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Incarceration is not the answer
Julie Roberts
Representative Dennis Kintigh’s recent article misses the mark when discussing the incarceration of people with marijuana possession convictions and people struggling with drug addiction.
Kintigh acknowledges in his article that even though people with marijuana possession charges are unlikely to end up in prison, they may still be sentenced to jail for the offense. And he’s right. According to the New Mexico Administrative Office of the Court’s Judicial Information Division, in 2009 alone 2,790 cases were filed in New Mexico charging people with marijuana possession.
Of those cases, almost 400 people were sentenced to serve time in our county jails, and about 200 people were put on probation.
When you crunch the numbers, this means that New Mexico taxpayers spent almost $1 million to make sure people with marijuana possession charges served an average of 20 days in jail or one year on probation. While few individuals end up behind prison bars for marijuana possession, they are more likely to spend some time in jail before trial and then be sentenced to probation.
They may not be in our state’s prisons, but they have been brought under the supervision of the criminal justice system – one of the single greatest predictors of future imprisonment.
Is this how New Mexicans want their money spent?
It is time for New Mexicans to ask if this is how we want our tax dollars spent. Local governments around the country are rightly looking toward alternatives to marijuana prohibition to prevent the wasteful use of our taxpayer dollars to target adults possessing marijuana for their own personal use.
While relatively few individuals end up behind prison bars for marijuana possession in New Mexico, Representative Kintigh fails to address that possession of other much more harmful drugs, such as heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine, often results in fourth-degree felony convictions and subsequent time behind bars.
According to the Judicial Information Division, more than 8,000 people were charged with drug possession in 2008. Of those, about 600 people were sentenced to serve time in our county jails at a cost of $3,206,026 for the year. Furthermore, 1,122 people were sentenced to probation, at a cost of $1,378,594 to our state.
The 92 people in prison for simple drug possession that Representative Kintigh refers to cost taxpayers an additional $3 million dollars. The majority of them are struggling with drug addiction. We spend almost $8 million a year to keep these people in the criminal justice system, rather than addressing their very treatable condition.
A health issue, not a criminal issue
Kintigh also highlights that many individuals who end up in prison for drug possession have prior convictions. Our criminal justice system has created a cycle of incarceration, release and re-incarceration at a cost of millions of dollars every year to the taxpayer.
People struggling with drug abuse often commit crimes to feed their own addictions. Without receiving access to the community-based substance abuse treatment that they need to manage their addiction and rebuild their lives, these individuals will continue to cycle in and out of our prisons and jails.
The cost-effective and commonsense solution is to treat drug use and addiction as a health issue, not a criminal one. Not only is substance abuse treatment cheaper than incarceration, but also benefits public safety by getting people with addictions the help that they need and finally ending the cycle of addiction and incarceration.
As for people with marijuana possession arrests, I encourage our state to think critically about the best use of law enforcement’s time and our scarce criminal justice system’s resources. In these economic times, where is our money truly better spent?
Roberts is Drug Policy Alliance New Mexico’s acting state director.
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CJ,
Thanks for the rational debate on an important issue.
Unfortunately, it appears that we are at a stalemate. Nevertheless, I offer this rebuttal.
1. Keep in mind that poppy plants and cocoa plants could be commercially grown within the United States. Just because something could be done for a profit for an individual means that it is a good industry to have. Take for example, the porn industry. While legal, it is an extremely harmful industry that is also generating a boat load of money for those in it at the expense (and pain) for those directly and indirectly effected by it. The porn environment is just as addictive as any other drug. Some people just do not realize it. Why legalize another drug that has the potential enslaving even more people.
I absolutely agree that the drug cartels would take a hit if marijuana were to be decriminalized. But the results could prove to be more disastorous than I outlined above.
2. CJ you have helped me make my point. Most of the advocates of medical marijuana want marijuana to smoke. For some adovcates, it is not really about any of the medical benefits that may result from the ingestion by vapors or eating, it is about the high. I have never tried marijuana, but I understand the best high is from smoking.
3. Marijuana is a gateway drug. I am not saying that one uses marijuana and then turns around and immediately uses another drug, I believe that the truly informed will back me on this point. As mentioned above, I have never tried marijuana. Just because people have been doing an activity for thousands of years does not make it right or ripe for legalization.
