THE DRUG WAR: A PROGRESS REPORT

A State of demand

California bears costly burden in nation's fight against drugs

Long before the war against terrorism, America's leaders declared an all-out fight against illegal drugs. Every day, many Californians slip into uniforms or suits or long black robes and go out to do battle. These stories examine how those police officers, lawyers, judges, therapists and doctors are doing. Is this war ever winnable? And if it isn't, what then?
Tomorrow: Trends in the campaign against illegal drugs offer some positive signs for the future.

Americans dropped $8 billion last year on movie tickets. They shelled out $6 billion on Head Start programS. They paid $7 billion for food from organic farms. But all of that falls short of what Californians spent in 2001 on illegal drugs – $9.2 billion.

A generation after the U.S. government declared war on marijuana and other illegal substances, the drug industry remains the powerhouse of the underground economy.

The $9.2 billion annual sales figure – an estimate derived from a Union-Tribune analysis of government data – is more than the gross domestic products of 69 nations.

And it is a reminder of the challenges facing those waging what has been called the war on drugs.

"We're making progress, but it takes a long time to get there," said Richard Gorman, a San Diego-based regional director of the federal High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Program.

California, the nation's most populous state, often shoulders a disproportionate share of the war's costs and impact.

A recent FBI study found that one of six Americans arrested on drug-abuse violations is from California.

One of six Americans who die from overdoses and other drug-related causes is from the Golden State.

Illegal drugs rob the California economy of an estimated $19.2 billion a year, which includes the amount spent by users and the tax money that goes to arrest, prosecute, imprison and treat them.

That is enough to build 2,000 elementary schools.

That is as much as the world spends to fight AIDS.

The impact of drugs and the drug war on California is staggering and often gets lost in the daily headlines.

Maybe that is because it is tough to get a handle on an issue with so many fronts – from the jailhouse to the ghetto bungalow, from courtrooms to suburban living rooms.

Some snapshots from the wobbly war, drawn from an analysis of government reports, and interviews with narcotics experts and those soldiering on:

The law

Once a month, police chiefs and other top cops from San Diego and Imperial counties meet to discuss a slew of ongoing anti-drug programs.

There is a lot to talk about.

Federal officials say marijuana and cocaine seizures along the U.S.-Mexico border dropped slightly in 2001, but heroin and methamphetamine seizures soared.

Authorities eradicated a record number of marijuana plants in California last year, but pot farms still dot the state.

U.S. and Mexican police celebrated the decline of the Arellano Felix cartel this year, but experts expect others to pick up the slack.

So goes this protracted conflict – one step forward, one step back.

It is tough to pin down how much law enforcement money and manpower is spent fighting drugs statewide because of the alphabet soup of agencies involved.

In San Diego and Imperial counties, about 800 federal, state and local law enforcement types staff a wealth of anti-drug programs coordinated by the feds, including crackdowns on methamphetamine labs and Coast Guard patrols.

About 250,000 arrests are made in California each year for drug abuse violations, enough to fill Qualcomm Stadium nearly four times.

Roughly half of those arrested for other reasons – theft, prostitution, violent crimes – test positive for narcotics.

Then the judges and lawyers step in.

The courts

California taxpayers spend $15 million a year to bankroll a major spinoff of the drug war: drug courts.

The special courts are sprouting up across the state to handle a crush of adult and teen-age drug users. There are nearly 150 drug courts in 50 counties.

Hoping to avoid jail, nonviolent offenders meet with a team of experts – the judge, lawyers, police officers and others – to chart their treatment and recovery.

Someone is always riding them. Police dog the offenders outside court. Random urine tests are common.

A recent state study declared drug courts a success, saying those who complete the program are less likely to see the inside of a prison cell. If traditional courts seem stuffy and at times snooze-worthy, drug courts are anything but. At least the one run by Superior Court Judge Desiree Bruce-Lyle is.

Her downtown San Diego courtroom often takes on the flavor of an Alcoholics Anonymous get-together. Recovering users parade before Bruce-Lyle, telling how long they have been clean and sober. If the lawyers and others agree an offender is doing well, the judge praises his or her progress.

Last spring, prosecutors told Daniel Schoenberger of Ocean Beach, a former crystal meth junkie, that his recovery was going so well that they would drop some misdemeanor charges against him.

"Congratulations," Bruce-Lyle told Schoenberger.

Then, applause. The judge clapped. Attorneys clapped. Ex-junkies in the audience clapped.

"I never would have got clean without drug court kicking my butt," Schoenberger said later.

The court stages frequent raffles, handing out movie tickets, gift certificates and other goodies to those staying clean and out of trouble.

But mess up in a big way, and it's off to jail.

The prisons

In the 1990s, the Big House got even bigger. California's inmate population grew roughly 50 percent as the state embarked on one of the largest prison-building sprees in modern history.

