As managing editor of www.reentrycentral.org I try to bring important news on criminal justice reform to our readers. Occasionally, I hear about an individual who is passionate about reform and who advocates a new approach in creating it. So it is with Clifford W. Thornton, Jr., who along with his wife, Margaret founded Efficacy, (efficacy-online.org) an organization promoting drug policy reform. When I read about him in a recent Hartford Advocate news story I was impressed by his dedication, and that his ideas are considered to be the vanguard in the new “war on drugs.” While Reentry Central does not necessarily support all of Mr. Thornton’s views, we believe that our readers should consider his analysis of how we can solve the crisis in our criminal justice system.
I contacted Clifford Thornton by in September 2010 and asked if he would consider being interviewed by me. He agreed, and after a few phone calls, I sent him a list of questions. I also spoke with him in person on September 21, 2010, but what follows is Thornton’s reply to my initial questioning.
Beatrice Codianni: I chose not to Google you, but instead to ask, what are for me, fresh questions. I know that you have probably answered similar questions, but please bear with me.
Clifford Thornton: Now please do so.
BC: What made you get involved in drug policy reform?
CT: This all started for me two weeks before I graduated high school, and I am sixty five now. My mother died from an apparent heroin overdose. At that time I thought all illegal drugs should be eradicated from the face of this earth. As I watched this problem get bigger and more uncontrollable I began to delve into the world of illegal drugs and study it.
I could see that more and more money was being poured into it with fewer and fewer positive results, and more people were starting to use these drugs. Our prisons were filled to the brim. Five year Hanna, who lives down the street, brought eighteen bags of heroin to school for show and tell. Ten year old Sarah was shot in the mouth from a stray bullet of yet another drug deal gone bad. I watched as state and city police rounded up known drug dealers and people with outstanding warrants. I also knew what was coming next. Oh yes, a record number of killings and shootings for the right to sell illegal drugs in a particular area. This happens all the time and I/we have been telling everyone this for years. Who is held responsible? No one. I watched as the authorities have taken so many of our young out of our community, on drug charges, and the community thinking somehow the community will be better for it. I watched as federal agents came to my place of employment and arrested one of my supervisors for selling drugs. I believe he was set up and did not sell drugs at all, he did not drink, did not have a girlfriend or smoke. He got ten years on the conspiracy theory to sell drugs. That next week I retired early to try and make a difference.
BC: In your opinion, what are three or four things that most need to be done, either through legislation, or via public policy?
CT: First and foremost, these drugs have to legalized, medicalized and decriminalized. Cannabis should be legalized like alcohol and cigarettes. cocaine, methamphetamine and Ecstasy should be medicalized. I have said this for years. In August 2010 Ecstasy was medicalized. (Editor’s note: Ecstasy was used in a study to treat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.) The rest of the Illegal drugs should be decriminalized for future debate with true and honest medicinal study.
All of this can be done at the state level and would have a domino effect for cites and counties for any state that does this. What I mean by domino effect is this. There are some 19,000 prisoners in Connecticut with a seven hundred and forty four million dollar prison operating budget with eighty percent of the prisoners being there for drug related charges. When these drugs come inside of the law that means over five hundred million would have to come out of the prison budget. When you look at the entire state of Connecticut we can see almost two billion can be recovered/saved. Now we have to ask the question what can we do with these saving. This money should and could go back into our communities to rebuild the infra structure. We need to revolutionize our public education system, have effective drug treatment such as heroin, meth and cocaine centers like in many parts of Europe and Canada. Everything we need to recover is already in place. We just have to go from a war time economy to a peace time economy. This makes to much sense, so we won’t do that, at least not in my life time.
BC: Who really controls the sentiment in this issue? Correctional unions? Politicians who want to be known as “tough on crime?” Law enforcement looking for big budgets? Citizens who are not aware that the “War on Drugs” is a failure?
CT: All of the above control this scenario. Many see the drug war as being supported by three major phenomena; all of which result in unequal treatment based either directly or indirectly on race, class or white privilege, and understand, even though I'm basically talking about Connecticut, this is how it works all over the world:
1) Greed. Drug markets are a dandy source of 'black' money which ends up being recycled (laundered) through our banks and other financial institutions and then made available for all sorts of scams-- including political contributions which guarantee that politicians remain "tough on drugs." The drug war effectively exempts most well-to-do adolescents from any severe punishment-- while it guarantees that the poor and unconnected are hit the hardest.
