The added value of a well-run alternative punishment is that it gives selected offenders a critical opportunity to become law-abiding members of society. Under current practices, too many people are unnecessarily relegated to the grim and criminogenic world of state prison.

BENEFITS OF THE CORRECTIONAL ASSOCIATION PROPOSAL

a)

b)

c)

d)

Removing the Rockefeller Drug Laws from the books would have several positive effects:

Expanding the use of effective alternative punishments for suitable offenders, thereby reducing the use of unnecessary incarceration, increasing the availability of needed drug treatment, and helping to make our criminal justice systern more fair and rational;

Saving the state substantial sums of money by reducing the number of persons occupying expensive prison space who do not have to be locked up for public safety reasons;

Returning appropriate discretion to judges who could then individualize the sentencing decision for the non-violent, low-risk offender. In this way scarce prison resources could be better focused upon the most serious offenders; and

Providing meaningful relief to the state's prison overcrowding problem, thereby helping to make the state's prisons safer for inmates and corrections officers and more manageable for prison administrators.

For more information on this issue, please contact Robert Gangi, Executive Director of the Correctional Association, at 212-254-5700

February 1999

Mr. MICA. This is a pretty comprehensive study of the New York prison population. I think we have heard the same thing from Mr. McDonough. There is a myth here.

Mr. Boaz, you look like you want to respond. But I want to ask you a question.

Mr. MICA. Do you-I think you indicated-and I want to be sure about this for the record-want to go beyond marijuana, that any type of substance, what is it, category one-Schedule 1, be decriminalized, no criminal penalty for possession?

Mr. BOAZ. Right. I wanted to say I don't think there is necessarily a conflict between the facts you read and the facts Mr. Glasser read. The report from New York says that most of the prisoners in New York have had prior criminal records. The report Mr. Glasser read said a large portion had not had a violent conviction. So the issue comes down to, should people who sell drugs be in jail?

Mr. MICA. That leads to my next question. These people dealing in quantities, are traffickers. Possession versus trafficking and sales. How far did you want to go on decriminalization? There is no penalty, as I understand your position. How about trafficking? Mr. BOAZ. I would like to see drugs sold in licensed, regulated stores, not on street corners and not on playgrounds. You don't see very many liquor dealers offering liquor on school yards and playgrounds. You see people selling drugs there because it is a completely unregulated, unlicensed, illegal business. So I would like to see the business treated like alcohol, yes.

Mr. MICA. OK, so if people were dealing in the manufacture and production and trafficking in an illegal, nonregulated fashion, for example, producing moonshine you get arrested, and you want the same for illegal drugs?

Mr. BOAZ. I grew up in Kentucky and we had a lot of bootlegging and moonshining, and my father used to be one of those who tried to take people in, so, yes

Mr. MICA. I am trying to develop a model. We talked about Baltimore. Now, let's see how you want to distribute and what types of stuff. You don't think we as a Congress or legislative body have any responsibility in controlling substances. And we have methamphetamine. You want that in the same category, even with the medical factual information shown in the chart?

Mr. BOAZ. I am not necessarily certain that there couldn't be some drug that was so dangerous, so mind altering but-

Mr. MICA. Heroin?

Mr. BOAZ. I would not put heroin in that category. I would rather have marijuana, cocaine and heroin produced by Philip Morris and distributed by licensed liquor stores, than to have it manufactured and distributed by the Cali cartel and distributed on street corners. Yes, that is right.

Mr. MICA. And meth is out of the category?

Mr. BOAZ. I think meth is a good example of something that we have seen throughout prohibition in the 1920's and 1990's, which is the creation of stronger drugs. When you have these huge profits available in an illegal business, as opposed to a legal business, you get an incentive to try to supply more and more powerful, smaller and smaller kinds of drugs.

I don't think you would see drugs like crack and meth if we had a legal drug market. If we had licensed, regulated stores where you could get marijuana and cocaine, you would not see these other kinds of drugs being produced.

Mr. MICA. Mr. Ehlers, I would like to hear about your model. Possession across the board?

Mr. EHLERS. Yes, I would say right now that is considered a decriminalization model. Adults wouldn't be prosecuted only for the possession of-

Mr. MICA. Marijuana, heroin, cocaine. Are you in the Boaz model?

Mr. EHLERS. What we are attempting to do is treat drug use and drug abuse as a health problem. The problem is if you criminalize it, if you tell people they are going to get arrested for being a drug user. You are going to push people away from help.

So that right now I think you have a situation where people are afraid to go in for treatment. Actually, there is no treatment available; but if it were available, they are afraid of criminal sanctions. I think there is another-also the problem of heroin overdoses among youth where you have kids who are afraid they are going to be arrested and then not helping their friends get to the hospital because they don't want to get into trouble.

Mr. MICA. I am trying to get to the model you would like to see. We are a legislative body; we pass the laws for determining what is legal and illegal, what is criminal and not. The model is pretty clear, marijuana, yes. How about heroin and cocaine?

Mr. EHLERS. What I would like you to do now is, I have a full list in my testimony. I listed all those things that should be done now, namely, the repeal of mandatory minimums, much more treatment available, much more prevention available, the reform of civil asset forfeiture, restoration of civil liberties, all of those things can be done here and now. That is what I want.

Mr. MICA. What about cocaine and heroin, sales, legalization, regulation as described by Mr. Boaz? We operate basically on-actually, this Congress operates on the will of the people.

Mr. EHLERS. Right.

