NO TEARS FOR DRUG OFFENDERS IN PRISON

Some of my friends keep jumping on me for taking a hard-line approach to the use of illicit drugs, including that "benign" gateway drug, marijuana. They keep bombarding me with the false propaganda put out by Hugh Heffner's National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) and other groups that our prisons are overcrowded with inmates who are serving long prison terms for possessing only a few joints or small amounts of crack and other drugs.

I have always maintained that almost all drug offenders in prison are there for distributing illegal drugs, not for mere possession. Those who are serving time for "possession" are actually drug dealers who, in order to obtain a shorter sentence, copped a plea to the lesser charge of possession.

Along comes John Pfaff, associate professor of law at Fordham University Law School, with an article entitled, "Five Myths About Prison Growth Dispelled." Professor Pfaff's article in yesterday's Slade Magazine backs my contention to the hilt. Here is the portion that deals with the number of drug offenders in prison:

"Myth No. 2: Low-level drug offenders drive prison population growth.

It is popular, perhaps almost mandatory, to blame the boom on the War on Drugs. But it is just not true. Only 20 percent of inmates in prisons (as opposed to jails) are locked up for drug offenses, compared with 50 percent for violent crimes and 20 percent for property offenses; most of the drug offenders are in prison for distribution, not possession.

Twenty percent is admittedly much larger than approximately 3 percent, which was the fraction of prisoners serving time on drug charges in the 1970s. But if we were to release every prisoner currently serving time for a drug charge, our prison population would drop only from 1.6 million to 1.3 million. That's not much of a decline, compared with the total number of people in prison in the 1970s—about 300,000."

So to those of you who have fallen for all that false propaganda, I suggest you take some time off and think up a better reason for decriminalizing the possession of illicit drugs. And don't give me that crap about how much it is costing us to keep all those poor souls locked up. That wont fly with me!