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Ideas for ending the War on Some Drugs
Dec. 9th, 2005 08:08 amA couple of years ago, Seattle passed an initiative, Initiative 75, making the arrest of people for possession of marijuana the lowest priority for law enforcement agencies in the city. That's a fairly baroque law, as laws go, but it apparently really has resulted in fewer people in the city being busted for possession. Now The Stranger has published an article by Eli Sanders called "After I-75" that talks about the practical (and political) effect of the initiative, how it is being copied by other cities around the nation, and about "the intellectual vanguard of the drug-law reform movement: physicians, psychiatrists, attorneys, policy experts, teachers, and social workers who feel that the current drug war is a failed policy in need of radical revision." Included in this group is former Seattle Police Chief, Norm Stamper, who advocates treating drug abuse as a medical rather than legal issue.
What's significant about this drug-law reform movement is that instead of just criticizing the idiocy of the War on Some Drugs, as some of these middle class groups have in the past, they are proposing new approaches to controlling drugs and taking the proposals to the Washington State Legislature. As the article points out, these proposals are years away from having any effect on actual law, but it's interesting to see what's bubbling under the surface. Could we finally be at the tipping point? Or is it just another reflection of the urban archipelago?
What's significant about this drug-law reform movement is that instead of just criticizing the idiocy of the War on Some Drugs, as some of these middle class groups have in the past, they are proposing new approaches to controlling drugs and taking the proposals to the Washington State Legislature. As the article points out, these proposals are years away from having any effect on actual law, but it's interesting to see what's bubbling under the surface. Could we finally be at the tipping point? Or is it just another reflection of the urban archipelago?
