Conscientious Objectors Protest the War Against Drugs
“Funny beast,” Judge Jim Gray mused last week when I asked whatever happened to his campaign against the nation’s drug war. “It’s hard to change public opinion quickly, and it’s kind of hard to keep the ball rolling.”
Gray, a 50-year-old Superior Court judge, has been the unabashed point man in Orange County for people who want America to give up the war on drugs and redirect the effort. Having not heard much about it lately, I wondered if the local crusaders had packed up their tents.
No, Gray said. Still giving three talks a week at the end of 1995, he said requests slowed over the holidays and that he’s now on the stump once a week. He expects the pace to accelerate again.
The drug-war issue revived again last week when National Review, the conservative magazine founded by William F. Buckley Jr., featured this cover: “The War on Drugs Is Lost.”
Inside, the editors for the first time announced the magazine’s opposition to current drug-war policy focusing on criminalization, just as Buckley has been an outspoken advocate of decriminalization for at least the last several years.
“It is our judgment that the war on drugs has failed,” the editors said, “that it is diverting intelligent energy away from how to deal with the problem of addiction, that it is wasting our resources, and that it is encouraging civil, judicial and penal procedures associated with police states.”
The editors said they deplored drug use and favor the stiffest penalties for anyone selling to minors, but concluded that to remain silent about their opposition to current policy “would be morally and intellectually weak-kneed.” The editors said they agree “on movement toward legalization, even though we may differ on just how far.”
Whether the magazine, long seen as a bastion of conservative political thought, will sway drug-policy debate is unknown. But the magazine’s position on the subject fits in neatly with Gray’s thesis that, eventually, public opinion will carry along public officials, who, he says, are too fearful of speaking out against the drug war.
“We’ve all been programmed by decades of rhetoric to shy away from the issue,” Gray said. “Of course, politicians realize they look weak on crime if they discuss the situation. That’s our fault as voters. People seem to feel there are just
two options--either full-scale prohibition or full-scale legalization, which almost nobody favors. There are many, many options in between.”
Gray characterizes his position as favoring the “regulated distribution of heroin, cocaine and marijuana.” The “legalization” buzzword scares off lots of people, but the practical effect of Gray and like-minded supporters is that prison populations would be significantly reduced with a different philosophy toward drug use.
Another main prop of the argument is that the drug problem is unstoppable, because of the immense profits available to sellers. If drugs were made affordable, Buckley writes in a companion essay in the current National Review, crime would drop because addicts wouldn’t need as much money to pay for their drugs.
A cocaine addict buying on the street may well need $1,000 a week to sustain a habit, Buckley writes. The actual pharmaceutical cost for that habit would be $20, he says. “The approximate fencing cost of stolen goods is 80%, so that to come up with $1,000 can require stealing $5,000 worth of jewels, cars, whatever. We can see that at free-market rates, $20 per week would provide the addict with the cocaine which, in this wartime drug situation, requires of him $1,000.”
Buckley goes on to ask what price crime exacts--not just in property from robberies and burglaries, but of our national psyche. “Fifty years ago, to walk at night across Central Park was no more adventurous than to walk down Fifth Avenue,” he writes. “Is it fair to put a value on a lost amenity . . . ? What value might we assign to confidence that, at night, one can sleep without fear of intrusion by criminals seeking money or goods exchangeable for drugs?”
Gray concurs. “Homicides went down materially after the repeal of alcohol prohibition, and I’m convinced the same thing would occur here. The same thing would be true with regard to robberies and burglaries. Every neutral study in the history of the United States has come to the same conclusion: We must get away from the criminal justice approach, even if it means we will have increased drug usage. We all understand that drugs are harmful. People equate going away from the criminal justice approach with condoning abuse, and that’s why we need to legitimize the discussion.”
Let me pose this: What if you awakened tomorrow and prisons were only one-third to one-half as full as they are now? What if you went out for a late-night walk and then to bed without much thought of being attacked? And what if the price for all of that was the concession that drugs were more available and, perhaps, legally sanctioned?
That seems to be the hump we have to get over. That’s what the debate would be about.
In that vein, I asked Gray, who said he’s given a couple hundred talks, what kind of reaction he’s gotten in conservative Orange County. “I’ve received between 800 and 900 letters, from various places. Seventeen have been negative.
“I was expecting to have a recall election, hate mail. None of that happened. I’m up for election this March, and the filing period came and went last November and nobody ran against me.”
Dana Parsons’ columns appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.