4. The “no one died” argument … that dog won’t hunt. I cannot prove death (I have not looked at the research), I can prove harm. Marijuana is still toxic to the user as you mentioned in your response. (I implied from your response that it may not be as toxic as tobacco.) Again, you make the same argument – comparative degrees of harm. Harm is harm. Second hand smoke from tobacco (which I was exposed to as a child) and second hand smoke from marijuana are both bad. The harm is that those using marijuana know that the drug cartels are killing people over the opportunity to sell it to the user. For a user then to blame me for not legalizing the drug that they are illegally using is laughable.
Are there activities out there that are illegal now that I wish to do? Sure, I would love to do some drilling in areas off of the coast of Alaska. Why don’t I? I respect the rule of law. I do not violate the drilling laws and then blame the system and say that the law should be changed. I lobby Congress for change. I control my behavior. Why can’t people who use “just a little weed” obey the rule of law?
Respectfully,
Nelson Spear.
Other than occ
Nelson Spear asks me to discuss the “the toll that drugs has manifested amoung the innocent victims.”
What victims? As others have pointed out, marijuana is pretty harmless. As for cocaine, heroin, etc, the *illegal* price and thus the profit would decrease drastically if they were legalized and regulated, and the addicts were treated. No more drug dealers, no more related crime.
Nelson:
1. I’m not suggesting the prison system is per se evil; there is a place for it in our society. But when it comes to locking people up for possessing a plant that can be grown in just about any location, I draw the line. And certainly you cannot argue with the logic that by ending prohibition of marijuana that the drug cartels won’t take a serious hit in their bottom line. It seems to me that the drug cartels and the prison industry each have a substantial interest in marijuana remaining illegal. Also, the cultivation and use of Hemp for industrial purposes and clothing purposes would be a huge economic boon. Unfortunately, we’re about the only civilized country that has made Hemp cultivation illegal and we are suffering economically because of it. And you can smoke all the Hemp you want and it won’t get you high, but still it’s illegal. Must be some big bucks thrown around by people like the cotton growers that are keeping it illegal.
2. Sure, there are side effects to any substance. If you have aspirin in your house, see what happens if you ingest a whole bottle of it. Smoking, obviously, can be hazardous to your health. Then again, show me one case of lung cancer traced to smoking marijuana. And, by your logic, tobacco (which kills an estimated 400,000 Americans PER YEAR) should have been made illegal long ago. And what about alcohol? Drink to much of it and you’ll nuke your liver and destroy your brain. Yet, I can go down to the liquor store and buy as much alcohol as I want. Are you detecting a double standard here? I sure am. BTW, marijuana is also edible. Or it can be vaporized so that the other “harmful” side effects are effectively neutralized. Contrast this with the other 400 chemicals that cigarette manufacturers routinely place into their product before it reaches the stream of commerce.
3. Marijuana is not a gateway drug. You don’t smoke a joint and then do a line of coke or shoot heroin. This is propaganda. If this is the case, then alcohol is a gateway drug. Or tobacco. The bottom line is that people have been smoking weed, drinking liquor and taking other drugs for thousands of years. And they will continue to do so, regardless of the consequences. Let me ask you this, Nelson–and I’m assuming you’ve never smoked marijuana before–if marijuana was legalized tomorrow, would you run out and give it a puff? My guess is probably not.
4. What I meant by “[N]ever killed one person in the history of mankind” is that there is no toxic level of marijuana for human beings. Some people smoke it and think they’re going to die, but they just go to sleep and wake up the next day. The next time you see your doctor, ask him how many people he’s seen die from marijuana. Ask a cop how many people he’s found dead in their homes with a bag of marijuana and a pipe laying next to the body. Ask an EMT how many people they’ve had to bring back from the dead from smoking marijuana. The answer will be zero. Then ask them about crack, cocaine, heroin, and alcohol, meth. You know what the answer is going to be. While marijuana may remain in your system in an inactive state for several weeks after ingesting it, it is metabolized into a non psychoactive chemical. And let’s be clear–no one here is advocating smoking marijuana and getting behind the wheel of a car. What we’re talking about here is the option of legalization of marijuana as opposed to the current policy, which has been an unequivocal failure by anyone’s measure. Use has not been reduced, quantities on the street have not been decreased and we continue to create a cohort of second class citizens that have to live their lives with a drug conviction for marijuana. It’s time for a change, that’s all I’m saying. To continue to do the same stupid thing over and over again is the very definition of insanity.
