T
The420Guy
Guest
At one point in "Traffic," the riveting new Steven Soderbergh film, the freshly installed drug czar (played by Michael Douglas) asks his staff to "think outside the box" about the drug problem. There's a pause. Nobody says anything. This is the message of the movie. Even the film's
clichs: drug informants killed, the teenage daughter of the drug czar deeply addicted, -- help reinforce the basic staleness of our national debate on drug policy. Soderbergh seems to be saying: Think harder. I don't
know what they are, but there must be some answers.
As a matter of fact, there are. The movie couldn't be more timely: while Congress cowers, taxpayers are beginning to rethink a policy that costs them $20 billion a year. Voters in five states approved drug-reform
ballot initiatives in November. In California, the little-noticed but landmark
Proposition 36 requires that nonviolent offenders be treated instead of jailed. As many as 37,000 fewer Californians will be incarcerated annaully, saving hundreds of millions of dollars. Oregon and Utah back forfeiture reform, so that the assets of accused drug dealers can no longer be seized prior to conviction, a horribly unconstitutional but widespread prosecutorial practice.
In New York, meantime, Gov. George Pataki reversed himself last week and pledged to reform the draconian "Rockefeller drug laws," while Mayor Rudy Giuliani last year came down in favor of offering mathadone to heroin addicts. In New Mexico, where GOP Gov. Gary Johnson is a leading drug reformer, a state advisory group chaired by a retired judge last week recommended decriminalizing small amounts of marijuana.
And in Rolling Stone magazine last month, a onetime non-inhaler named Bill Clinton agreed about pot, adding that mandatory minimum sentences that tie the hands of judges should be "re-examined" and the sentencing disparities between crack and powdered cocaine (which Clinton tried and failed to address) are "unconscionable" and essentially racist.
The real-life drug czar left office last week after a record five years sounding a lot like the chastened Michael Douglas character. "I think change is coming to America," Gen. Barry McCaffrey told me in an exit interview. Instead of talking about "drug lords" or "interdiction,"
McCaffrey used words like "holistic" and "rational" to explain his reasons
for increasing prevention and treatment funding, which were up by more than a half and a third, respectively, during his tenure. While the budget is still overwhelmingly tilted toward law enforcement, McCaffrey has nudged the ball in the right direction, rejecting what he calls "the internal gulag" of more incarceration for mere users.
That "gulag" is one of the great under-covered stories of our time: 400,000 Americans behind bars on drug charges. And it's not as if the system even treats them. About 85 percent of those released from prison have substance-abuse problems, a recipe for rearrest. "McCaffrey's the best drug czar we've had," says Ethan Nadelman, a drug reformer who runs the New York-based Lindesmith Center. "But he still falls short. In every other realm of health care, we blame the treatment provider if something goes wrong. Here we still blame the patient."
But at least McCaffrey is trying to retire the military metaphors: "I'm an Army general with three purple hearts, and I don't think it's a 'war.' It's more accurate to call drugs a 'cancer.'" He's pushing a middle
way, backing new "drug courts" that combine treatment with "the stick" of jail.
The number of such courts is up from a dozen to 700 in the past five years.
McCaffrey is against mandatory minimums and for methadone, though he never did come around on needle exchanges, which have been repeatedly proved helpful in stopping the spread of AIDS. Most allies are far ahead of
the United States on such "harm reduction" strategies.
"If [the new drug czar] asked, 'What's the one big thing you've not done?,"
McCaffrey concludes, "I'd say, 'Get access to insurance for drug abuse and mental health.' If we did that, spousal abuse, violence and the rest will go way down. OMB says: can we afford it? I say it's a no-brainer that will save us immense resources."
But will the Bushies have the brains for this and other drug-policy no-brainers? Not clear. Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson, Bush's nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services, sees drug abuse as a public-health problem; he's even sponsored a needle-exchange program in Milwaukee. But if John Ashcroft becomes attorney general, he's likely to push the policy back toward more criminalization. Ashcroft opposed even McCaffrey's advertising campaign against drugs, which the drug czar says has helped cut teenage drug use by 21 percent in the past two years. At the Justice Department, Ashcroft will be able to direct more prosecutorial
resources toward drug cases, not to mention nominate on average one judge a week for the federal bench (that's how many vacancies arise) and have a big say in the choice of the new drug czar.
"Traffic" has cameos by real-life senators like Orrin Hatch and Barbara Boxer, each of whom found something to like. One of the beauties of the film is that it somehow manages to satisfy both drug-enforcement
officials by showing them as heroes and drug-policy critics by exposing the futility
of sealing the border. The horrors of addiction and interdiction get equal
time. By staying descriptive rather than didactic, Soderbergh re-energizes the drug-policy debate without actually entering it. That's up to the rest of us.