Mr. MICA. Believe it or not it does. When the people make up their mind they want such and such-

Mr. EHLERS. I think the people should be offered-frankly, we talk about a lot of different potential models, and we don't advocate on behalf of any of those various models that would come under regulation. Right now one thing that I think could be tried-both of the fellow witnesses have said it hasn't worked-I think there is evidence to support the possibility of heroin maintenance. That is something that could be tried. Medical marijuana, that is something that should be available.

Mr. MICA. Do you like the Baltimore model for heroin?

Mr. EHLERS. No. I am just not sure what the Baltimore model is.

Mr. MICA. Liberalization and——

Mr. EHLERS. The only thing that I was aware of that Kurt Schmoke was doing in Baltimore, was that he was expanding needle exchange programs which I have seen studies that indicate it

works, and he has gotten a lot of addicts into treatment, and he is expanding treatment.

I don't know what is he is doing on arrest policy. I do know there has been a heroin use problem long before Kurt Schmoke came on board. So it is not something we can blame on Kurt. There is a long history here. He came into a situation.

Mr. MICA. What about continuing the regulation of criminalization of trafficking in heroin and cocaine, and methamphetamines? Mr. EHLERS. I think we need to discuss the possibility of regulation, mainly the problems of prohibition and the black market which have been discussed before. A regulated market would do good things in the sense that we would no longer have criminals getting large amounts of money from the trade. We would no longer have destabilization of governments in other countries, undermining the rule of law, the huge prison system we have now. There is also tax revenue, to talk about and using that for prevention and treatment. That is a possibility. It is not something we are advocating right here and now.

Mr. MICA. Thank you.

I have tried to be open and fair in this process. In fact, I think we are three to one on this panel. The government also stated its position prior to this, the head of the drug policy office and two others. But we conducted this hearing, as I said in the beginning, to have an open and civil discussion. There is obviously a difference of opinion.

I intend to have additional hearings to the point of decriminalization looking at the Phoenix, AZ model, talking about medical use of marijuana. Some points have come out in this hearing that we need to look at, what is going on as far as promotion of these different positions; the new element raised here today about marketing on the Internet. The Internet didn't exist just a few years ago, and we have a whole new scope and range of activities. So that is the purpose of the hearing, to open the discussion. I don't know that we will reach any conclusions, and you can see there is a great diversity of opinion among you and, I am sure, the people in the audience and the members of this panel.

I did want to give Mr. McDonough some time to respond. He did want to respond. If you would do that at this time.

Mr. MCDONOUGH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to make a comment on the notion put before you that the fact that drugs are against the law deters people from getting treatment. Having spent a number of years looking at drug courts, the prison system and addicts, it is sad to say but what I find is an addict almost never volunteers for treatment. It is only when they are under great duress that you see them come forward. This is for the rich as well as the poor. Usually with the rich it is we know when the spouse has said that is enough, we can't tolerate this anymore or the business is about to fail or the profession is about to fail, they will quietly go and get treatment.

The vast majority that come for treatment come for it within the criminal justice system. That is to say, the law picks them up after they committed about 20 crimes-and that is what the law enforcement professionals tell me what happens-and if they are given the

option of going to drug court in lieu of prison, they will accept drug treatment.

Now, interesting to note, the success rates on that in bringing down addiction and recidivism rates are very, very good. To be specific, in Florida, I have studied the data. Since 1994 we have seen seven or eightfold improvement.

That is to say, you have seven or eight times as much success in bringing the recidivism rates down when you have coercion of the criminal justice system overhanging the treatment. That is not an undignified process for the offender, now the client. The client appears before the drug court judge, has to go to treatment, has to take his drug or her drug test on a monthly basis, often more often than that, and has to successfully get through the program every month for 12 months. After 12 months, they graduate. The ideal is they are free of drugs, employed, and no longer have a criminal activity habit.

That is what we are seeing in successes. I will tell you my experience the statistics I have looked at it is not the criminal justice system that deters people from getting treatment. Actually, it seems to be an impetus to treatment. A very good one. So I would like to dispel that myth.

Mr. MICA. Thank you. To be totally fair, the only one I don't think I have asked a question of or given a chance to respond is Mr. Maginnis. Did you want to comment, sir?

Mr. MAGINNIS. Mr. Mica, I have a chart and I won't have to use it, but 70 percent of Americans oppose cocaine and heroin legalization because they believe, as the DEA indicated, it would lead to more violent crime in America. That is one of a number of reasons, but if you look at the Chinese opium use at the turn of the century, 100 million Chinese started using opium.

If you consider what Dr. Herb Kleeber quoted earlier by the DEA and saying how addictive cocaine is, can you imagine if Madison Avenue was to market cocaine and heroin as they have cigarettes in this country? We produce 600 billion cigarettes a year; we market all over the world. We would certainly produce a purer heroin and cocaine and package it with flavors, with everything else and it would be pretty widely available but the social consequencesthe chart the drug czar showed you-would have 110 billion social consequences that would go up logarithmically if we did this.

So it is a deadly pathway. If we want catastrophe for this country, go forward.

Otherwise, I think we should listen to the sanguine and very common sense approach that the American people keep telling us that drugs are-this is the wrong direction. We need to turn off the spigots and hold these people pushing legalization accountable for what they are doing whether it's in California, Arizona, or up in Washington State. In fact, they are confusing our kids; they are contributing to more drug use and more of the problems that we have in this country, not helping.

Mr. MICA. Thank you. Mr. Barr, do you have any final questions? Mr. BARR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

We had asked, Mr. Chairman, I believe, Mr. Soros to come here today and testify. I am sorry he didn't. Perhaps he will in the near future. But we know, Mr. Chairman, that those associated with the