Earlier this year, the Pew Center for the States reported that more than 1 of every 100 American adults is in jail or prison. That totals approximately 2.3 million adults.

NPR reported today on one program that could help solve America’s huge incarceration problem. Texas sends many people to "DIVERT" Court, a system that pushes first-time, low-level non-violent offenders—especially those arrested for minor drug possession offenses—through rehab and treatment programs instead of the through the criminal justice system and into prison.

Texas has a prison population of 157,000, a number that’s expected to balloon in the next few years if it continues to incarcerate at its current rate. NPR reports:

Two studies by Southern Methodist University show that DIVERT Court cuts the recidivism rate by 68 percent over the regular Texas criminal justice courts. For every dollar spent on the court, $9 are saved in future criminal justice costs.

…The expanding prison population is a financial red stain spreading across the state’s books like the Andromeda Strain, [Texas State Rep. Jerry Madden (R-Plano), Chairman of the House Corrections Committee] says. Each new maximum security prison costs Texas taxpayers $300 million to build and $40 million a year to operate.

State officials estimate that unless changes are made, Texas will need 17,000 more prison beds just four years from now. Releasing prisoners on parole is politically untenable — which makes "diversion" an increasingly appealing way to avoid what’s looking like a $2 billion invoice.

You can’t argue with numbers like that. The DIVERT Court has been such a success that officials are hoping to expand it beyond first-time offenders. Jody Kent, Public Policy Coordinator for the ACLU’s National Prison Project, says:

Too many non-violent offenders are sent to prison because of deeply flawed sentencing policies, which are costing taxpayers millions of dollars and not addressing the heart of the problem. Programs such as the DIVERT court provide a sound, less costly alternative that has proved to be successful in reducing recidivism, and should be adopted in every city in the country.

Thanks to the "War on Drugs," incarceration of non-violent drug offenders has increased 1,100 percent since 1980; the current population of such offenders stands at nearly half a million. That’s almost a quarter of the current total national prison population.

Jag Davies, Policy Researcher for the ACLU’s Drug Law Reform Project, says:

We are at a remarkable moment in history that presents an opportunity for systemic change. The confluence of ballooning state prison populations, budget shortfalls, and a newfound political willingness to be “smart-on-crime,” are presenting unprecedented opportunities to halt the ever-increasing population of incarcerated drug law offenders. Most of these individuals have no history of violence or high-level drug selling activity, and do not belong in prison. With more humane and effective alternatives available, such as the DIVERT program in Texas, it is imperative that policymakers implement alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent drug offenders as soon as possible. State and local agencies carry the brunt of enforcing, prosecuting, and incarcerating drug offenders, yet it is also state and local budgets that are being squeezed tightest by the current economic downturn. Both fiscally and in terms of overall public safety, the U.S. can no longer afford the status quo.

Texas taxpayers should be gratified to know that their policymakers are looking for innovative, responsible ways to keep the prison population low, while still keeping the public safe. Diversion programs save both taxpayer money now and in the future, and benefits those who need it most.

Over the past generation, routine police work in the U.S. has become radically militarized in the name of the "War on Drugs." One frightening expression of this trend is the approximately 40,000 paramilitary-style SWAT raids that take place each year in the U.S. — most commonly to serve drug warrants, and often for misdemeanor, nonviolent offenses. SWAT raids are usually forced, aggressive, unannounced entry by heavily armed policemen dressed as soldiers, and are often accompanied by flash-bang grenades and major damage to the residence or business. (For more on the rise of paramilitary police raids, see Radley Balko’s report, Overkill.)

When you combine this disturbing trend with a concurrent shift over the past decades away from prosecutorial and judicial oversight of policing practices, you get lots and lots of tragic "isolated incidents" — resulting in preventable deaths of not just drug offenders, but also innocent suspects, bystanders, and police officers.

One of these isolated incidents occurred in the small city of Lima, Ohio, on January 4, 2008, when Sergeant Joseph Chavalia shot blindly into a room where unarmed 26-year-old Tarika Wilson was presumably hiding behind a closed door with her six children, including her one-year-old son Sincere Wilson. Tarika was killed immediately, and Sincere had a finger amputated after being shot in the shoulder and hand. Tarika was not even the target of the raid — rather, the officers had a warrant for Anthony Terry, her boyfriend.

During the raid, one of Chavalia’s fellow officers shot and killed two dogs that belonged to Terry. Chavalia testified that when his fellow officers shot the dogs, he mistakenly presumed that hostile gunfire was coming from the Wilson’s bedroom. Chavalia then shot blindly in the direction of the bedroom, without first attempting to identify the Wilson and her six children.

On Monday, a jury in Lima ruled that Chavalia didn’t show a "substantial lapse of due care" and acquitted him of misdemeanor charges of negligent homicide and negligent assault.

