Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is starting the week with praise for the White House's drug czar.
The Office of National Drug Control Policy on Monday formally announced that it would be providing $2.5 million in funding for a new Heroin Response strategy to fight opioid abuse in five identified High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas, including Appalachia.
ONDCP Director Michael Botticelli visited with the Kentucky Republican at an April 9 event in the northern part of his home state.
"This is a positive development for Kentucky's efforts to fight the use of heroin that is hitting the Commonwealth particularly hard," McConnell said in a statement. "I appreciate Director Botticelli contacting me with the good news and I appreciate all he has done to assist in our efforts back home. We must use federal resources to combat this epidemic in the most efficient and effective way possible, and I look forward to our continued efforts."
McConnell has been active on opioid abuse issues in recent years as the scourge has become more and more prevalent in Kentucky, particularly in rural areas.
If you haven't heard a peep from Durbin, it's because you're not listening:
http://www.durbin.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/durbin-discusses-legislation-to-combat-heroin
Bill, I am not sure if I count as one of the drug sentencing reformers of which you speak, but I do count as one (of many) concerns about the heroin epidemic. And, as I think you may recall, I think marijuana reform could and should play a major part in discussion and research about how to deal with opiate addictions and related crimes/harms.
Specifically, driven by concerns of people using harmful and addictive opiates to deal with chronic pain, I think the feds should (1) swiftly change the CSA to formally allow states to legalize marijuana for use, at the very least, as a step-down drug for persons struggling with opiate addition, and (2) study whether in fact, as some early research suggests, opiate addiction and death rates are lower in states that have reformed its marijuana laws.
Notably, the bipartisan CARERS Act put forward by Senators Booker, Gillibrand and Paul would achieve indirectly these ends. But I have heard that your pal Senator Grassley refuses to hold a hearing on that bill in Committee. Will you join me in urging him to hold hearing on CARERS, with special attention given to what research suggests marijuana reform can help address the heroin epidemic?
Thank you for the link to Sen. Durbin's press release. This one works better for me: http://www.durbin.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/durbin-discusses-legislation-to-combat-heroin-epidemic
A few things, though. First, putting out a press release is not acting -- or at least it counts as "acting" only inside the Beltway. Second, the press release promotes dealing with the dreadful medical effects of heroin, and is thus something everyone supports, like motherhood and apple pie. Third, the question in this post is about SENTENCING for trafficking in heroin and other dangerous drugs. Is it not the case that Sen. Durbin, even in the teeth of the heroin epidemic, continues to support allowing judges to ease up on heroin sentencing? So we should go softer on heroin peddlers at exactly the time when the misery and death they are causing is spiking, is that right?
Isn't it also the case that the dramatic penalty enhancements for heroin enacted in 1986 did nothing to prevent the current epidemic?
Doug --
A few points.
1. You profoundly misunderstand the nature of drug addiction. Addicts do not go down from smack to pot. They go up from pot to smack. The whole thing that makes addiction so insidious is that the user's body becomes accustomed to his present usage level, so he seeks a higher high. Almost no one overdoses on purpose; they're all just trying to get to that higher high.
2. First things first. Before we get to Sen. Paul's CAREERS legislation, I would like to see a vote on his previously introduced JSVA Act. As you know, Pat Leahy refused to give it such a vote. And that is because it was so radically pro-drug that it would have gone down in flames, not so? But, hey, I'm a broad-minded man, so I would happily give it what Sen. Leahy refused
3. I'll be curious to see you produce actual evidence for your statement that I am Sen. Grassley's "pal." I strongly suspect that "evidence" will be the same as Linda Greenhouse's "evidence" that we have a de facto moratorium on the death penalty -- when we have an execution every 12 days. But I'm a patient man.
4. Do you think we should go lighter on sentencing for heroin trafficking at the very moment that for-profit enterprise is causing heartbreaking amounts of misery and death?
That cannot be known, because punishment is only one of a number of variables that affects availability and medical effects. Others are supply routes, law enforcement conditions in producer countries, technology changes in delivery techniques (both internationally and hand-to-hand), potency, adulteration, and others.
