How could my family have saved my cousin from addiction?
Legislature should take tough-love approach to drug possession
My late cousin, Valeria, was a dark-haired beauty, with deep brown eyes, a keen sensibility and a quick intellect. She was a talented artist, and her teenage work appeared in official placards in the New York City subway system.
All that promise ended in 1986, when she jumped to her death off the roof a Harlem apartment building when she was nearly 40. She had struggled with drug addiction for more than 20 years.
Valeria was nearly a decade older than I, so I never fully understood why she lived a life of constant fixes and repeated overdoses. I’ve often wondered why she could never recover — and asked what our family and society could have done better to save her. Surely, it seems, she needed more robust treatment — and perhaps at least a little incarceration to make sure she stuck with it.
Many America families have similar stories to tell and questions to ponder. And starting in January, Washington legislators will decide on an issue that goes to the heart of these matters: Should simple possession of all hard drugs — such as meth, heroin, cocaine and fentanyl — be decriminalized in favor of more addiction treatment? How much stick and how much carrot should the justice system apply to addicts? Should we emulate Oregon’s go-soft approach, mimic Portugal’s non-criminal system or continue to aggressively incarcerate?
Let me state at the outset that I don’t believe, as some advocates of decriminalization assert, that drug possession is a victimless crime. Addicts often abuse their families and kids, steal from their families and neighbors, prostitute or degrade themselves in other ways, and indirectly encourage organized crime.
On the other hand, I also don’t believe drug addiction is cured in jail, and the get- tough-on-drugs approach has been especially hard and marginalizing on minorities. Still, the justice system needs some way to hold addicts accountable and stay on a course of recovery. I agree with retired Cowlitz County Superior Court Judge Stephen Warning, who established the county's drug court.
“Some people say forced treatment doesn’t work. It’s just the opposite,” Warning told me last week. “Nobody ever goes to treatment voluntarily.”
This issue is arising out of a February 2021 Washington State Supreme Court decision declaring the state’s strict liability drug possession law unconstitutional. The 5-4 “Blake” ruling held that the state law criminalized unintentional, unknowing possession of controlled substances because it put the burden of proof on defendants, not the prosecution.
Blake resulted in dismissal of thousands of drug convictions and cases. It led to the absurd reality that a minor can be arrested for alcohol but not for possessing hard drugs. It led to a firestorm of criticism from law and justice officials, who say it has led to a rise in crime.
Shortly after the ruling, the Legislature adopted a temporary measure that emphasizes treatment over incarceration and reduced drug possession to a misdemeanor. However, for the first two possession “offenses” police must refer the person to treatment instead of citing them. Lawmakers approved $88.5 million for treatment.
Yet there is no state database to track whether a suspect has been previously advised to get treatment. The patchwork law is so unworkable that police and county prosecutors have virtually stopped adjudicating drug possession offenses. The temporary law expires July 1, and legislators must write an alternative or the state will have no drug possession statute at all.
On one level, a quick and easy remedy is to rewrite the law to require prosecutors to prove that a defendant “knowingly” possessed drugs. Doing so, as some Republicans proposed, likely would cover the vast majority of drug possession cases. Some counties — including Lewis County — have considered adopting such ordinances.
This hard-nosed approach alone fails to recognize how thinking about addiction and drugs has shifted.
For one, there’s the recognition that the nation’s 50-year-old “War on Drugs” isn’t working and the problem is getting worse. More than 932,000 Americans have died from drug overdoses since 1999, including 92,000 in 2020 alone, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The age-adjusted rate of overdose deaths increased by 31% during the first pandemic year— from 21.6 per 100,000 in 2019 to 28.3 per 100,000 in 2020, the CDC reports. Drug overdoses are the leading cause of death for people under 50.
In addition, there is growing awareness that addiction is a medical problem and shouldn’t be treated as a crime. Fewer people consider drug abuse a stigmatizing moral failure. My cousin Valeria was essentially a good and salvageable person. Drugs made her do hurtful things —to her family and ultimately to herself.
Democratic leadership is likely to pursue this line in the upcoming session, when the Oregon experience with decriminalization is likely to become prominent.
Oregon voters passed Measure 110 in 2020. It downgraded possession of small amounts of drugs to misdemeanors or civil infractions and designated $300 million in marijuana tax revenue for treatment over two years. The measure established a hotline that people who are ticked for possession can call to undergo a health assessment. If they complete the assessment, offenders can get their $100 civil fines waived, even without further treatment or other services.
Advocates said Measure 110 would help end the cruel and inhumane war on drugs that undercut addicts’ ability to get jobs, loans, professional licenses and other necessities.
Yet, while arrests have plummeted, the measure has been disastrous in terms of curbing drug use or getting people into treatment. An assessment published last fall found only about 3% nearly 3,200 people ticketed through August had made even a call for treatment. Only 0.8 % had actually accepted a treatment referral.
Keith Humphreys, a Stanford University professor who advised the Obama Administration on drug policy, said Oregon went too easy on abusers. The state, he told Oregon Public Broadcasting, “is experiencing extensive drug use, extensive addiction and not much treatment-seeking.”
A study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that in 2021, Oregon ranked first in the nation in illicit drug use. Washington is not far behind.
So far, Oregon is the only state to have voted to decriminalize hard drugs. Last year the American Civil Liberties Union failed to get enough signatures to put a decriminalization measure on the ballot in Washington. Several other states are considering similar measures.
The nation of Portugal is often cited as a success story for decriminalizing drugs, which it did in 2000. Drug users are handled outside the justice system. Even there, however, anyone caught with drugs must appear before a three-member panel made up of a doctor, social worker and a legal expert. The panel drafts a treatment plan and can impose fines, yank professional licenses, and take other steps to force compliance with the treatment program, according to the Seattle Times.
Portugal’s system works much like U.S. drug courts, with the exception that drug courts can send people to jail if they violate rehab requirements.
About 50% of the people who enter Cowlitz Drug Court graduate from the program. Of those, 75% to 80% of those graduates are not convicted of a crime within three years, according to Adam Pithan, the county’s therapeutic courts program manager. Nationally, every dollar spent on drug court saves taxpayers $3.36 in future law and justice costs and society as a whole up to $27, Pithan said.
Enrollment in drug court is prohibited for people convicted of violent or sex crimes. There were 74 people enrolled last week. Pithan would like to expand to at least 120, but he’d need about $120,000 to hire a third case manager, he said.
Drug Courts have been successful, but they alone obviously are not solving the problem. The Legislature will need to build off the model and enhance treatment. Whatever lawmakers do, they must make sure offenders face consequences for failing to submit to treatment.
Dallas Delagrange, a former addict and now counselor for the Cowlitz Tribe Health Services reinforced this point at a Longview forum in October.
“I’ll tell you, for me, I would’ve never gotten clean without damage intervention of getting pulled over without that initial stop. I didn’t have any intention of getting clean. I used drug court to get out of jail, but through all the people in the program, the decision was meant at that time to try something different.”
I only wish Valeria would have faced more of this tough love.