Arnold Trebach, a leading critic of President Bush`s war on drugs, plots strategy from a suburban-style office complex with a tearoom and a kitchen-cabinet emporium.
Trebach and the Drug Policy Foundation of which he`s president pride themselves on swimming against the mainstream by advocating the legalization of marijuana and cocaine. They also want the government to provide addicts with sterile needles to avoid AIDS virus infection and to make marijuana available to people suffering from cancer and other painful diseases.
”For 20 years,” he said, ”the government has been building on the same policy: more money, more police power and more abuse of civil liberties.”
During this time, Trebach said, the number of drug-related crimes and drug abuse have soared, infecting urban centers as well as rural communities.
William Bennett, director of national drug-control policy, dismisses the criticism as ”cocktail party conversation.”
Lackluster statistics
Especially frustrating for Bennett are the lackluster statistics from the administration`s year-long effort to make the nation`s capital the showcase of its drug war.
Trebach likes to compare crime statistics from Amsterdam, where marijuana and hashish are sold openly in youth clubs, with those of Washington. Although Amsterdam has more people than Washington, it reported only 11 drug-related homicides in 1989, compared with 262 in the U.S. capital.
The foundation`s headquarters is a clearinghouse for alternatives to the war on drugs. In an interview, Trebach complained that government actions are often based on ”utter distortion” and ”misinformation.”
The prime example, he said, was the U.S. invasion of Panama in December, which was billed as Operation Just Cause.
24,000 against 1
”Bush sent 24,000 U.S. troops to get one drug trafficker, Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, and bring him back here,” Trebach charged. ”In the process, 23 American soldiers lost their lives and another 300 were wounded, while hundreds of Panamanians were killed or injured.”
Trebach, a professor at American University, said he ”wandered into the drug field totally by accident” in the 1970s. At the time he was doing research on President Richard Nixon`s crime-control policy, which impressed him because it increased treatment resources for drug addicts 1,000 percent.
During the 1980s Trebach began roaming the U.S. to see firsthand how President Ronald Reagan`s drug war was being waged. Returning home ”scared,” he recorded his experiences in a 1987 book, ”The Great Drug War.”
In 1987 Trebach and Kevin Zeese organized the foundation and set up operations in the basement of Trebach`s home. Zeese, the foundation`s vice president and counsel, formerly worked for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
A driving force behind the foundation is Richard J. Dennis, a former member of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange who has made a five-year commitment of $2 million to its efforts. ”Anyone who has lived through the last 20 years knows how bad drugs are,” Dennis said in a telephone interview, ”but you don`t help people by handcuffing them if they have a problem.”
Earlier this year Dennis funded a nationwide poll of 1,400 adults that showed a majority preferred to treat drug abuse as a health problem rather than criminalizing such behavior. According to the poll, 68 percent preferred treatment and counseling, and only 21 percent preferred punishment.
Dennis is a member of the foundation`s advisory board, which includes academicians and medical professionals from around the world. Among its members are Patrick V. Murphy, a former Justice Department official and police commissioner of New York City and Detroit; and Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke.
Policies challenged
In Senate testimony, Schmoke has argued that the government`s policies fail to remove the incentives for drug dealing, relieve jail overcrowding or provide enough treatment for addicts. He also complained that the
administration has ignored the spread of AIDS through intravenous drug use, which is the source of most new cases of the deadly disease.
The foundation has also circulated statements by George Shultz, a member of the Nixon and Reagan Cabinets, criticizing the criminal-justice approach to the drug problem.
”It seems to me we are not really going to get anywhere until we can take the criminality out of the drug business and the incentives for criminality out of it,” Shultz told a Stanford University alumni group last fall.
Shultz also said: ”Frankly, the only way I can think of to accomplish this is to make it possible for addicts to buy drugs at some regulated place at a price that approximates their cost. When you do that, you wipe out the criminal incentives, including the incentives that the drug pushers have to go around and get kids addicted.”
The 900-member foundation has taken no specific position on how legalization or decriminalization should proceed. ”We are a forum for open, rational and sound opposition,” Trebach said, ”and no one supports kids on drugs.”
One proposal, advanced by New York state Sen. Joseph Galiber, would establish a regulatory scheme for drugs similar to that used for alcoholic beverages. Times and places of sale would be restricted.
”It could also be taxed and regulated as to its purity,” Trebach said,
”and carry a health warning on its label. Sales to minors would be prohibited.”
In recent years Congress has stiffened the penalties and provided for mandatory sentencing of convicted drug traffickers. Inasmuch as these penalties do not apply to minors, Trebach pointed out, dealers are ”sucking them into the drug trade” by increasingly using them as couriers.
Trebach and Zeese see parallels between the war on drugs and Prohibition, when the U.S. outlawed the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages. That period, from 1918 to 1933, was marked by rampant criminality and mobsters, who were attracted by the huge profits from illegal liquor.
They view the Dutch system for controlling drug abuse as a possible model for the U.S. In the Netherlands, according to Trebach, marijuana and hashish products are sold openly at approved places; drug trafficking outside these channels is illegal.
”Hundreds of stores sell marijuana,” Trebach said, ”and what has happened is that pot has become boring.” He cited a poll in which 5.5 percent of America`s high school seniors admitted using pot daily, while only 0.5 percent of Dutch youths of the same age reportedly do.
The foundation has also entered the 18-year legal struggle with the federal government to allow the use of marijauna in treating the side effects of such diseases as cancer, AIDS, glaucoma and multiple sclerosis.
In September 1988, the chief administrative law judge for the Drug Enforcement Administration ruled that it was ”unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious” for the agency ”to continue to stand between these sufferers and the benefits of marijuana.” The decision followed two years of hearings.
But with the war on drugs in full swing, the DEA has refused to change its policy. The foundation has appealed the agency`s action to the U.S. Court of Appeals.