Drugs drove part of it.

More drug arrests and harsher sentences led to more low-level and first-time drug offenders in California going to jail, far above the national average.

Today, more people sit in prison for drug-related convictions than for any other crime. The state operates 33 prisons and related facilities at an annual cost of $4.8 billion.

At Centinela State Prison near El Centro, roughly one out of five inmates is a narcotics offender.

At Otay Mesa's R.J. Donovan Correctional Facility, which offers drug treatment programs, 55 percent are incarcerated for drug offenses.

As Californians see more of their friends and family going to jail on drug convictions, many want alternatives for offenders, in addition to drug court.

State voters in 2000 approved an initiative directing more first-and second-time drug offenders into community treatment programs instead of prison.

State officials tout the new program as a money-saver.

By directing thousands of nonviolent offenders into treatment over the next few years, the state expects to save $100 million to $150 million annually in jail costs.

A hundred million here, a hundred million there. Seems like a lot of money, until you consider the billions of dollars' worth of drugs injected, smoked and snorted.

The product

Because of user demand and its place on the map, California remains an epicenter of illegal drug cultivation, manufacturing and trade.

The underground business has a powerful reach. Federal narcotics experts said this year that California produces about 80 percent of the crystal meth found in the Midwest. Methamphetamines are mood-altering stimulants that can be produced with common household products.

Despite decades of high-profile raids on pot farms, U.S. law enforcement reports suggest the availability of domestically grown marijuana has been rising.

Figures for 2000 show California authorities that year eradicated 800,000 marijuana plants. That is enough for about 45 million joints, cannabis experts say.

Today's domestic marijuana is more potent than the stuff passed around on college campuses 20 years ago. Hospital emergency rooms report a rise in cases linked to marijuana.

Meanwhile, heroin, cocaine and marijuana continue to flow in from Asia, Central America, South America and Canada.

Indoor pot farms – growing "BC Bud" – have mushroomed into a major problem in British Columbia. Experts say huge quantities of the highly potent plant end up in California.

Smugglers continue to haul drugs across the U.S.-Mexico border despite interdiction campaigns and tighter security since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, many authorities say.

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy reports marijuana remains the most common drug in Southern California, with most of it coming from Mexico.

In February, U.S. and Mexican authorities found a 1,000-foot tunnel near Tecate used to sneak drugs into the United States.

The discovery was widely hailed, but experts expected the tunnel's closure to make little dent in trafficking.

Not as long as the demand is there.

The users

Federal surveys show close to 8 percent of the California population has used an illicit drug within a 30-day period.

That percentage is higher than the rates in 44 states.

For most users, pot remains the drug of choice. Californians are as likely to smoke marijuana as tobacco. Polls show many consider pot safer than cigarettes or booze.

Decades after government health authorities warned of "reefer madness," marijuana seems to generate more shrugs than surprise among many.

That relaxed attitude was displayed to a national television audience in March during the gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Danielle van Dam murder case. Danielle's parents, testifying under oath, matter-of-factly described smoking marijuana in the garage of their Sabre Springs home the evening before their daughter disappeared.

Some experts suggest the medical marijuana movement signals a further easing of attitudes toward pot.

Voter-approved state law allows the chronically ill to grow and smoke marijuana for medicinal reasons – in direct conflict with federal rules. The Bush administration has made it clear in recent months that it will be unyielding in law enforcement.

Chris Conrad of San Francisco, a European-trained expert on cannabis cultivation, said medicinal use may actually lessen the allure of marijuana among youth. Conrad, who has written several books on marijuana, speculates more young people may turn to binge alcohol drinking or drugs such as Ecstasy.

While Ecstasy is relatively new in other parts of the nation, it is among the most prevalent drugs in California, along with marijuana, cocaine and heroin.

Among racial and ethnic groups, Latinos use cocaine at a higher rate than other groups, while the marijuana rate is highest among African-Americans, studies suggest.

Whites tend to smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol more than other groups, but meth and marijuana are major problems, according to a recent state survey of households.

Some trends point in the right direction. The use of many illicit drugs, other than marijuana, is down. In the city of San Diego, the number of drug-related deaths bounced up and down during the 1990s, then dropped in 2000 to 360.

It is tough to nail down what is behind some of the improvements. Tougher law enforcement? Population changes? A combination of factors?

Peter Reuter, a University of Maryland economist and founder of the RAND Drug Policy Research Center in the 1980s, notes drug use is gradually slipping.

But, Reuter points out, after more than 30 years and billions of dollars battling narcotics – by land, by air, by sea – the United States still has the most severe drug problem of any rich Western nation. Which raises the question:

"How impressed should we be with government policies that leave us with the worst drug problem in the Western world?" Reuter asked

By Gordon Smith
December 2, 2002

For a half-century, California has been a drug battleground. Almost certainly, it will continue to be one.

