Judge, Anaheim Doctor to Join Call to Legalize Drugs

Orange County Superior Court Judge James P. Gray said Wednesday that he will join prominent citizens across the country in urging President Bill Clinton and Congress to legalize drugs.

Gray, along with an Anaheim surgeon and two ministers from the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles are among 19 civic and religious leaders and private citizens who signed a resolution last month declaring that the United States has lost the war on drugs.

The resolution calls for revising drug laws to reduce the spread of drug-related crimes and diseases such as AIDS, which can be transmitted through the sharing of contaminated needles.

“We wanted people from all walks of life to get involved and go back into their communities and get other groups involved,” said Gray. The resolution will be forwarded to the White House in several weeks, he said.

Dr. S. Clarke Smith, an Anaheim surgeon, signed the resolution after a meeting at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, along with Dr. Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning professor of economics at the University of Chicago and the Revs. Leonard B. Jackson and J. D. Moore of L.A.’s First AME Church.

Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, who has been an outspoken advocate of legalizing or decriminalizing drugs, and Joseph D. McNamara, former chief of police in San Jose, also signed the resolution.

Opponents, including members of the Orange County Advisory Board on Drug Programs, say legalization of drugs will lead to increased problems with drug addiction and crime. Legalization would also send the wrong message to children, opponents argue.

Gray said it is “insulting” to believe that people who do not use drugs will become cocaine addicts upon legalization.

Gray said opponents have not seriously looked at the evidence that the country is not effectively fighting drugs. Gray said 80% of the felony cases in Orange County are drug-related, while 85% of bank robberies are committed for drug money.