It’s a shame that the same considerations aren’t made when officers are shot by innocent drug suspects who reasonably mistake unannounced intruders for illegal home invaders (such as in the prosecutions of Tracy Ingle and Corey Maye, as I described in this recent DailyKos post.)

Since Wilson was biracial and Chavalia is white, many have seen the shooting as representative of the disproportionate enforcement of drug laws in African-American and economically disadvantaged communities. (I posted last week on a new report detailing shocking racial disparities in drug enforcement in nearby Cuyahoga County, Ohio).

The shooting even prompted Jesse Jackson, Sr. to pay a visit to Lima to meet with protesters, community members, and city leaders last February. Jackson called the shooting "unnecessary force, excessive, and illegal," and urged prosecution of Lima police.

The fact that all eight members of the jury that acquitted Chavalia were white — even though one-quarter of Lima’s residents are black — has only added fuel to the fire.

"We’ve got to do better. We’ve given people the license to kill," Jason Upthegrove, president of the Lima chapter of the NAACP, was quoted as saying in the Toledo Blade.

As negligent as Chavalia may have been in shooting Wilson and her son, it’s hard to chalk up responsibility to just one trigger-happy officer. Officers are often given little or no background information before taking part in SWAT raids, and thrown into dangerous situations unnecessarily by sloppy or disingenuous work on the part of their colleagues.

It’s shocking that more people are not urging their government officials to return SWAT policing to its intended purpose — neutralizing the rare, crisis situations when there is substantiated evidence that someone’s life is urgently threatened.

By merely tightening search warrant standards and implementing basic safeguards and regulations that ensure ample oversight and corroboration of informant testimony, we could begin to rebuild the broken trust between police and the communities they aspire to serve and protect. Until then, count on the steady parade of drug raids resulting in needless death and destruction to continue.

Gradually, it is becoming common knowledge that even though a white American is just as likely to use or sell drugs, if you’re African-American, you are many times more likely to be arrested and incarcerated for a drug law violation.

The new report by Mona Lynch, Ph.D., "Selective Enforcement of Drug Laws in Cuyahoga County, Ohio: A Report on the Racial Effects of Geographic Disparities in Arrest Patterns" – published in January by Citizens for a Safe & Fair Cleveland (CSFC) and made public for the first time last week – lays bare the intricacies of how this dynamic has taken shape in Cleveland’s criminal justice system.

The report’s roots go back to a series of discussions dubbed "Incarceration Nation," where the ACLU of Ohio brought together a diverse array of voices on this subject. Through these discussions, community members realized that more needed to be done to monitor law enforcement policies to ensure safety and fairness in Cleveland and its surrounding areas. Thus, the participants created CSFC in March 2007 to discuss issues of law enforcement, judicial equity, and community relations. Organizational members of CSFC include the ACLU of Ohio, Cleveland Chapter NAACP, Cleveland Job Corp Academy, and 100 Black Men, as well as a number of community leaders, advocates and stakeholders.

Kudos to Dan Harkins, who published an insightful article on Lynch’s report and CSFC for the Cleveland Scene.

Lynch’s report explains the disparities in prosecutors’ charging decisions for drug possession violations in the different jurisdictions within Cuyahoga County. Lynch found that Cleveland prosecutors are more likely to charge low-level drug law violations – such as possession of drug paraphernalia containing infinitesimal amounts of drug residue – as drug possession felonies compared to their counterparts in other parts of Cuyahoga County, who are more likely to charge the same offense as a misdemeanor.

Lynch concluded that, "Since the city population is majority nonwhite, whereas the surrounding county population is overwhelmingly white, the differential enforcement practices disproportionately impact the non-white population of the county."

The result? In 2005, 81 percent of all county drug arrests involved black people, despite the fact that only 27 percent of country residents are African-American.

Let’s hope Cleveland’s leaders have the courage and common sense to bring an end to this blatant racial injustice. The time has come to make a systemic shift away from the arrest and incarceration of low-level, nonviolent drug users and toward a more efficient, effective model that frees up criminal justice resources to focus on serious, violent crime.

Flanked by fellow legislators and drug policy reform leaders, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) held a press conference yesterday in his office on Capitol Hill to announce the details of legislation that would eliminate federal criminal sanctions for possession of marijuana.

The “Personal Use of Marijuana by Responsible Adults Act of 2008,” also known as H.R. 5843, would remove federal criminal penalties for personal possession of up to 100 grams of marijuana or the nonprofit transfer of up to an ounce of marijuana. It would not change the federal statutes forbidding cultivation, import, export or for-profit sale of marijuana.

Co-sponsors of the bill include Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), Ron Paul (R-Texas) and William Lacy Clay (D-Mo.).