This is the same multi-factor phenomenon we see in the prison population. As I have said many times, for example, increased incarceration of criminals is one significant factor, but only one, in the crime decrease in the last generation.
But as a general proposition, you bet, all other things being equal, the more you punish X, the less of X you will get. I really don't know many educated adults who doubt this.
Are there actual proposals to lower sentencing for heroin trafficking? I don't see any links in your post to support that claim. Are they at the federal or state level? It's hard to evaluate your apparent assertion that legislators are trying to lower sentences for heroin trafficking without more details about the exact proposals.
- Victor
"Isn't it also the case that the dramatic penalty enhancements for heroin enacted in 1986 did nothing to prevent the current epidemic?"
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, "Trends in Annual Prevalence of Drug Use for Twelfth Graders," the drug use index in 1985 was 46 per 100,000. The index dropped to 27 over the next seven years. The federal Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 coupled with a national anti-drug campaign marshaled by the President, dramatically reduced drug use in all categories. Cocaine use, for example dropped from and estimated 5.8 million annually to 1.3 million by 1992.
The current epidemic has been enabled by Attorney General Eric Holder's 2013 announcement that federal prosecutors would be pleading down charges against drug offenders (read dealers) to correct racial disparities in federal drug convictions. It has also been enabled by an Obama Administration border policy which has allowed drug cartels to bring drugs directly to U.S. cities, rather than utilizing Los Angeles based gangs for distribution. According to Border Patrol Agent's testimony before Congress, for every illegal they catch, three avoid capture, with the drug smugglers, many of whom had been deported previously, most adept at crossing undetected. Heroin use has spiked because it is cheaper than cocaine or meth, and easier to smuggle.
Victor --
Yes there are such proposals, and there will be more coming. Nor will they be limited to heroin trafficking. I have discussed them from time to time, as has Doug Berman on his blog, Sentencing Law and Policy. Doug particularly emphasizes state drug sentencing measures, some of which have been passed in recent years (oddly enough more in southern states, as Doug happily points out), but in others as well.
The federal proposals I have on the top of my head generally would lower sentences indirectly (since that keeps it better hidden from the public), both by punching holes in mandatory minimum eligibility, and by "back-end" relief, allegedly for an inmate's progress in rehab and vocational programs.
Sorry, I'm not going to list them. They are readily available with three minutes' looking, certainly for someone of your skill.
I trust you know, Bill, I was being cheeky in calling Grassley your pal. If I am not mistaken, you have done the same in associating me with Obama and others. Sorry if that is bad form --- though I do think it is accurate that you are pals with a key Grassley staffer, no?
More to the point, I would welcome a vote on the JSVA as soon as possible, before or after a vote on the latest version of the SSA and/or CARERs and/or SAFE and othe proposals. I think you and I share the view that all serious bill ought to get votes (like all serious judicial nominees) so that our elected politicians cannot hide their positions behind procedural machinations.
As for JSVA being radically pro-drug, I find this accusation curious in light of the fact that ALEC (which I do not think is a radical pro-drug group) has promoted a state version of JSVA in many states and helped get it enacted in states like Oklahoma. Are you suggesting the ALEC, the Oklahoma legislature and the Oklahoma Gor are all radically pro-drug? Are you advocating, based on these developments in Oklahoma, the kind of grass-roots campaign in Oklahoma to turn back such a radical pro-drug reform as you have with respect to death penalty repeal in Nebraska?
on the merits, I would readily conceded I do not understand drug addiction because my addictions run to video games, not illegal drugs. And that is why I care so much about data. And the early data suggests marijuana reform HELPS with the current heroin epidemic, and all I have suggested is that the feds explore this data and encourage state experimentation with marijuana reform as part of a multi-level/pronged response to this harmful and tragic new public health problem. If you truly do care about helping all people, rather than just enjoy having some bad people serve ever longer prison terms, I would hope you would join forces with me in advocating for exploration of marijuana reform as one aspect of efforts to respond to the new heroin problem.
So, I will restate my basic question with a more direct one concerning marijuana reform: Do you agree with me that one (of many) actions Congress should now serious consider in response to the heroin epidemic is to explore the possible beneficial relationship between state marijuana legalization reforms and reduced heroin problems?