Rethinking Tactics in War on Drugs

When it comes to moral crusades, religious leaders have long enlisted in the “war on drugs.”

The cost of illicit narcotics trafficking in ruined lives, deterioration of neighborhoods, drug-related crime and impact on law enforcement and prisons are all inherently moral issues that thunder from pulpits.

But 30 years after the Nixon administration declared war on drugs in the late 1960s--a war pressed by each succeeding administration--growing numbers of religious leaders are breaking ranks.

Not only are they questioning the war’s effectiveness and its burgeoning costs--they also charge that its execution violates biblical imperatives of justice and mercy.

Rather than reducing the threat to society posed by illegal narcotics trafficking, the war is making orphans of tens of thousands of children by unnecessarily jailing their parents and disproportionately targeting people of color, religious critics charge.

Not all religious leaders share the same outlook. More conservative Christian pastors, for example, agree that rehabilitation is needed but stress that drug users must also be held accountable through punishment.

“They need to understand, not only do they have a psychological history that has made themselves something of a victim in this, but they have a responsibility to themselves, their family and society,” said John Coe, a professor at the Rosemead Graduate School of Psychology at Biola University in La Mirada, a fundamentalist college.

But the call for a greater emphasis on treatment and rehabilitation is spreading. “It is clear we cannot arrest our way out of the problem of chronic drug abuse and drug-driven culture,” Barry R. McCaffrey, director of the White House Office of National Drug Policy, told a conference in Albany, N.Y., a year ago. He warned that if the public begins to believe the war against drugs is unfair the effort will lose public support.

Religious critics of the nation’s anti-drug efforts admit that their pleas are unlikely to result in immediate reforms. There is little popular sympathy, in or out of churches and synagogues, for drug users.

As the late Cardinal John J. O’Connor of New York wrote last year, “just about the last thing any candidate would want to be accused of would be ‘softness’ on drugs.”

That may also be true for clergy. Most of the more than 500 Jewish and Christian clergy and religious scholars who have joined a new group campaigning for changes in narcotics laws are from California and New York. There is little representation from the South and slightly more in the Midwest. Only one Muslim imam is affiliated.

Yet the group, known as Religious Leaders for a More Just and Compassionate Drug Policy, does count as members some of the best known religious figures in America, including Harvey Cox of Harvard University; John B. Cobb Jr. of Claremont School of Theology; the Rev. James Forbes of the Riverside Church in New York; the Rev. William Sloan Coffin Jr.; retired New York Episcopal Bishop Paul Moore; Rabbi Balfour Brickner of Stephen S. Wise Free Temple in New York; and Glenn Stassen of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena.

Religious critics of the nation’s drug laws have focused on two critical issues. First, they say, the law enforcement system treats rich and poor in drastically different ways.

“When it comes to addiction, the rich go to Betty Ford, the poor go to county jail,” the Rev. Scott Richardson, a priest at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, said in a recent sermon.

At the same time, for those who do get enmeshed in the criminal justice system, the quest for tough sentences has largely eliminated the ability of judges to treat people as individuals.

“The more I think about these drug laws, the guiltier I feel,” O’Connor wrote last February. The cardinal had earlier led the New York State Catholic Conference in issuing a statement calling for “a more humane and effective system to rehabilitate addicts and protect public safety.”

“The cry for justice in our society seems to clash, at times, with a plea for forgiveness,” the New York statement said. “Often ignored in this debate is a fundamental tenet of American justice--the punishment should fit the individual’s role in a crime.”

The California Catholic Conference has not issued such a statement, but its representative, Carol Hogan, said it would probably concur with the New York conference.

Critics, both religious and secular, point to the enormous increase in the number of prisoners serving sentences for drug-related crimes--an eleven-fold jump between 1980 and 1996. They also cite statistics showing that while most drug users in the country are white, most of those serving prison terms for drug crimes are black.

“We’re jailing a whole young adult generation of blacks and Latinos and we’re going to keep them in there a long time because you can’t build that many prisons and keep them empty,” said the Rev. Howard Moody, coordinator of the group of religious leaders.

Recently, Moody spoke at the Claremont School of Theology to recruit clergy and religious scholars to the national group’s cause. Among those he enlisted was Richardson.

“One of the scandals of the past 30 years in regard to this issue is the fervent support the church-at-large has given to the war on drugs,” Richardson said.

“This is an aspect of American puritanism, but it’s not reasonable or helpful, and it’s time to repent. We might ask ourselves, have we declared a war on drugs or a war on those who are ill and addicted to those drugs?”

A Rand Corp. study in 1997 found that treatment reduces 15 times more serious crime than mandatory minimum sentences and that residential treatment programs cost a little more than half of the $30,000 annual cost of housing a prisoner, Richardson notes.

“I’m not necessarily saying there’s not a relationship between addiction and drug-related crime,” Richardson said. “But if we treated addiction more clinically, both addicts, our society and God’s justice would be better served.”