By Jonathan Alter
Newsweek
clichs: drug informants killed, the teenage daughter of the drug czar deeply addicted, -- help reinforce the basic staleness of our national debate on drug policy. Soderbergh seems to be saying: Think harder. I don't
know what they are, but there must be some answers.
As a matter of fact, there are. The movie couldn't be more timely: while Congress cowers, taxpayers are beginning to rethink a policy that costs them $20 billion a year. Voters in five states approved drug-reform
ballot initiatives in November. In California, the little-noticed but landmark
Proposition 36 requires that nonviolent offenders be treated instead of jailed. As many as 37,000 fewer Californians will be incarcerated annaully, saving hundreds of millions of dollars. Oregon and Utah back forfeiture reform, so that the assets of accused drug dealers can no longer be seized prior to conviction, a horribly unconstitutional but widespread prosecutorial practice.
In New York, meantime, Gov. George Pataki reversed himself last week and pledged to reform the draconian "Rockefeller drug laws," while Mayor Rudy Giuliani last year came down in favor of offering mathadone to heroin addicts. In New Mexico, where GOP Gov. Gary Johnson is a leading drug reformer, a state advisory group chaired by a retired judge last week recommended decriminalizing small amounts of marijuana.
And in Rolling Stone magazine last month, a onetime non-inhaler named Bill Clinton agreed about pot, adding that mandatory minimum sentences that tie the hands of judges should be "re-examined" and the sentencing disparities between crack and powdered cocaine (which Clinton tried and failed to address) are "unconscionable" and essentially racist.
The real-life drug czar left office last week after a record five years sounding a lot like the chastened Michael Douglas character. "I think change is coming to America," Gen. Barry McCaffrey told me in an exit interview. Instead of talking about "drug lords" or "interdiction,"
McCaffrey used words like "holistic" and "rational" to explain his reasons
for increasing prevention and treatment funding, which were up by more than a half and a third, respectively, during his tenure. While the budget is still overwhelmingly tilted toward law enforcement, McCaffrey has nudged the ball in the right direction, rejecting what he calls "the internal gulag" of more incarceration for mere users.
That "gulag" is one of the great under-covered stories of our time: 400,000 Americans behind bars on drug charges. And it's not as if the system even treats them. About 85 percent of those released from prison have substance-abuse problems, a recipe for rearrest. "McCaffrey's the best drug czar we've had," says Ethan Nadelman, a drug reformer who runs the New York-based Lindesmith Center. "But he still falls short. In every other realm of health care, we blame the treatment provider if something goes wrong. Here we still blame the patient."
But at least McCaffrey is trying to retire the military metaphors: "I'm an Army general with three purple hearts, and I don't think it's a 'war.' It's more accurate to call drugs a 'cancer.'" He's pushing a middle
way, backing new "drug courts" that combine treatment with "the stick" of jail.
The number of such courts is up from a dozen to 700 in the past five years.
McCaffrey is against mandatory minimums and for methadone, though he never did come around on needle exchanges, which have been repeatedly proved helpful in stopping the spread of AIDS. Most allies are far ahead of
the United States on such "harm reduction" strategies.
"If [the new drug czar] asked, 'What's the one big thing you've not done?,"
McCaffrey concludes, "I'd say, 'Get access to insurance for drug abuse and mental health.' If we did that, spousal abuse, violence and the rest will go way down. OMB says: can we afford it? I say it's a no-brainer that will save us immense resources."
But will the Bushies have the brains for this and other drug-policy no-brainers? Not clear. Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson, Bush's nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services, sees drug abuse as a public-health problem; he's even sponsored a needle-exchange program in Milwaukee. But if John Ashcroft becomes attorney general, he's likely to push the policy back toward more criminalization. Ashcroft opposed even McCaffrey's advertising campaign against drugs, which the drug czar says has helped cut teenage drug use by 21 percent in the past two years. At the Justice Department, Ashcroft will be able to direct more prosecutorial
resources toward drug cases, not to mention nominate on average one judge a week for the federal bench (that's how many vacancies arise) and have a big say in the choice of the new drug czar.
"Traffic" has cameos by real-life senators like Orrin Hatch and Barbara Boxer, each of whom found something to like. One of the beauties of the film is that it somehow manages to satisfy both drug-enforcement
officials by showing them as heroes and drug-policy critics by exposing the futility
of sealing the border. The horrors of addiction and interdiction get equal
time. By staying descriptive rather than didactic, Soderbergh re-energizes the drug-policy debate without actually entering it. That's up to the rest of us.
By Jonathan Alter
Newsweek