Ms. Roberts,
Thanks for the reply.
In my experience, asking someone “inside” if they want treatment and are they ready for treatment is a little nonsensical. There are many treatment programs availble on the “outside.” Some are residential and some are not. I would be curious to know from the ladies that you talked to who has tried and who has not tried residential treatment. Some prople are just not ready for that kind of committment until they get behind bars.
Also, I hate to sound uncaring for these addicts (believe me I do care). But all addicts know the consequences of their behavior. Maybe they need the tough love before they can hit bottom. None of us want to be an enabler.
CJ,
Thanks for the reply.
I want to respond to just four of your points:
1. Profits – every industry that can stay in business (legal or illegal) does so by its ability to make a profit. The mere fact that an industry makes a profit does not necessarily make it good or bad. Compare the porn industry (an evil business in my opinion) with the computer industry (e.g., Micrpsoft). Depending on whom you talk with, either industry could be classified as good or bad. My point is that you cannot classify the war on drugs and hence the prison system as evil just because someone makes a profit somewhere down the road.
2. I may need your help on this point … I had heard that the smoking of marijuana was harder on parts of your body than tobacco. Certainly, smoking anything is bad for your lungs. It is also my understanding that most medical uses of marijuana indicate that smoking marijuana was the least effective way for the effectiveness of marijuana. I am sure there are competing medical articles at least.
3. Marijuana is a gateway drug. I realize that there are statuistics that say only x% of the people who try marijuana go on to try other drugs. However, the statistics going the other way are compelling. The research that I have seen clearly indicate that among cocaine and other hard drug users, there was an almost 100% correlation to the use of the hard drugs leading from the earlier use of marijuana.
4 “[N]ever killed one person in the history of mankind ….” Sorry CJ, can’t buy that. One of the problems with legalizing marijuana is that it is very hard to determine the degree of impairment. As you probably know, marijuana can stay in the body for several weeks though the impairment has wanned. I am not sure how many people have been harmed directly or indirectly over ” a little weed.” There are more tangible harms (e.g,, lost work hours due to unproductivity). Again, as a small business owner, I would be crazy to hire anyone that I knew to be using marijuana (legal or not) due to the high risk of driving under the influence.
In my opinion, marijuana should remain illegal.
Best Regards,
Nelson.
Hi!
My apologies for not responding yesterday. I spent my day in Albuquerque at the Metropolitan Detention Center visiting women incarcerated with drug addictions serving their time in the Addictions Treatment Program pod. The women were amazing, strong, courageous, and absolutely none of them deserved to be sitting behind bars.
I met with two groups of women, about 20 women in each group. All of the women were mothers. All nonviolent. All with drug addictions – the drug of choice varied from alcohol to meth to heroin to cocaine. Many of the women were serving time for their first offense. The vast majority of women were serving time for probation violations – meaning they missed an appointment, had a dirty urine, and in three of the cases the women were still unsure of what exactly they did to be “violated” and sent back to jail. Maybe about 2 or 3 of the women were in for DUI.
Many of the women were serving long sentences – on their 7, 8 or 9 month. Their ages ranged from early 20s to late 50s. Their faces reminded me of my sisters, my friends, my mother, and my aunt.
While the women were hopeful, they shared their stories as tears streamed down their faces about being away from their babies and children, loosing their jobs, loosing their homes, and in some cases being pulled out of their college education with no idea if they would be able to be re-enrolled upon their release.
The women talked about their fears of being released with no resources – no counseling, no continuation of treatment, no housing, no access to jobs. And we wonder why people end up serving multiple sentences?
Nelson – Are there people in jail who commit violent crimes, harm their families and others, and deserve to spend time behind bars contemplating their harm to society – absolutely. Yes. As a young female with many friends who were victims of sexual assault, I fully believe that rapists – even if they were struggling with addiction when they committed their crime – deserve to serve a just sentence with a focus on rehabilitation and reconciliation. Don’t get me wrong here.
I also know, however, that there are hundreds of people sitting in our state’s jails right now who are nonviolent and serving time for drug possession, or drug-related probation or parole violations. This is not right and a complete waste of our precious taxpayer dollars.
