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Prop. 36 Clones Split Legalization Groups
June 22, 2001 - Drug legalization organizations' united front splits wide open at The Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation Conference in Albuquerque, according to DRCNet Week Online (Issue # 189). "Coerced treatment . . .will allow the state to define acceptable treatment," claims ACLU president and former Drug Policy Foundation Chair Ira Glasser, "and that means abstinence and piss-testing."

"If the conference, 'Drug Policies for a New Millennium' showed the drug reform movement poised to create a sea change in drug policy, it also showed a movement bitterly and vocally divided over 'coerced treatment,' a term that for many includes California's Prop. 36 reform, where drug possession offenders can choose treatment over jail. Despite the impassioned defenses of Prop. 36 by CNDP staffers who insist it is not 'coerced treatment' because defendants do have a choice between jail and treatment, many in attendance were not swayed by that fine distinction.

"The rift was the subject of much hallway and barstool argumentation and of private meetings alongside the conference. The battle lines over coerced treatment, however, were articulated most eloquently Saturday morning, when ACLU Executive Director [and former Drug Policy Foundation board chair] Ira Glasser, The Lindemith Center's Deborah Small, and addiction specialist [and Drug Policy Foundation board member] Dr. David Lewis squared off before several hundred listeners in the Hyatt Hotel's main ballroom.

"'Coerced treatment is an oxymoron,' thundered Glasser. 'Government intrusion by police and arrest is anti-treatment. I am not against treatment, I am against government compelled treatment.'

"The about-to-retire but unretiring Glasser warned dramatically about the growth of the 'therapeutic state,' where public health invades private life. 'Fusing the police power of the state with medicine corrupts medicine and makes it a tool of the state,' he said. 'Then we get the therapeutic state and pretend that is progress. The worst danger is an ever-expanding net of social control. The "benevolence" of coerced treatment is a trap. It will allow the state to define acceptable treatment,' Glasser continued, 'and that means abstinence and piss-testing.'
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"'The question,' said Glasser, 'is do incremental reforms like coerced treatment get you closer to your goal?' Not necessarily, he answered. 'I worry that Prop. 36 will undermine our fundamental principles and reinforce greater social controls. In the long run,' Glasser concluded, 'coerced treatment takes us further from our principles.'

"But if Glasser's argument was impressive, Deborah Small's counterargument was equally strong. 'How can you question anything that gets people out of the living death of prison?' she asked. 'We have to engage with what is actually happening in the criminal justice system,' Small argued, 'and coerced treatment is an alternative to incarceration.'

"Coerced treatment is an unhappy compromise, Small admitted, calling it a lesser evil than prison, but still evil. 'There is something intensely perverse about therapeutic jurisprudence,' she noted.

"But then Small drew a comparison with World War II. 'Drug users are today's Jews,' she analogized. 'Just as Schindler saved the Jews from the Holocaust by getting them into forced labor camps, we hope to save drug offenders from prison by getting them into treatment. Certainly forced labor was better than death in the gas chamber, and just as certainly coerced treatment is better than being in prison under horrific conditions.'

"A strong point. But in his closing comments, Glasser got the last word. 'It is not our job to be Schindlers,' he told a cheering audience. 'I would rather we be Eisenhowers' leading the way to D-Day and victory.

"Dr. Lewis, caught between two ardent debaters, quietly pointed out the difference between informal coercion -- e.g., the cop on the beat cajoling the street addict to get to the clinic and help himself, or fear of job loss -- and actual state mandated treatment ordered by judges. And while opposing mandated treatment, Lewis recognized that it nevertheless works for some people who have undergone it."

What should legalization proponents do about this split?

Advises David Borden, executive director of DRCNet, "The answer may be different for different organizations. Those with funding to mount ambitious ballot initiatives have to forge their initiatives carefully, in ways that intersect with prevailing current popular opinion, so that their initiatives will pass. Grassroots and educational organizations, however, have no such constraint. In fact, one of the functions of such organizations is to push the envelope and engage the public in debate on longer term visions, so that one day in the future decriminalization or legalization will be a realistic possibility.

"Whether or not, then, ballot initiatives like Prop. 36 will ultimately help or hurt, remains to be seen. But the rest of us, whose activism is not primarily focused on initiatives, have a much clearer path ahead. We should be focusing our energies where we are needed most: partial reforms where we are in a position to make a unique difference, and shouting out the truth about prohibition and the war on drugs and why they must end -- so that one day end they will."

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