Roger Ley Responds in Opposition to KCBA’s Drug Policy Project
This letter continues a discussion of the KCBA proposal to decriminalize heroin, methamphetamine, LSD, cocaine and other drugs. Roger Goodman, the KCBA drug policy advocate, objects that the present system does not work and should be changed to a “treatment” modality. Our system is not perfect, but the question is whether it is better than something else.
Roger Goodman claims that the criminal system has failed because there is so much drug use. But would there be astronomically more use of heroin, methamphetamine, LSD, cocaine and barbiturates, if we did not have the current system of enforcement? If there would be more use of these drugs without the criminal system, then our system works, even if not perfectly.
There is no easy way to know whether adjustments make things better or worse because there are too many variables. Passage of time, different court judges and prosecutors, economic changes, cultural changes and population changes all affect drug activity, which itself is impossible to measure. It would be ideal to have four identical counties with same populations, same court personnel, same everything, and use as variables our current system, a more lenient criminal system, a harsher criminal system, and finally, of course, Roger Goodman’s scheme of eliminating all penalties for possession of drugs, and for crimes related to drugs. But this experiment using somewhat controlled variables is not likely to happen.
So, Roger Goodman cannot defend his scheme by claiming the current system doesn’t work, because he has no basis for saying that his scheme would work better. I believe that Roger’s system, decriminalizing not only possession of cocaine, barbiturates, LSD, methamphetamine and perhaps PCP, but also decriminalizing crimes said to be caused by use of those drugs, would make drug problems much worse. I explained some of the reasons in my prior letter. Just one problem in Roger’s plan is that it would make it very easy to become an addict. Obviously the Legislature must apply common sense and experience to the problem. Common sense tells us that criminal penalties deter crime. Speeders know that. But common sense also tells us that penalties deter only some crime, some of the time, to some extent, for some people. The legislature constantly adjusts for these common sense concepts.
Lawyers who do not practice in this area may be interested in what the penalties really are. For possession of any drug, including meth, penalties range from no jail time to a maximum 24 months if you have six to nine prior felony convictions. For dealing any amount of anything, the maximum, no matter how many priors, is 10 years, and the minimum is a 12-month prison sentence. The more severe penalties for meth manufacturing top out at 120 months, ten years.
But these figures do not tell the whole story. Most offenders serve half of their sentence unless they have violent prior offenses. A meth cook with five prior felony convictions could spend as little as 46 months in confinement. DOSA, (Drug Offender Sentencing Alter-native), sentences are common and allow the defendant to serve half or even a quarter of the sentence. Charges are often reduced to conspiracy or to a misdemeanor, allowing the court to impose any sentence from zero time up to 12 months. These sentences are not demonic.
Roger Goodman claims that I should not comment on drug laws because he believes I have not studied his materials adequately. But I am a voter like everyone else and we must all comment in the voting booth. Roger seems to believe that lawyers and the public should defer to him and the drug policy committee because they are the experts and know what is best for the rest of us. Not so.
This idea is akin to turning democratic government into government by administrative agency, and Roger Good-man attempts to turn common sense issues into government by administrative agency report. Most voters do have opinions on drug laws. Acting through the legislature, the voters should apply common sense and reject these harmful proposals.
Roger Ley
Seattle
Drug Policy Project Rebuttal
The recent report released by the King County Bar Association was the product of countless hours of research, debate, drafting and editing by dozens of enthusiastic volunteers--lawyers, pharmacists, law enforcement representatives, scholars and scientists, current and former elected officials and others.
We commend the writer to the voluminous and persuasive research cited in the report, and in our 2001 report, that arrest, prosecution, adjudication, incarceration and supervision in the criminal justice system is not only ineffective in addressing our societal problem of substance abuse, but counterproductive and with disastrous “collateral” consequences.
The KCBA is not recommending any specific “scheme” that “eliminates all penalties for possession of drugs and for crimes related to drugs.” The KCBA is recommending the consideration of a state-level regulatory system to control those drugs now in the hands of criminals and easily accessed by children. Under such a system, there would undoubtedly be certain penalties for certain individuals for possessing certain substances, but the KCBA is not presuming to prescribe a specific legal regime, but only the parameters of a legal framework. Existing elements of our legal framework will continue to hold people accountable for negligent, reckless and criminal (harm to person and property) conduct, whether the actors are using drugs or not.
The KCBA’s current effort is but a small first step in an inclusive, respectful and deliberate process of engaging the public in a serious conversation about this critical issue and by no means a limitation of the scope of that conversation.
Roger E. Goodman
Director, Drug Policy Project
King County Bar Association
Drug Policy Project Criticism Criticized
Roger B. Ley’s diatribe against the King County Bar Association’s recent drug policy proposal is undeniable proof that ostriches aren’t the only ones who stick their heads in the sand (March Letters).
If Ley had ever read the Declaration of Independence, he would have learned that every American is entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If he had ever even glanced at the Constitution, he would have found that each of us is to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.
But that raises the question of when government may prevent a citizen from pursuing that happiness. Tom Jefferson answered that in his Notes on the State of Virginia: only when a person is doing something “injurious to others.” The British philosopher John Stuart Mill said the same thing in his essay On Liberty. Ley really needs to catch up on his reading.
We held to the wise counsel of geniuses like Jefferson and Mill from 1776 to 1913, the period of our country’s greatest growth and triumph. But then, the anti-drug hysteria kicked in and we started putting people in jail for this private behavior by consenting adults.
The result was the inevitable consequence of drug prohibition: horrible violence, terrible corruption and mass violations of human rights, but without ever accomplishing its stated goal: the end of drug use. Almost a century later, drugs are everywhere, but we have succeeded in currently putting more than 500,000 Americans in jail at enormous public expense. This is the worst of all worlds. Yet, to quote an old Pete Seeger song, “We’re waist deep in the Big Muddy, but the damn fool says ÔPush on.’”
Ley offers only the voice of ignorance and failure. Let’s get smarter and return to the principles of our Founding Fathers. The purpose of government in a free society is to protect private behavior by consenting adults, not to violate it.
Brian Templeton
Des Moines
Thanks for Volunteer Settlement Program
I wanted to thank all of the family law attorneys in Seattle and the South End who participate in the free volunteer settlement program. Our program frequently uses the services of these attorneys who go the extra mile to settle cases, often for parties who are unrepresented. The attorneys mediate and some help the parties fill in the correct paper work and often walk them over to the ex-parte courtroom so that they can finish their case with one visit to the courthouse. The amount of trial time these attorneys save is invaluable.
Caroline Davis, Family Law CASA of King County