The women I listened to yesterday all wanted treatment and did not try to make excuses for their crimes. But they all agreed their lives would be better off if they could access that treatment in the community, where they could keep their kids, their jobs, and continue their education.
Nelson,
Thanks for the honest reply because it proves my point exactly. The only people getting rich off of the drug war are private prisons (and I visit one in Chaparral on an almost weekly basis so I have a good understanding of how they work) and the drug cartels. Also there are countless employed in the so called War on Drugs (like police, defense attorneys, prosecutors, judges, addiction counselors, doctors, etc). Some people may be out of work, myself included, if we legalize something like marijuana, but we need to ask ourselves: are we winning the war on drugs? Can it ever be won? If history is an indicator, then the path we are on is doomed to failure. Prohibition didn’t work in the 1920′s and 1930′s, why should we think it works now?
I agree that certain drugs (e.g. Methamphetamine) are extremely dangerous and need to be illegal. They are dangerous to manufacture and dangerous to use. But if we legalize something like marijuana, which has never killed one person in the history of mankind, do you think people will feel the need to move on to the harder drugs if something like pot is readily and legally available? And when you compare the cost/benefit of marijuana with the cost/benefit of legal drugs, like alcohol and tobacco, marijuana legalization makes perfect sense. And when you think of the possibility of the profit and enterprise that could result from legalization, it is downright American to consider it. After all, many of our founding fathers not only smoked marijuana, they grew it!
Pros to Legalization of Marijuana: Fewer people in prison, more efficient allocation of law enforcement and judicial resources, more tax revenue, less government, severely cutting the profits of the narco-terrorist cartels (by 70%!), economic opportunity (especially with the cultivation of Hemp), MORE FREEDOM.
Cons to Legalization of Marijuana: Fewer cops (or perhaps a greater concentration of law enforcement resources to more serious crime), fewer jails and prisons (or perhaps more space for serious, violent offenders), a freethinking, individualist population (this is almost always bad for those in power).
But, Nelson, I’m sure you’ll be able to come up with way more reasons to keep marijuana, something that grows naturally over the entire planet, illegal and keep the war on drugs going.
I meant to say fries. “You want fries with that?!?”
CJ,
If people would stop eating Big Macs and fires, McDonalds would go out of business – fat chance of that happening (pun intended). If people would stop smoking, the cartels would go out of business. A little weed because a little weed never hurt anybody? We all are responsible for the drug problem.
I think that there is a flaw in your editorial. Most of us will probably agree that a person who has been charged with simple marijuana possession does not deserve jail time. I would venture that most of the individuals that were sentenced to jail are repeat offenders , serving probation for another offense, or there are extenuating circumstances that caused them to be incarcerated. I find it hard to believe that a person would receive a jail sentence for simple possession if it were their first offense!
Let’s also remember that marijuana prohibition results in the illegal market which makes up 70% of the profits for drug cartels. That’s money that’s being used to buy guns, ammo, and muscle to expand their influence in the illegal market on both sides of the border. That same prohibition is being used to create a cohort of second class citizens in our country–those that can’t find a job, can’t borrow money to educate themselves to get a better job, etc.
It’s time to get serious about legalization. It’s costing our society too much. So many things are a threat to me–I can eat too many Big Macs, become obese and die or be a burden on society by taking up too many health care resources and by not pulling my fair share of the weight (no pun intended). Someone smoking a joint in the privacy of their own home is no threat to anyone, except a bag of Doritos.
I sure wish Ms. Roberts would join this discussion.
Jacques,
1). Please call me Nelson.
2). While the corrections system (including prisons) does offer opportunities to get clean, some do not take advantage of the opportunities within or without the system. The programs that do work (primarily the faith based organizations) are tougher than real prison. I can remember more than one person standing before the court for sentencing and choose a longer prison sentence rather than be sent to Delancy Street;
3). People cannot be helped until they want to be helped annd they have hit the bottom;
4). Prison is also a place to keep people who are dangerous to others. Please refute me on this point or any other point if you are able;
5). I really do not know who owns the prisons. If they are a publically traded company, I would suggest that a lot of people do. Most retirement funds hold stocks in controversial areas including abortion clinics. It is very possible that if you have a retirement fund that very fund may hold stocks in companies that you do not approve of. If you have a specific name of a specific politician who may own an interest in one of these companies, please share it. Are they Democrats or Republicans?
