O.C. Judge Reiterates Need to Reform U.S. Drug War

Speaking at a drug policy forum in Albuquerque, an Orange County Superior Court judge added his voice Tuesday to that of New Mexico’s governor calling for debate and reform of U.S. drug policy.

Judge James P. Gray stopped short of saying he would legalize drugs, but he agrees with New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson that the U.S. drug war is a failure. Calling Johnson a traitor to the drug war, as some have, pays the governor a compliment, he said.

“My view is that someone who is a traitor to a failed policy is a patriot to common sense and the common good,” Gray said at the forum Tuesday night.

“It is time that we as a society address the issue of drug policy,” Gray said, who after the discussion reached over, shook Johnson’s hand and said he was proud to do so.

But is legalization the answer?

No, he said.

He said he has recommended a combination of measures including drug maintenance programs, drug substitution as seen in methadone programs, legalization of hemp production, legalization of needles with needle-exchange programs--but would not legalize the drugs.

“The drugs themselves are dangerous,” he said by phone Monday, “and we want to do everything under the law we can to discourage people from using them.”

Gray would keep drugs under strict regulation but eliminate the profit motive for illegal drugs, just as ending Prohibition cut the profit motive from bootleg liquor.

“No one has a profit motive to get your son hooked on alcohol except the legal purveyors,” he said, “but lots of people have a profit motive to get your children hooked” on drugs.

Despite the war on drugs, he said, “it’s easier for them to get cocaine or marijuana than it is to get beer.”

Each state--not the federal government--should decide drug laws, he said.

There are many options between the extremes of legalization and of imprisoning “anyone who comes into contact with these drugs,” he said.

Options include regulation, treatment and decriminalization, which he said differs from legalization. Under decriminalization, drugs remain illegal. That’s the case in the Netherlands, where users who stay within certain limits are not prosecuted, he said.

He said any option other than the current U.S. policy would be an improvement.

“If the founding fathers were here and could see this, there would be a second American revolution,” Gray said.

He quoted former California Assemblyman Pat Nolan (R-Glendale) as saying, “We should reserve our prison space for people we are afraid of--not people we are mad at.”

When substances are abused, he said, the law should “hold people responsible for their conduct, regardless of what mind-altering drug they use, including alcohol.”

Johnson has said all along he opposes drug use but questions whether drug use, in itself, should be a crime.