Here is what our shadowy and sometimes conflicted near-future probably will look like:

Marijuana will remain illegal because residents are sharply divided over its dangers to young people. Heroin, cocaine, methamphetamines and psychedelics still will be illegal because of general agreement they can be addictive or de-stabilizing to adults, as well as teens.

Law enforcement agencies will continue to root out marijuana farms and methamphetamine labs, both primarily controlled by Mexican drug cartels. However, the authorities will be restrained from seizing drug dealers' property and selling it to finance drug-interdiction efforts. The money instead will go to drug treatment programs.

At the same time, there will be growing agreement that smoking marijuana somehow helps control nausea among cancer patients. More and more individuals will grow their own pot, using the state's loosened laws on medical marijuana and possession of the drug as a justification – or a cover.

Ecstasy use, once soaring among young adults, will decline as more people become aware that it may cause brain damage or even death. Police and sheriffs will adopt a strategy of forcing promoters of rave parties to closely supervise their events or risk being shut down.

Crack use – long primarily an inner-city problem – will decline; so will the use of methamphetamines. Fewer people will be imprisoned on drug charges because of Proposition 36, which mandates drug treatment over incarceration for certain nonviolent offenders.

There will be broad agreement – even among law enforcement officials and anti-drug activists – that education and treatment are key to reducing the demand for drugs of all types.

If that future sounds much like the present, that is because most of these trends already are under way.

California long has been a place where illegal drugs are not only produced but exported to other states. Cutting-edge anti-drug strategies have been honed in the Golden State, and the growing public backlash to the government's costly war on drugs had its roots here.

All that makes California a better place than most in the United States to get a bead on where drug use and the fight against it are headed.

A drug culture

Some trends surely will undergo shifts as the next decade unfolds. One thing not likely to change much is the rate of overall drug use.

Drugs are firmly rooted in California culture, particularly its youth culture, in a way that has remained stable during the past decade.

About 8 percent of all Californians 12 or older used an illegal drug regularly in 1999. Figures for previous years aren't available, but drug use nationally held steady throughout the 1990s.

Among the state's 11th-graders, 26 percent used an illegal drug regularly in 2000. That figure was down 6 percent from a decade earlier, but consider another statistic: Nearly 50 percent of the 11th-graders said they had used an illegal drug within the past six months. That percentage has remained stubbornly constant for 10 years.

The figures suggest to some experts that it is unlikely Californians or anyone else ever will stamp out drug use completely. After all, nearly every cultural group on the planet has made use of consciousness-altering substances of one sort or another, from peyote to alcohol.

"It seems likely that there will always be some portion of the population making use of hallucinogens," said Peter Smith, a political scientist at UC San Diego and an expert on drug policy.

But it is impossible to say exactly what the "permanent" population of drug users might be, Smith said.

The pot debate

In contemporary California, marijuana is by far the most common drug of choice among teens and adults, and it almost certainly will remain so. It has special status in another sense: People are more conflicted about it than any other drug.

Even those who rail against the government's dubious drug war don't advocate legalizing heroin, cocaine or methamphetamines. Some reformers argue that psychedelics – including so-called club drugs such as Ecstasy – are less dangerous, yet stop short of calling for the hallucinogens to be legalized.

The legalization of marijuana inspires passionate debate. Dale Gieringer, California coordinator for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, insists pot should be available "for adult personal use," adding, "alcohol and tobacco are as good a model as any."

Gieringer and other advocates are convinced marijuana legalization is inevitable, and cite national polls showing a growing segment of the public – currently 33 percent – supports it.

Initiatives permitting the medical use of marijuana have been passed by eight states – after first winning the approval of California voters in 1996 – making more and more people "comfortable" with the notion of marijuana being available for legal consumption, Gieringer said.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Bush administration's official drug policy maintains marijuana is a "gateway" drug that often leads to the use of harder drugs. Patrol officers say they are all too familiar with the distorted sense of time, and the diminished capacity to perform multiple tasks that drivers under the influence of marijuana often exhibit – signs of significant impairment.

Legalization? Howard Simon of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America just says no.

"If someone uses marijuana once, they are more likely, statistically, to use it again," said Simon, whose group has developed powerful anti-drug media messages, including some for the federal government. "And very few people try other drugs without trying marijuana first."

The contrasting attitudes help explain why, at the same time the fine for possessing less than an ounce of marijuana in California is less than the fine for running a red light, and the drug can be legally grown and used by cancer patients, the eradication of marijuana fields statewide by well-financed law enforcement agencies continues at a record pace.

It also explains why legalization of marijuana in California isn't likely any time soon.

A primary reason for the attitude split is the baby boomer generation, whose members experimented broadly with drugs in the 1960s and 1970s and tend to view drug use with compassion, if not outright tolerance.

