Justice Reform Network

Women and men, old and young, suits and blue jeans, from all over the U. S. and around the world gathered in New Orleans’ still beautiful French Quarter last week to kick off The 2007 International Drug Policy Reform Conference.

The three-day conference was hosted by the Drug Policy Alliance, and co-hosted by Students for Sensible Drug Policy, the Marijuana Policy Project, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Harm Reduction Coalition, and the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation. With more than 800 attendees, the 2007 conference was the largest drug reform conference ever.

A wide variety of organizations there attended more than 80 roundtables and breakout sessions over a three-day period. While many separate aspects of the War On Drugs were analyzed and discussed overall agreement on some central messages soon became clear. :

The drug war is not working –
It is causing violent crime rather than preventing it.

That drug use needs to be treated a health problem rather than a criminal one.

That drug use treated as a health issue is far less expensive than incarceration.

That lack of clean needles and sterile, controlled injection is a large factor in the spread of the Aids epidemic.

That giving drugs a degree of legality would mean they could be regulated and brought under control in the same manner that we now control food, liquor and medicine. . This would eliminate deaths from bad drugs and deter the spread of disease as well as bring the price of drugs down to where they are less profitable as an illegal enterprise.

That the large number of sentences for possession in the African-American communities have the effect of creating an entire class of persons who are either in prison or on the street with felony conviction records that make them almost unemployable.

The American Civil Liberties Union was a
co-sponsor of the conference

Meanwhile the 100 to 1 difference in penalty for possession of powder cocaine, the form of the drug typically used by the white community and crack, the form prevalent among black users results in defacto discrimination against the African American communities resulting in social, economic chaos and large scale tragedy.

(The financial and medical logic and humanity of these arguments might seem obvious but over he last several decades they have made little headway.).

In more than eighty presentations and roundtable discussions attendees heard details of what amounts to our government attacking a segment of its own people via drug penalties.
Between their presentations and discussions in the beautiful old French Quarter attendees were given tours of New Orleans hurricane devastated neighborhoods.

There, looking at acres of housing reduced to the concrete slabs where houses once stood, they were shocked to see a different kind of government offense–government by selective neglect, an attack on the city’s poor and black community by neglect and mismanagement.

Infamous FEMA trailers.

Only slabs left where homes once were.

A shocked young conferee from California looked out on the scene in horror- ”Two and a half years! My God, Where I come from” she said, “ they build whole new towns from scratch in less than a year.

(Never the less the conference later ended on a high note when a classic New Orleans marching band led the attendees out the door of the auditorium and down Bourbon Street.)

Antonio Costa

Back at the hotel auditorium next morning there was a speech by U.N. drug control czar Antonio Costa, probably the highest level official ever to attend a drug reform conference. Costa got a somewhat hostile reception when it became clear that he was in favor of continuing the “Drug War”.

While he did call drugs principally a health issue he was all for using every means to irradicate them and argued against legalization.

Moments later in his sometimes-contradictory speech he pointed out that if opium growing were shut down in one place it would, no doubt, simply show up being grown elsewhere.

The answer, Costa argued, is not on the supply side but the demand side. "Lowering demand is the necessary condition to make drug policy realistic and sustainable," he said, adding that that could be achieved by "prevention, harm reduction, and treatment, combined with comprehensive health programs."

Costa appeared to be himself conflicted by the changing perceptions of the drug problem.

(Ed. note: This editor believes there is a sea change going on in both the public and official perception of drug problems, Perhaps Costa is only now beginning to respond to that change.
Even his unprecedented appearance at the conference suggests an opportunity for new dialogue.).

Almost as if in response to the demands of the conference…It had hardly ended when the news came.

The Supreme Court affirmed a judge's decision to sentence below the guideline range based on the unfairness of the crack cocaine sentencing disparity.
Next in quick succession the United States Sentencing Commission voted unanimously to make retroactive its recent guideline amendment on crack cocaine offenses. The USSC's decision makes an estimated 19,500 persons in prison eligible for a sentence reduction averaging more than two years. Releases are subject to judicial review and will be staggered over 30 years.

While these actions represent a turn around in the legislative and judicial tide they leave thousands of small non-violent user-felons to spend more years incarcerated.

Chicago was represented at the conference by, among others, Protestants for the Common Good (www.the commongood.org) and
Roosevelt University’s Institute for Metropolitan Affairs.
Chicago delegates returned home to find a victory for justice in their hometown. The city of Chicago; had agreed to pay four black victims of torture by Chicago police more than 19 million in restitution for their many years in prison.
Jon Burge, the retired police commander responsible for the torture procedures, however, remains free and unindicted, living in Florida on a city pension.
But stay tuned.