Houston Press November 7-13, 1996 Page 6
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News
To some of those fighting on
the front lines of the war on drugs, open discussion can be as dangerous as bad
smack. Besieged by growing legions who favor the reform of zero-tolerance drug laws
-- including prominent conservative judges, police chiefs, physicians and business men --
the say-no foot soldiers are increasingly employing their favorite tactic: discredit those
who have opposing views.
Alan Robison holds a few of those views.
A disinguished professor of pharmacology and former department chair at the University of
Texas Health Science Center, Robison is the kind of reform advocate drug warriors loathe,
one with impeccable credentials. And as president of the Drug Policy Forum of Texas,
a group seeking to broaden the debate, the professor poses a special threat.
"The war on drugs is designed to use the
criminal justice system to make America drug free," Robison says. "It's a
bad policy. It doesn't work."
Beyond agreeing that the drug war has been a
failure, members of the Forum and other advocacy groups hold varying ideas on what should
replace it. Some focus on easing harsh penalties for simple possession. Others
want to implement "harm-reduction" strategies for treating drug abuse that take
a more realistic approach to addiction than zero tolerance. Still others would
legalize marijuana and control its distribution. Robison himself stops well short of
calling for legalization, instead favoring a combination of decriminalization and greater
emphasis on education and treatment.
The Forum recently sponsored three debates at
Rice University to address the most pertinent questions on drug policy: Who should lead
the war on drugs, doctors or the police? Has the war done more harm than good? Should
drugs be legalized? To present a cross section of opinion, Robison pulled together law
officers, public health officials and academics with widely diverging views.
Prior to the first debate in late August, a
number of panelists received phone calls asking them not to participate. Though most
refused to back out, not all withstood the pressure. Leonel Castillo, Mayor Bob
Lanier's education liaison, had agreed to moderate the second meeting but pulled out at
the last minute. According to Castillo, several people suggested he not attend,
though he wouldn't name names: "I'd rather not put anybody in a bind by suggesting
they said I not do that."
Assistant police chief Art Contreras, whose
purview includes narcotics investigations for HPD, was likewise unwilling to identify
those who asked him not to honor his commitment to be on one of the panels, but offered a
clue. "The people that have a vested interest in keeping the policy as it is
today are the ones to look at," says Contreras, who appeared as scheduled at the
debate.
Those vested interests include drug testing
companies and anti-drug consulting firms, the sprawling D.A.R.E. bureaucracy, private
prison operators, police departments dependent on asset forfeitures and others with a
financial stake in maintaining the war on drugs at current levels. "They don't
want changes," says Contreras.
One name among the just-say-don't-say-anything
forces did repeatedly surface -- Calvina Fay, executive director of Houston's Drug-Free
Business Initiative, a nonprofit organization working to eliminate drug and alcohol abuse
in the workplace. Fay phoned a number of the participants and tried to persuade them
not to attend the Robison-organized functions. "Ms. Fay was pretty upset,"
Castillo says. "She doesn't think the matter should even be discussed.
She said that Robison and all of them were legalizers."
|
UT's Alan Robison: "The war on drugs ... is a bad policy. It doesn't work." |
Calvina Fay appears
suspicious, and her unease is somehow compounded by her incongruous pre-Halloween
jack-o'-lantern earings, black widow hose and "Cool Ghoul" pin. Before
answering questions, she demands to know if the reporter does in fact work for the Press
or is simply masquerading as a journalist on behalf of the enemy.
Fay organizes educational compaigns, speaks to
employers, edits HDFBI's newsletter and otherwise oversees the group's anti-drug
efforts. She joined the organization in 1990 after running her own drug-testing
company for several years. During that time, she says, she experienced firsthand the
horrors of controlled substances.
Fay says HDFBI operates on a shoestring: Its
office is donated, its programs are subsidized and much of its labor is volunteer.
Despite several requests, however, she would not allow the Press to see the
organization's annual IRS Form 990s prior to our deadline -- a violation of federal law
governing disclosure for tax-exempt nonprofits. And while she says no one's making
money off of the HDFBI, one of the group's charter sponsors is a drug-testing company,
Drug Screens Inc.
To Fay, all efforts to moderate the nation's
tough drug laws, including such seemingly innocuous proposals as loosening restrictions on
industrial-grade hemp for cultivation, are part of a widespread conspiracy to legalize
drugs. "It is very organized," she says with a knowing smile.
