled ourselves after that system," he explained.
By way of comparison to drug policy in the United States, Stamper cited the examples of nations that have sought to partially or totally decriminalize controlled substances, such as Switzerland and the Netherlands. A number of these countries, rather than pumping endless streams of money into law enforcement and prosecution, channel funds instead into a network of health care, public education and community support dealing with drug addiction.
Of course, Stamper said, partaking in dangerous or criminal behavior while on drugs - such as driving under the influence - should be looked upon as a criminal activity, and dealt with swiftly and to the full extent of the law. Beyond that, however, he argued that taking drugs is an issue of personal choice.
"We need to recognize drug use as a civil liberties issue for adults," Stamper said.
Staff writer Rick Levin may be reached via mageditor@nwlink.com or by calling 461-1284.
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