The sacrifices to public health and safety made in the name of marijuana enforcement and prosecution are horrifying. 829,625 people arrested for marijuana law offenses in 2006, 89 percent for mere possession. Taxpayers are stuck with the multibillion-dollar bill for these hundreds of thousands of marijuana arrests, which consume 4.5 million law enforcement hours — the equivalent of taking 112,500 law enforcement officers off the streets. (See my previous blog post on this bill for further analysis.)

Contrary to conventional wisdom, it is unlikely that marijuana decriminalization would lead to an increase in marijuana use. As the World Health Organization detailed in its recent report, the U.S. has the highest rate of marijuana use in the world despite some of the most punitive drug policies. In the U.S., 42.4 percent of people have used marijuana, compared to just 19.8 percent in the Netherlands, where marijuana has been decriminalized for decades.

People seem to be paying attention. CNN posted a favorable story, which was ranked as the most viewed article on CNN’s site for most of the day.

The drug czar sure is paying attention. As Nick Juliano at The Raw Story reported, the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) was so troubled by yesterday’s press conference that they sent “chief scientist” David Murray and two aides to dispense materials to reporters and make a statement to the press immediately following the conference. One of the materials distributed to reporters was a “Marijuana Sourcebook” called, “Marijuana: The Greatest Cause of Illegal Drug Abuse.”

Federal drug law is so corrupted to the core that ONDCP is actually bound by statutory obligation to use taxpayer funds to lobby against any attempt to change drug laws within the U.S. Thanks to a little-known statute pushed through by Mark Souder (R-Ind.), Congress has mandated that the Director of ONDCP “take such actions as necessary to oppose any attempt to legalize the use of a substance (in any form) that—(A) is listed in Schedule I…; and (B) has not been approved for medical purposes by the Food and Drug Administration.”

While it is highly doubtful that Frank’s bill will pass this year or anytime soon, it could help bolster state-based efforts to decriminalize marijuana. After all, state and local agencies carry the brunt of enforcing, prosecuting, and incarcerating marijuana offenders, yet it is also state and local budgets that are being squeezed tightest by the current economic downturn.

In addition to the 12 states the decriminalized marijuana in the 1970s, several others are well on their way — Nevada came close to passing a ballot initiative in 2006, Massachusetts voters will decide the issue this November, and other states such as Washington, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Montana have taken steps that could lead to decriminalization over the next few years. In addition, a number of cities such as Denver, Seattle, Oakland and San Francisco — as well as a handful of smaller towns and cities —have passed measures mandating police treat marijuana law violations as the “lowest law enforcement priority.”

Let your Congressional Representative know that this issue is a priority. Take a few seconds to urge him or her to co-sponsor and support this historic legislation by sending a personalized message to your Congressional Representative.

If you have a problem with
school
officials strip searching 13-year-olds for Advil – or if you
care
about the government’s standards for informant use and
invasive
searches – you can take relief in href="http://www.aclu.org/drugpolicy/search/35955lgl20080711.html">yesterday’s
ruling by a full panel of the U.S.
Court of Appeals
for the 9th Circuit, which ruled 6-5 that students cannot be
strip-searched based on the uncorroborated word of another student
who is facing disciplinary punishment.

“A reasonable
school official,
seeking to protect the students in his charge, does not subject a
thirteen-year-old girl to a traumatic search to
‘protect’ her
from the danger of Advil,” the federal appellate court wrote
in
today’s opinion. “We reject Safford’s
effort to lump together
these run-of-the-mill anti-inflammatory pills with the evocative term
‘prescription drugs,’ in a knowing effort to shield
an imprudent
strip search of a young girl behind a larger war against
drugs.”

“It does not take
a constitutional
scholar to conclude that a nude search of a 13-year-old girl is an
invasion of constitutional rights. More than that: it is a
violation of any known principle of human dignity,” the court
continued.

In addition to finding the
strip search
unconstitutional, the court held that the school official who ordered
the strip search, Vice Principal Kerry Wilson, is financially liable
in the case and cannot claim qualified immunity.

The ACLU co-represented the
student,
href="http://www.aclu.org/drugpolicy/search/34293lgl20041103.html">Savana
Redding, before the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the 9th
Circuit, which decided to reconsider the case after a three-judge
panel ruled 2-1 that the strip-search was legal.

For a case like this,
it’s hard to
understand how the unconstitutionality of strip searching Redding
could even be up for debate. Consider how flimsy the
government’s
case was:

• No physical
  evidence suggested that
  Redding – an honor roll student with no history of substance
  use or
  abuse – might be in possession of ibuprofen pills or that she
  was
  concealing them in her undergarments.

• The strip search
  was undertaken
  based solely on the uncorroborated claims of a classmate facing
  punishment, who was caught with prescription strength ibuprofen
  –
  the equivalent of two over-the-counter pills of Advil. (And why on
  earth might a teenaged girl have ibuprofen?)

• No attempt was
  made to corroborate
  the classmate’s accusations among other students or teachers.

• The classmate
  had not claimed that
  Redding currently possessed any pills, nor had the classmate given
  any indication as to where they might be concealed.

