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Lit_Match

Webb Urges Fresh Look at The War on Drugs
06-20-08|Daily Press|By David Lerman

Virginia Sen. Jim Webb began building a public case Thursday to change the nation's drug laws to stress treatment over incarceration for nonviolent offenders.

The freshman Democrat held a hearing of the Joint Economic Committee to solicit testimony from prosecutors and scholars who argued that the decades-long emphasis on incarceration has been costly and ineffective.

Armed with statistics showing soaring incarceration rates and drug seizures, Webb argued — and his witnesses agreed — that authorities have failed to reduce the supply of drugs appreciably.

"Despite the number of people we have arrested, the illegal drug industry and the flow of drugs to our citizens remain undiminished," Webb said.

While much of his work in the Senate has focused on the Iraq war and a new GI bill for veterans, Webb has sought to stir a public debate on an issue he acknowledged could be politically perilous. Advocating reductions in prison time, of course, can trigger charges of being "soft on crime."

But with more than 2 million Americans now behind bars and drug offenders swamping the prisons, Webb argued, it may be more cost effective to consider treatment options for nonviolent offenders.

"The time has come to stop locking up people for mere possession and use of marijuana," Webb wrote in his new book, "A Time to Fight."

He added in the book: "Drug addiction is not in and of itself a criminal act. It is a medical condition, indeed a disease, just as alcoholism is, and we don't lock people up for being alcoholics."

Webb was not quite as blunt at Thursday's hearing, however, and said he was not pursuing any specific legislation at the moment.

"We're just trying to get the facts out," he said.

Joining Webb for the joint Senate-House hearing was Rep. Robert C. "Bobby" Scott, D-Newport News, a longtime critic of prison-focused crime policies. Scott, chairman of the House Judiciary subcommittee on crime, said prevention programs such as prenatal care, early-childhood education, summer jobs and access to college would prove more cost effective than spending $65 billion a year to lock people up, as the United States does today.

In a sign of the political stalemate over crime policy on Capitol Hill, however, no Republicans attended Thursday's hearing.

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Buzzby

Why not emphasize leaving people to make up their own minds about what to put in their own bodies, as long as by doing so they aren't harming anyone else? People who use illicit drugs don't automatically need "treatment", any more than the guy who has a couple of beers after work.

Drug addiction is an illness. Drug use is not. Why is it so difficult for our legislators to see the same difference they all accept between social drinkers and alcoholics? Fewer than 10% of the people who use hard drugs are addicted to them. Fewer than 10% of people who drink alcohol are alcoholics. The percentage of marijuana users who are dependent or addicted is similar.

Medicalizing prohibition is not the solution. It merely moves the sanctions from the criminal justice system to medical providers under court order. Almost every person who is in rehab for marijuana is there because the courts ordered it or at the insistence of family members, not because they felt that they had problems with the drug.

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Conservative1976