That stance helped buoy the success of California's Proposition 36, which mandates treatment instead of incarceration for nonviolent drug crimes. It also is creating ripples in the workplace.

Pusher state

The percentage of companies requiring drug testing has declined steadily to 67 percent in 2001, down from a high of 81 percent five years earlier, according to an annual survey by the American Management Association.

Meldron Young, an association consultant, said that as boomers increasingly become CEOs and other top executives, they are bringing with them the attitude that drug use "is almost accepted as long as it doesn't destroy your performance."

For law enforcement agents on the front lines of the drug war, it is mostly business as usual. Among the trends almost certain to endure for the foreseeable future, state officials say, are these: the domination of marijuana and methamphetamine production by Mexican cartels, and the cartels' preference for growing and mixing more of the drugs in California.

There is evidence California has become an exporter of meth to other states as federal agents have clamped down on smuggling across the border. The number of illegal meth labs busted in California has declined in recent years, yet the use of meth across the West has climbed steadily.

"I hate to say it, but we're pushing it all across the United States," said Robert Hussey, executive director of the California Narcotic Officers' Association.

On another front, a new tactic is gaining favor in the battle against Ecstasy, a kind of psychedelic stimulant whose use climbed steadily in recent years. Authorities are alarmed even though the latest statistics show Ecstasy is the drug of choice among less than 5 percent of regular 11th-grade drug users in California.

In the future, police agencies will target the producers of the raves – dance parties attended by hundreds – where Ecstasy use is rampant, said Lt. Stephen Johnson of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department's narcotics bureau.

Some studies show the rapid rise in Ecstasy use already is leveling off as concern grows over its potential to cause lasting brain damage and, occasionally, death. The mounting number of serious incidents underlines the need for more widespread drug education and the companion strategy for reducing demand: drug treatment. On this subject, everyone from drug-policy reformers to staunch drug opponents agrees.

And that is one of the most promising trends pointing to the future.

"It's better for society to treat the addict than simply warehouse him and forget about him," said Simon, of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. "And it's cheaper for you as a citizen to treat that person and get him clean than to put him a prison."

Saying no

When the state's voters passed Proposition 36 two years ago, they did it with the expectation it would save $1.5 billion in incarceration costs over five years.

Experts on all sides say it is too soon to assess the results of the law – which went into effect July 1, 2001 – but the number of people in state prisons on drug possession charges has declined by 16.8 percent since then. The overall population of female inmates also has declined by 10 percent during the past year, a change state prison officials attribute largely to Proposition 36.

Saving money is only one of the goals of steering people to treatment sessions rather than prison cells. Another goal is to salvage lives that have spun out of control under the influence of drugs – and to prevent those people from committing crimes or returning to prison.

"My gut feeling is that it's a good strategy," said Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Ana Maria Luna, who chairs her county's Proposition 36 implementation task force.

The California law, and a similar one in Arizona, have sparked interest around the country, in part because they seem to be one way to provide residential drug treatment for about 3 million addicts who thus far have been unable to get it.

A Proposition 36-style drug diversion initiative won the overwhelming support of voters in the District of Columbia this month, but still needs congressional approval to take effect. Ohio voters rejected a similar proposal, and measures in Michigan and Florida to provide drug treatment for certain offenders failed to make the ballot.

Whether diversion programs become an integral part of government policy, they are clearly here to stay. Our biggest legacy in the realm of drugs could turn out to be the telltale signs of our struggles to control how we use them: the myriad treatment centers, educational programs and media ad blitzes intended to persuade people to avoid or renounce mind-altering substances.

Anti-drug programs have become ubiquitous, from the Boy Scouts to the Elks Club. One well-known treatment program – Hazelden – employs 1,200 people at its facilities in four states. The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy is wrapping up a five-year, $2 billion anti-drug media campaign.

Inevitably, the anti-drug efforts have created a backlash: a network of nonprofit groups focused on repealing or softening drug laws and reallocating the billions of dollars spent annually on the drug war. Some run Web sites that target the young and curious, offering competing versions of "straight talk" about drugs and their effects.

A few are like the Drug Policy Alliance, a highly organized group that, from its offices in New York, San Francisco, Sacramento, Oakland, Albuquerque and Washington, D.C., lobbies for and tracks drug-policy reform legislation.

None of these organizations is liable to disappear anytime soon, given the nation's unfinished dialogue on drugs and, perhaps above all, the federal government's burgeoning anti-drug budget. The latter grew from $1.5 billion in 1981 to $18.8 billion in 2002, with two-thirds of the money designated for interdiction and law enforcement, and one-third for treatment and education.

"Where there's a budget, there will be agencies and programs vying for the money," said Smith, the UCSD political scientist. "And it is clear that there are many deeply entrenched interests in the anti-drug war."

Steve Schmidt: (619) 293-1380; steve.schmidt@uniontrib.com

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