• No attempt was
  made to contact
  Redding’s parents prior to conducting the strip search.

If you want to get some
background
information on the abundance of scientific literature describing the
serious psychological repercussions of being strip-searched at age
13, you should check out the briefs of support that were also filed
by the href="http://www.aclu.org/drugpolicy/search/34290lgl20080221.html">National
Association of Social Workers and the
href="http://www.aclu.org/drugpolicy/search/34291lgl20080221.html">Rutherford
Institute.

“The strip search
was the most
humiliating experience I have ever had,” said Redding in a
sworn
affidavit following the incident. “I held my head down so
that they
could not see that I was about to cry.”

As Reason’s
Jacob Sullum
insightfully observed in his article on the case, href="http://www.reason.com/news/show/125786.html">“The
School Crotch Inspector”:

“There are two
kinds of people in the
world: the kind who think it’s perfectly reasonable to strip-search a
13-year-old girl suspected of bringing ibuprofen to school, and the
kind who think those people should be kept as far away from children
as possible … Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference
between
drug warriors and child molesters.”

The same href="http://www.aclu.org/drugpolicy/search/informantabuse.html">safeguards
and regulations on informant use that
we have been
advocating in the context of criminal drug proceedings apply even
more so to the context of school, where young people are particularly
vulnerable to unsubstantiated rumors and finger-pointing by
vindictive peers.

The first-ever meeting of ordinary people, representing the entire globe and discussing the state of the world’s drug policy, concluded today in Vienna with a unanimous, united call for a new approach to drug control policy. Here are the highlights of our resolution:

• We recognized "the human rights abuses against people who use drugs"
• We called for "evidence-based" drug policy focused on "mitigation of short-term and long-term harms" and "full respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms"
• We called on the U.N. to report on the collateral consequences of the current criminal justice-based approach to drugs and to provide an "analysis of the unintended consequences of the drug control system"
• We called for comprehensive "reviews of the application of criminal sanctions as a drug control measure"
• We recognized harm reduction as a necessary and worthwhile response to drug abuse (harm reduction is a set of practical strategies that reduce negative consequences of drug use, incorporating a spectrum of strategies from safer use, to managed use to abstinence; harm reduction strategies meet drug users "where they’re at," addressing conditions of use along with the use itself)
• We called for a shift in primary emphasis from interdiction to treatment and prevention
• We called for alternatives to incarceration
• We called for the provision of development aid to farmers before eradication of coca or opium crops

In other words, we voiced the need for a very significant shift in direction for drug policy at just about every level.

Of course, if the national governments decide to ignore this call from the grassroots, this could just be a grown-up version of the model U.N. club some of us did in high school.

If you read my earlier blog posts , you’ll know about the mysterious woman with the yellow badge — she worked hard to wreck the first day, but once she was gone on the second day, the more hard-line U.S. groups became fairly pragmatic and sensible. But the mystery woman showed up again today.

I decided to introduce myself to the woman with the yellow badge. Today, she had a red badge, like the rest of us — meaning that overnight she had become a delegate, not an observer. Scary thought for how the day might go. I offered her my card, and got hers. I asked that she, as an official U.S. representative, please include the ACLU in future delegations. It turns out that June Sivilli is indeed in the drug czar’s office. A quick Google search reveals that she’s a big proponent of student drug testing, which may explain why she already knew who I was (thanks to the ACLU’s heretical position that, because it’s invasive and ineffective, we shouldn’t drug test students.) She didn’t offer to include me in future delegations, but was entirely civil.

And then the day started with a bang: obstruction and delay from Drug Free America’s Calvina Fay and a couple of her colleagues. What was interesting, though, was that many of her original allies were no longer going along with her tactics. Joined only by the "Drug Free Schools Coalition" and a group called Sundial , she renewed the call to remove any suggestion that current drug policies cause harm. Sivilli seemed to be at work again, mobilizing her dwindling troops. Things quickly became comical: one delegate made a motion for all official government employees (i.e., Sivilli) to reveal themselves. The chair denied the motion, but the point had been made. Then another delegate asked the chair why the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (love the name!) was no longer filming the meeting. A rumor had spread that Sivilli objected to being caught on camera whispering in the ears of the "drug-free" representatives. And I learned from one colleague that the Drug Free Schools Coalition representative had threatened to sue her for taking his picture and "reported" her to the U.N. (whatever that means), forcing her to erase the picture from her camera. Can anyone think of any other examples of the U.S. government these days trying to do its dirty work with no accountability or scrutiny, especially in the face of overwhelming opposition from ordinary people? (Yes, Drug Free Schools Coalition and Drug Free America are not actually the U.S. government, but they clearly were working hand-in-glove in the one space where the U.S. government representative could not speak for herself.)