6). I will ignore the attempts to turn this debate into a name calling event. Let’s keep the dialogue going and polite.
Respectfully,
Nelson Spear.
Interesting that mr.Nelson Spear, prosecutor, fully aware that “justice system” is completely powerless over problem and has no clue how to do anything but put more people behind the bars yet advocating “lack em all up ” attitude despite of years of evidence that prisons dont make people kinder. The missing element is that those prisons are owned by many of our politicians who make lots of money housing unwanted problem. What Mr. Spear fail to add is the amount it takes to house a sick drug addict in prison . This money could be used to help those people , but it is used to help another politician get richer on our backs. Prisons are pure expression of our fear, and fearfull will support them. The most important issue is not hard core drug addicts but casual users who become criminalized by a system and become criminals. Even if I gave Mr.Spear every ounce of assumption of good intentions, still he will never be able to introduce me to people whose lives have been positivaly affected by prison system, except for their owners The system is and remains to be just a monster money machine feeding the prison owners, system, prosecutors, usless cops, and lawyers.
Adolph Hitler kept all mentally sick people in prisons, using exactly same argument. good company
Wedum,
Please give me your thoughts about the toll that drugs has manifested amoung the innocent victims. How do we protect them? BTW, most government run rehab programs have a bery low success rate. Faith based programs like the ones that I listed have a very high success rate.
Nelson.
Whoops, that should read “Amen to ENDING our support of the increase…”
Amen to our support of the increase of Mafia-type organizations in the US. There is an organization called L.E.A.P., Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which is fighting these useless laws.
I believe that Britain has eliminated their drug dealer problem by legalizing these drugs and providing a government-financed supply to addicts. It is interesting that prohibition was discontinued during the “Great” Depression, as states and the Federal government found alcohol to be a better source of revenue from taxes and decided to stop wasting money on enforcement that was needed for job programs.
Ms. Roberts,
I applaud your devotion and your writing ability. However, I respectfully disagree with your conclusion(s) regarding the ability to respond to the drug problem. I agree that may people who have drug addiction issues may commit crimes (including drug trafficking) to support their habits. Some of these same people commit violent crimes including burglary and robbery to finance their habit. It would be nice if we could solve all of the addicts problems by sending them to rehab, but as you fail to point out, rehab is useless unless the person really wants to get out of the addiction. I left the DAs office in 1999, since then many new and innovative programs for drug addicts have been made available both in and out of the state system. Within the system there is drug court. Outside the system there is the Salvation Army’s ARP (Adult Rehab Program), Teen Challenge, and Mission Messiah (the group out of Odessa, Tx). I am sure there are other programs out there that work. As a former prosecutor, I have seen many people choose prison versus rehab because reharb is harder.
Deregulation, legalization and decriminalization are not the answers for these people who get hooked on drugs. If we were to decriminalize drugs, there would still be people being victimized by th drug adducts. In my experience, the families’ of these addicts are the second victims (the first being the adducts themselves). When the addict realize that their family will not help them anymore, the addict will turn to victimize others to feed their habit. As a former prosecutor, I cannot count the times that I saw truly innocent people harmed by another person’s drug use. I still remember the children of C.L. one of whom was still in diapers and C.L. was too wasted to care for them to the point of intentional and extreme neglect. C.L. was convicted of child abuse and C.L. went to jail, but the harm to the children will last long beyond the jail sentence. I might add that C.L. had the intervention of Children, Youth and Family (CYF). A representative of CYF testified in the trial that had C.L. called upon them, they would have helped C.L. beyond the help that was already in place!
Ms. Roberts, the focus of the drug solution should be on helping the addicts, but more importantly it has to be about protecting the innocent from the wreckless path of the addicts. Until everyone is assured of that protection, the public’s welfare must come first!
Nelson Spear
A.D.A. (1990 – 1999)
A.U.S.A. (2003 – 2005)
Amen sister! We should be looking into harm reduction techniques pioneered by European countries such as Portugal and the Netherlands.
All this Prohibition is the delight of War Profiteers and the Prison Industrial Complex. All those taxpayer parasites that make profit from human frailty and misery have no interest in reform.
We pray that the GOOD prevails sooner rather than later. End prohibition, regulate and tax. Spend relatively little on treatment for those who are ready and committed to change.