"It is very deliberate. It is very well funded, too."
As proof, Fay says she's compiled a library of
videotapes of the movement's leaders openly advocating the use and legalization of
drugs. She regularly monitors the Internet site of the Washington, D.C.-based Drug
Policy Foundation, whose work parallels Robison's on a national scale, and has downloaded
numerous incriminating documents, including a marijuana smoking instructional.
"They have totally polluted the Internet," she says.
Asked about such reform-minded conservatives as
William F. Buckley and federal judge and former California prosecutor James Gray, Far tars
them with a big brush. "Since Buckley is a pot smoker, of course he'd like to
see it legalized," she says. As for Gray, "I don't know who all he's tied
in with."
Locally, Fay points to links between the Drug
Policy Forum of Texas and the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana
Laws. Ralph Hodges, a member of the Forum executive board, is a former NORML officer
and still active in the local chapter. She's got something on Robison, too, but she
won't go into details. "There is something specific about him," she
says. "I don't want to be the one telling you."
Fay readily admits asking people to reconsider
participation in Robison's debates. She herself was asked to sit on a panel but
declined because she felt the format -- 30 minutes for reform advocate Kevin Zeese
followed by five rebuttal minutes from six different speakers -- was a setup. But
she denies that she pressured anyone to withdraw and says she only called to warn
panelists of the true nature of the sponsors. She phoned former drug czar Lee Brown,
for instance, to advise him on handling tough questions. "I wanted participants
to know who they were dealing with," she says. Besides, Fay adds, some things
just aren't worth talking about. "Legalization is not a debatable issue,"
she says. "It's like debating racism."
Calvina Fay says she's got
science on her side. Marijuana is addictive, causes schizophrenia and other mental
disorders and has absolutely no medical value, she published in HDFBI's most recent
newsletter. Asked the source of the schizophrenia claim, Fay cited an inconclusive
1987 Swedish study published in the prestigious British medical journal Lancet.
But in an editorial last November promoting a more rational approach, Lancet
concluded that "cannabis per se is not a hazard to society, but driving it further
underground may be."
Fay also contends that needle exchange programs
to reduce HIV infection and promote treatment for intravenous drug abusers are a
failure. As proof, she cites statistics on a Canadian experiment that she just
accessed from the Internet. (She promised to share those statistics, but didn't
produce them before our deadline.) On the other hand, the federal Centers for Disease
Control, in a 1993 report on the 33 needle exchange programs in the United States, argued
for expanded services and research and recommended repeal of the ban on "the use of
federal funds for needle exchange services."
Short of conclusive evidence, Fay relies mostly
on anecdotes. She's heard enough D.A.R.E. graduates say "no" to discredit
any studies challenging the program's effectiveness. And she personally traveled to
Switzerland and talked to a drug addict, returning with the depressing knowledge that the
country's heroin giveaway and needle exchange experiments are a complete failure, even
though the Swiss government has expanded the program to a number of cities since its
inception.
Fay's tales aren't enough to sway those who
spend their lives studying chemical dependency and working in the field. "I
think there is pretty much a consensus among the medical and public health professional
communities," says Thomas Burks, executive vice president for research and academic
affairs at the UT Health Science Center. "Our present national drug policy is
not effective."
But consensus apparently doesn't mean the
freedom to speak out, and even the slightest deviation from the party line can be
politically fatal. Castillo may have been the only scheduled debate participant to
change his mind, but the heat has been felt in other quarters. After initially
agreeing to host a meeting of health service providers and Kevin Zeese about harm
reduction strategies, Covenant House executive director Phyllis Green had a change of
heart when someone she won't name described organizers as "a legalization
group."
Being painted as a public enemy has proved
frustrating for Robison, who says he'll continue his efforts to bring rational debate to
the highly charged issue. But it won't be easy, as Barbara Weyland can verify.
Weyland, who performs HIV/AIDS prevention education for the nonprofit Montrose Counseling
Center and once worked for the city health department, says she's often been stymied
trying to discuss the idea of needle exchange, let alone more sweeping reforms.
"It's ridiculous to ask for political support for this," she says.
"It's a political bullet in the head."
"Nobody wants to talk about it," says
Weyland. "They don't want to talk to each other about it. They don't want
to talk to you about it. They don't want to talk about it at all."