But I’m spending way too much time on the shenanigans and not enough on the tremendous promise that today brings. For almost half a century, world drug policy has focused overwhelmingly on "supply side" tactics — a euphemism for policies based on arrests and imprisonment. The U.S. has largely driven this process, in our name but without our consent and mostly without even our awareness. Other governments were initially dragged into this regime, and many have come to embrace it enthusiastically and viciously. Yet now, in this very official space, the people of the world have responded, and we say with one voice that things must change.

I’ll write one more time with some thoughts about how we can make sure our government listens. And I hope you’ll all chime in with your ideas in the comments section. One more thing: thanks for taking the time to read this far. I hope it’s been useful and maybe even a little bit fun.

Intrigue and then remarkable progress marked the second day of the Vienna conference on drug policy.

First, the intrigue. Throughout the first day, I kept noticing this one person who harrumphed, guffawed, and muttered every time someone spoke in ways critical of the drug policy status quo. By accent, she seemed to be from the United States. And she had a yellow badge, where everyone else had a red badge. Who was she? Why did she keep shuffling over to the U.S. groups like Drug Free America and other cheerleaders for U.S. hardline policy? She settled in right behind me, and gave instructions to her allies — tactics for blocking inclusion of harm reduction. She said "one of you needs to interject to stop the hand clapping in favor of their proposals." More and more, she seemed like some sort of puppet master. As the day concluded, she rushed up to the podium, accosted the chair, and, in the most agitated way, began lambasting the chair for various procedural points.

I had to find out about the American woman with the yellow badge. At a social gathering later that evening, I described my observations to some of the NGO delegates who regularly attend these U.N. events. Turns out that the yellow-badge woman is June Sivilli, an employee of the U.S. drug czar’s office and a regular fixture at Vienna drug meetings. Until now, she has been able to speak as an official voice of the U.S. government — and the U.S. is always the most important voice on U.N. drug policy issues. Now that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are bringing the voices of ordinary people to the table for the first time ever, she was actively subverting the process, throwing every possible obstacle in the way of this quite benign process.

I’d always heard that the U.S. government played a bully role in international drug policy. But it’s really ugly to see it in practice.

Happily, the second morning of the conference came with no U.S. government saboteurs on the scene. Someone must have let Sivilli know that her contributions were not appropriate. As if by magic, the barrage of objections from yesterday largely evaporated. Some of the pro-status quo groups continued to raise some objections, but I realized that some of those folks have a genuine desire to make the world a better place and a desire to make the NGO consultation productive. The head of Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America offered some reasonable compromises; the representative of the National Association of Drug Court Professionals (NADCP) supported my calls for human rights protections; even Calvina Fay (see yesterday’s post on her deplorable statements) became fairly agreeable.

I shouldn’t overstate the kumbaya spirit of the day, though. A tempest erupted when a European HIV prevention group suggested that drug users should be consulted in making drug policy because they are the most affected. He asked us to imagine if an AIDS convention were drafted without mentioning people living with HIV. The NADCP representative then brought down the house with this: "I do not believe that people who are using drugs should be part of the process," followed by, "drugs are illegal, so it can’t be compared to the civil rights movement" and a comment that people could be heard only if "they submitted themselves to treatment" first. Deborah Small from Break the Chains offered an olive branch, saying that we all share the goal of helping people, so we should exclude no one. But the point of the whole exercise was brought home by the chair of the meeting, who said that some governments hesitate to consult NGOs because they are seen as unruly or undirected, so this kind of squabble would bring delight, showing that NGOs are categorically unfit to have a seat at the table.

Thus, with Sivilli gone and with our minds focused on not looking like a room of unruly school children, we finally rolled up our sleeves. By mid-day, we began accelerating through a draft resolution, adding in human rights protections, recognizing the value of harm reduction, and insisting that "success" in the drug war must account for all the human and economic costs of incarceration and law enforcement, not just a tally sheet of tons of drugs interdicted. We even agreed that the U.N. drug bodies should re-evaluate whether incarceration is an effective drug policy. (One stalwart — a fellow whose organization’s goal is to bring drug testing to every school in the U.S. and across the globe — objected that this was an attack on law enforcement. None of the law enforcement organizations agreed.)

Frankly, I’m not sure what to make of all this. It seems clear that ordinary people of the world are able to do a pretty good job describing a sane drug policy, so long as the U.S. drug czar stays out the way. The problem, though, is that this wonderful set of recommendations will matter only if national governments decide to listen. Once Sivilli resumes her customary seat at the table, she’ll surely oppose the recommendations. But will the other nations of the world have the wherewithal to chart their own course? Given that U.S. aid is often made conditional on toeing the U.S. drug policy line, it’s hard to be overly optimistic.

