Bergeson, Riley Join Call for Drug Reforms

Orange County Supervisor Thomas F. Riley and state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) are among those who support Orange County Superior Court Judge James P. Gray’s call for serious drug policy reform, the judge announced Monday.

Bergeson and Riley were among six prominent people in Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties who recently endorsed a resolution that calls for a presidential commission empowered by Congress to study and recommend changes in the nation’s anti-drug laws.

Also endorsing the resolution, Gray said, were state Sen. Robert Presley (D-Riverside), Assemblyman Bill Morrow (R-Oceanside), Orange County Superior Court Judge Francisco F. Firmat, and San Bernardino County Chief Probation Officer Barbara J. Frank.

Gray’s announcement came just a week after U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders jolted the White House and Capitol Hill by saying that making drugs legal could “markedly reduce our crime rate.”

Bergeson, a conservative Republican, said Monday that she does not support legalization but does believe the criminal justice system needs reform.

“I don’t support the legalizing of drugs,” she said. “But I think anyone who knows the current state of affairs knows that what we have now is simply not working.”

The recent Polly Klaas case is an example, Bergeson said. Richard Allen Davis, suspected of killing Klaas, had been convicted of kidnaping and other violent crimes in the past but was not in prison.

“We have so many people being sent to jail because of drug crimes that it’s causing prison overcrowding, and people like Davis . . . are going free,” Bergeson said. “And we don’t know how many more like him are free just because of prison overcrowding.”

Change must occur now, Bergeson said.

“For us to just turn our backs and say we can’t do things differently is not facing reality,” she added.

Riley said he also opposes legalization of drugs but that “we need to do something that has a positive influence in changing the situation that we have today.”

More than a year ago, Gray set off a controversy when he publicly advocated legalizing adult use of marijuana, cocaine and heroin. Since then, he has backed away from the term legalization in favor of “regulated distribution.”

Riley said that when Gray first approached him for support of full legalization, the supervisor refused.

“When he changed his request to have the people consider the issues,” Riley said, “I felt that was the appropriate forum for the discussion.”

Gray has since become a founding member of the National Coalition for Drug Policy Change. The coalition includes scholars, doctors, politicians and law enforcement officials. Its purpose is to change the country’s approach to the drug epidemic by convincing policy makers that it is a social and medical problem, not a criminal justice one.

Robert Stewart, a spokesman for the Drug Policy Foundation, a Washington-based think tank that also supports new approaches to the drug problem, said Gray “represents the wisdom of the bench. He sees a policy that’s not working, and he knows it is better to have people talking about it than not doing anything.”

Elders later stressed that her comments “should be portrayed as her personal observations based on the experiences of other countries” and that no plan to legalize drugs is being considered by the Clinton Administration.