In terms of participants, the upper level dealers and financiers are seldom even identified; but the mid and lower level workers (often "minorities") are far more visible and at risk of arrest.
The job security provided to police and the prison industry is also a big motivator. It might be noted here that our state, I believe, is going through major prison building and watch who gets the high paying jobs.
The benefits of the war on drugs to the Pharmaceutical, Alcohol and Tobacco industries doesn't need to be spelled out. I'm reasonably sure that if cannabis were legal, they would all take a big hit. As it is, illegal cannabis already reduces their sales significantly. Also understand that cannabis is not the real prize, HEMP is. HEMP would immediately revolutionize the clothing, paper, and food industry, a no- no in this country.
2) Overt Racism/Classism. The malignant racism which justified slavery is definitely not dead. It survived under Jim Crow (segregation) and continues to survive under the drug war. There is abundant evidence that blacks and browns actually have fewer drug problems than whites; but you'd never know it from our media. As editor, past and present, of many Drug News Weeklies for years, I had continuous evidence that the war on drugs is incredibly racist in all its applications. That unfairness is accepted by most whites; at least they don't feel any great need to protest.
3) Fear and the intellectual dishonesty that fear promotes in Medicine and the "treatment" disciplines (Psychology and Sociology). This is a very complex issue; but there's no doubt that the drug war survives partly because Medicine has been so thoroughly co-opted. My take is that our whole system of classification of mental "disorders" has also been corrupted by the war on drugs. We literally have no defensible objective standards for the labels we apply (labels demanded by "treatment"). Our "official' take on abnormal behavior also promotes continued marginalization of dissent-- especially by minorities. The truth is that blacks are condemned to the worst school, and if they make any trouble at all, the "solution" is to banish them administratively from the system ASAP. I also see this in New Zealand and all other countries where there is a significant minority population.
America has been a racist society ever since its Constitution was drafted in 1787. We-- as a nation-- have never repudiated our (sainted) founders' embrace of slavery. Until we do, I suspect we'll remain an intensely racist society. Historically, I see it as a smaller-- but far more intense-- version of Western Europe's legacy of exploiting Africa and Asia for profit in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. The big difference is that while Europeans were content to travel to those areas and rule as colonizers. Our plantation economy led our forebears to employ the additional barbarity of abduction; along with the destruction of families and of culture and brought about by perpetual enslavement and continued refusal to educate children. The cruel treatment of slaves was justified by a spurious doctrine of racial "supremacy;" but I suspect it was mostly motivated by (the now) seldom-discussed fear of a "servile rebellion."
Our white forebears thus saddled all Americans of color-- especially blacks-- with the bitter legacies of their own guilt and fear. Until that's recognized and repudiated, I see no real improvement. The drug war has been substituted for slavery and segregation and most people can't see it or don't want to see it. I just want to say I am not promoting drug use, I am promoting a sound logical approach to this problem. I increasingly see ALL human behavior as generated by emotions-- which are then dressed up and justified by "logic." The way you recognize extremists and demagogues is by the shabby quality of their "logic" and the degree to which they are unable to deal honestly with challenges to that logic.
BC: We know that the United States has the largest prison population in world, and that our prisons are filled with nonviolent inmates who were incarcerated on drug charges, mostly for possession of marijuana. How much money would be saved if drugs were legalized, or regulated?
CT: I gave you that for Connecticut, but for the entire country we are talking about a little over a trillion. Remember, we have spent a couple of trillion dollars on interdiction alone.
BC: Please discuss the differences between legalization, decriminalization, and regulation. Where do you stand on these issues?
CT: I have said in another question where I stand on this, but here is a breakdown for what these terms actually mean. Legalization equates to regulation and control, like cigarettes or alcohol. Medicalization equates to prescription type drugs where one has to go to the doctor to receive a recommendation of a prescription for giving the drug. It is a form of legalization with a few more steps. Please reference the Ecstasy paragraph. Decriminalization means no felony charge for small amounts of illegal drugs. The law does not change. It means there is an addendum and people will only pay a fine for small amounts of given substance with no jail or prison time. This will have little to no effect on the crime and violence as medicalization and legalization would.
BC: If you could get one point across to the citizens of this country, what would it be?
CT: The alternatives to this problem has to be as far reaching and pervasive as the problem itself.
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