And yet, we have no choice but to find hope that other nations will join us in charting a new course. At the end of today, I talked with Deodory John. He runs program in Tanzania for young people harmed by drug use. The program, Rafiki Family, is funded by local contributions. He is certain that prisons and police would do the kids in his program no good; they need education, jobs, peer counseling and treatment. And using harm reduction interventions, he’s working to combat the spread of HIV and AIDS. (If you want to join me in supporting his program, please send an email to John for more information.) I also met Tripti Tandon, from the Lawyers Collective’s HIV/AIDS Unit in India. She told me how India had enacted draconian drug laws under pressure from the U.S. to comply with its treaty obligations. The law makes even consumption of drugs a crime, and police routinely pick up poor people, force them to take drug tests, and then convict them based on the results. A positive for marijuana lands you in jail for six months; harder drugs for a year. Meanwhile, in Indonesia, the U.S. helped design and build a remote maximum security prison, where death-row inmates are transported using CIA rendition techniques (hoods, shackles, beating), confessions are extracted under torture, and the majority of prisoners are accused solely of drug crimes. This travesty is exposed on page 45 of a March 2008 U.N. Human Rights Council report to the U.N. General Assembly. If the NGOs get our way here in Vienna, the U.N. drug bodies will start documenting the myriad human rights violations committed under the U.S.-led global war on drugs.

At the ACLU, we work hard to replace the drug war with a humane, health-based approach. The millions of current, former, and would-be drug prisoners in the U.S. urgently need this change. This conference makes clear that things are as bad, and often worse, in other parts of the world, and I’m glad that our work may help atone for — maybe even correct — some of the devastation that U.S.-led drug policy has inflicted throughout all corners of the globe.

Today marks the beginning of the first-ever attempt to shape international drug policy, not from the perspective of national governments, but based on the views and experience of people who live and work in countries all around the globe.

More than 300 delegates (including me, as the ACLU representative) gathered this morning in a room in a vast U.N. complex in Vienna. More famous as the home of international efforts to control the spread of nuclear arms, the complex is also home to the main U.N. agencies charged with control of illicit drugs. We sat in the chairs usually occupied by the Committee on Narcotic Drugs, each of us with an earphone providing simultaneous translation. Dial 4 for English, 5 for French or 8 for Spanish. If you rely on any of the world’s other languages — from Albanian to Zulu — it seems that you’re out of luck.

If a few languages are dominant, though, it was quickly clear that only one national government held sway in this part of the U.N.: the United States. The introductory remarks from the leading figures in the U.N. drug policy structure all reflected a surprising level of allegiance to hard-line U.S. drug policy. Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (recently his title was changed from Drug Czar to something less, well, czar-ish), proclaimed that last week the world had finally reached "containment" (his word, not mine) of the drug problem. I’ll let others judge whether he is right to claim victory: compare his report with a report by the Transnational Institute not-so-subtly titled, "UNODC Rewrites History in New World Drug Report to Hide Failure." (PDF)

Hasn’t our own U.S. drug czar periodically (and controversially) proclaimed a statistical victory in the war on drugs, even as the rest of us know otherwise? Indeed, Congress held oversight hearings in March (PDF), slamming the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) for sugar-coating statistics and exaggerating its accomplishments. Just last week, the New York Times published a poignant editorial entitled, "Not Winning the War on Drugs," which also took ONDCP to the mat for obfuscating the truth about its failures.

As to any alternative to arrest and incarceration as the framework for drug policy, Costa is sending mixed signals. On the one hand, he quipped, "we must move beyond these debates between a drug-free world and a free drug world," suggesting that any alternative to drug gulags would entail providing free drugs to all who seek them. On the other hand, Costa signaled a new and most welcome opening to applying human rights rules to drug policy (much more on that later). Again he executed a nice turn of phrase: "Although drugs kill, we should not kill because of drugs." I was left wondering: is his vision of human rights limited to disallowing the death penalty, or is this an opening to talk about decades of incarceration, invasions of privacy, and the host of other human rights violations committed in the name of drug law enforcement?

The non-governmental representatives turned out not to share Mr. Costa’s view of the world. During the past year, NGOs (that’s U.N.-speak for "nongovernmental organizations") met in nine regional conferences around the globe. Covering vast swaths of the map (from sub-Saharan Africa or Southeast to East Asia), each meeting gathered input from hundreds of organizations and produced a report detailing NGO input. The input from these reports coalesced into a draft declaration and resolution. During the next few days, the NGOs in attendance will engage in a consensus-building process to debate the final wording of the declaration and resolution. In turn, the declaration and resolution will be presented at the U.N. General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) in March 2009, when the next 10-year global strategy for drug policy will be determined. 

In all but one region of the world, the NGOs found an appalling over-reliance on arrest and incarceration — appalling both because it proves ineffective in addressing drug addiction and because it destroys so many lives at such great cost. In all but one region, the NGOs called for applying human rights norms to their nations’ drug policies. In all but one region, the NGOs described their work in reducing the harms of drugs by providing sterile syringes to drug users to stop the spread of AIDS.

The one region to part course on these fronts was the United States. A regional meeting in St. Petersburg, Florida, gathered a chorus of organizations that are funded by or collaborate closely with the U.S. Drug Czar’s office, and, having gathered only the usual suspects, they produced a consensus view that federal drug laws were consistent with the U.N. drug treaties and that they were working just fine. Their main complaint was that some states violate international law by choosing not to arrest seriously ill patients who use marijuana — a policy they call "medical excuse marijuana." (By the way, this argument about international law is being made by the County of San Diego in a lawsuit where the ACLU and our allies are defending California’s medical marijuana law, so far with great success.)

It’s hard to select a low point in the presentation of the Florida meeting, but I’ll go with this one: according Calvina Fay, director of the Drug Free America Foundation and a former advisor to the ONDCP, "the criminal justice system is a good referral system for treatment."  In other words, we should be proud that we arrest and incarcerate more people for drugs than any nation in the entire world or in all of history because this is a way of getting these folks into treatment. I can hardly think of a more expensive or less humane way to address an issue that the rest of the world (and much of America) recognizes to be a public health issue.

The day ended with Fay blocking consensus on the suggestion that the words "harm reduction" should be included in a list of services provided by NGOs. The list is long and reflects the wide range of responses to people who use or misuse drugs — peer outreach, treatment, early intervention, education, etc. But the inclusion of this taboo term, "harm reduction," invokes those approaches that seek to save lives of people who cannot or will not stop using drugs. The term is used in literally dozens of U.N. documents, the approach is practiced by a sizeable portion of the service providers at this conference (I would guess half or so, from every part of world, including Iran, and yet its very mention is anathema to the dogma-police approach to drug policy.

I spend a fair amount of my workdays thinking about the direction of drug policy in the United States. The Calvina Fays of our country leave me worried that we’re on the way to locking up another generation of Americans and exporting our misguided policies to the rest of the globe. So far, the U.N. has been an accomplice in doing so. But today’s airing of the views of the world’s NGOs leaves me hopeful that we’re in the process of turning a page on that history, both at home and abroad.

To learn more about the ACLU’s analysis and recommendations to the U.N., check out our statement to the United Nations: "Adopting a Human Rights-Based Global Drug Policy."

As I head to Vienna for a historic U.N. meeting on drug policy, I find myself reflecting on the pervasive influence of the United States on drug laws around the globe. The news of today, and of any given day, is permeated with tragedies and dramas that exist only because we, in the United States, have convinced ourselves and much of the world that prison and black markets are the best solutions to the human urge to ingest substances, despite (or perhaps because of) their powerful ability to alter brain chemistry.

Walking down the boarding ramp for my flight on Swiss Air, an array of Swiss newspapers faces me. From each cover, the face of Ingrid Betancourt stares out, her smile celebrating newfound freedom and her worried eyes betraying six years of brutal captivity at the hands of FARC, a Colombia guerilla group funded by cocaine sales and hostage ransom. The story of her rescue is the stuff of a fine spy novel; the embrace of her children, heart-warming; but behind it all lies a story of drugs — the consumption of cocaine, the war on those who use, sell and produce it, and a complex web of violence, destruction, corruption and destroyed lives that follow ineluctably from this endless war.

In other cocaine-related news of the day, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is in trouble. No, he is not yet another politician to be accused of using drugs. Rather, he was outed as being soft-on-crime, an allegation that can be just as lethal to political ambitions. Mayor Newsom’s gubernatorial ambitions have faltered following the revelation that the city has returned a handful of juvenile drug sellers to their native Honduras rather than sending them to prison and then deporting them. Newsom quickly apologized for failing to incarcerate children — at least when sale of (presumably minor amounts of) drugs is involved.

Much of the demand for cocaine comes, of course, from the United States. This isn’t really news, but it’s fascinating to see that researchers from the World Health Organization (WHO) have found that the United States has both the highest consumption of cocaine as well as some of the most punitive laws imposed on those who use or sell the drug. The WHO researchers concluded:

The use of drugs seems to be a feature of more affluent countries.

The United States, which has been driving much of the world’s drug research and drug policy agenda, stands out with higher levels of use of alcohol, cocaine, and cannabis, despite punitive illegal drug policies, as well as (in many U.S. states), a higher minimum legal alcohol drinking age than many comparable developed countries.

The Netherlands, with a less criminally punitive approach to cannabis use than the U.S., has experienced lower levels of use, particularly among younger adults.

The limitations of punitive drug policies principally concerned with supply-side enforcement and incarceration could not be clearer. The time has come for the international community to fully recognize that a drug free world is presently beyond reach and to focus on minimizing the dangers that drugs pose to at-risk individuals and society at large — an approach that has proven both effective and better aligned with international human rights and public safety mandates. The ACLU’s statement to the U.N. offers additional information and detailed recommendations.

With thoughts of Betancourt, Honduran children and a failed U.S. drug policy that drives a global market for drugs, I’ll be meeting with NGO leaders from around the world. Some will argue for more of the same, but many of us will be urging a new approach.

I’ll report tomorrow on the first day of the conference.

Tomorrow, U.S. Senator Jim Webb (D-Va.) will convene a hearing of the Joint Economic Committee (JEC) entitled, “Illegal Drugs: Economic Impact, Societal Costs, Policy Responses.” According to the committee’s media advisory, “The panel will discuss the illegal drug economy in the United States, assess the costs of U.S. policy responses to combating drug use, and address the need for policy reforms.”

Considering the government’s scandalous waste of resources on destructive and inefficient drug policies — and the economic troubles spreading across the country — it’s thrilling to see Congress making the connection. Here are a few topics that we would love to see discussed at the hearing:

• Hidden Costs of the Drug War. The Office of National Drug Control Policy’s 2006 reauthorization requires that the National Drug Control Budget include all funding requests for any drug control activity, including costs attributable to drug law enforcement activities such as prosecuting and incarcerating federal drug law offenders. This requirement was necessary because in 2002 ONDCP had dropped many of these costs from the budget — effectively reducing the budget’s size by one-third, and exaggerating the proportion of the budget slated for treatment and prevention. Despite Congress’ mandate that ONDCP prepare a comprehensive budget that informs Congress and the public of the full scope of drug control program expenditures, the recent 2009 National Drug Control Strategy completely omits the activities that Congress ordered to be re-instated. It should go without saying that a comprehensive assessment of the overall costs of current U.S. drug policies is needed to assess its cost-effectiveness.

• Shifting to a Health-Based Approach. Several studies have demonstrated that treatment is a more cost-effective method for addressing the issue of drug abuse than enforcement and harsh punitive measures such as lengthy imprisonment. For example, a report by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy found that every dollar spent on drug treatment in the community is estimated to return $18.52 in benefits to society. Along the same lines, a report by the RAND Corporation, a Pentagon-funded think tank, found that domestic law enforcement efforts cost 15 times as much as treatment to achieve the same reduction in societal costs. The University of California’s recent analysis of Proposition 36, the state’s groundbreaking program to divert nonviolent drug offenders to treatment, concluded that the state produced $173.3 million in savings in the first year alone.

Despite the proven efficacy of drug treatment, according to the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services’ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, there are over 20 million Americans in need of substance abuse treatment that are currently not receiving services. This is despite the fact that, since 1980, our nation’s annual drug war spending has skyrocketed from just under $2 billion to over $50 billion. While the treatment gap has marched steadily upward, the number of drug offenders in prisons and jails has increased by a whopping 1100 percent since 1980 — nearly a half-million (493,800) persons are in state or federal prison or local jail for a drug offense, compared to an estimated 41,100 in 1980. Drug arrestshave tripled in the last 25 years, totaling a record 1.89 million arrests in 2006. Despite this massive escalation in arrests, drug use has remained relatively constant. Drug-related health problems, on the other hand, have risen dramatically. According to a little-noticed January report from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), drug overdoses killed more than 33,000 people in 2005, the last year for which data are available. Overdose deaths have more than tripled since 1990, and increased over 60% between 1999 and 2005. It has become all too clear that our over-reliance on arrest and imprisonment have had little or no effect on drug use and a counter-productive effect on drug-related health problems.Yet, while health-based approaches to drug abuse are demonstrably more effective than criminal justice-based approaches, U.S. policy is stuck in the same excessively punitive “tough-on-crime” approach that got us into this mess in the first place.

• Emphasis on Marijuana. Of the 1.89 million drug arrests in 2006, over 40% (829,625) were marijuana arrests. Of these marijuana arrests, 89% were for mere possession. Taxpayers are stuck with the multibillion dollar bill for these hundreds of thousands of marijuana arrests, which consume 4.5 million law enforcement hours - the equivalent of taking 112,500 law enforcement officers off the streets. The focus on arrest and prosecution of small-time nonviolent drug offenders distorts law enforcement priorities and has diverted resources from other important law enforcement functions, such as preventing violent crime. Check out www.marijuanaconversation.org for a fantastic video, featuring travel guru Rick Steves, that outlines the many unacceptable costs of focusing so many law enforcement resources on marijuana.

The costs of the Drug War and mass incarceration are crippling both our communities and our public coffers. State and local agencies carry the brunt of enforcing, prosecuting, and incarcerating drug offenders, yet it is also state and local budgets that are being squeezed tightest by the current economic downturn. Still, there are a lot of opportunities to take steps in the right direction today — a step away from a criminal justice approach and toward a health-based approach, and a step away from blind prohibition and punishment and toward insightful regulation and treatment. Let’s hope tomorrow’s hearing is a pivotal step in the right direction.