“If we recognize substance abuse disorder as a health condition, then we must modify our justice system to treat it as such,” Foxx said. We couldn’t agree more.
Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx outlined a bold step forward this week, envisioning convicted some marijuana dealers having their convictions automatically wiped clean, while those busted for cocaine and heroin possession possibly getting their convictions expunged.
We know this kind of talk is sure to rankle professed law-and-order types, and it certainly could never be done without a drug treatment network that is far more robust than what the county currently has.
And Foxx — this cannot be said strongly enough — is not looking to lighten punishment for drug traffickers and others moving major weight. “I think that large manufacturing and delivery cases, that’s a different story,” she said.
But Foxx is correct in wanting to equitably reframe the state’s drug laws, which too often bring the hammer down on relatively small-time offenders in minority communities while, paradoxically, making these neighborhoods no safer — and providing few avenues for drug addiction treatment — in the process.
“I think this is the gateway conversation to deeper conversations around treating addiction as a public health issue and looking at the drug economy that has flourished in these neighborhoods while every other bit of economy has abandoned [them],” Foxx said in an exclusive interview with Sun-Times reporter Tom Schuba.
“If we recognize substance abuse disorder as a health condition, then we must modify our justice system to treat it as such,” she said. “Criminalizing health is not in the interest of public safety.”
We couldn't agree more.
Mass incarceration of narcotics users and dealers won’t solve the city’s or country’s drug problem — but it’s not for lack of trying. Someone in the United States is arrested every 25 seconds for drug possession, according to a study by the non-profit Center for American Progress. More than a million people were arrested for drug possession in 2015, three times the number busted for the same offense in 1980.
And if the number of people nationally on probation or parole for drug-related offenses — 1.15 million — were in one locale, they would comprise America’s 10th largest city, with a population between that of Dallas, Texas, and San Jose, California.
Locking people up has resulted in only a “minimal at best” decrease in crime, according to the Brooklyn, New York-based Vera Institute of Justice. The non-profit organization found 19 states have actually reduced crime and incarceration rates.
Then there is the racist undertow of America’s drug laws and prosecutions. Black people comprise nearly 30% of drug related arrests nationwide, though they comprise only 12% of reported substance abusers.
And the cost of all this? The Center for American Progress puts the federal price tag at $9.2 million a day to incarcerate people with drug offenses. State governments together spend an addition $7 billion yearly to keep drug offenders behind bars.
The short of it — and why Foxx’s proposal makes sense — is that the war on drugs, nationally and locally, is an expensive machine that takes untold billions of dollars to maintain and provide debatable-at-best results.
Imagine if that money could be used for drug treatment or to augment economic development efforts, education and job programs in the most heavily-impacted neighborhoods.
That would make a real difference.
Under Foxx, about 2,200 low-level pot convictions involving possession of 30 grams or less — the amount of marijuana that’s now legal to hold — have been automatically expunged. Under her new proposal, cases involving between 30 to 500 grams, which is slightly over a pound, similarly could be wiped away.
Right now, anyone convicted of possessing or selling 30 to 500 grams of the substance must petition to have their record expunged.
But broadening the measures to include heroin and cocaine possession — drugs that aren't legal — will take some time, real work and cooperation from the federal government, which also charges narcotics offenses, complete with mandatory sentencing. The sentence for possession of 28 grams or more of crack cocaine, for instance, is five years.
In Illinois, possession of 15 grams or less of heroin or cocaine can result in a felony conviction that is next to impossible to be expunged from criminal records.
Foxx’s proposal to rethink our drug laws as a key part of a larger plan to rebuild communities and deal with addiction is solid.
“What has been a long concern of mine . . . is other drugs that are still illegal, that are still being prosecuted, in some of these very neighborhoods that are being devastated by the war on drugs,” she said. “And marijuana was but one of the drugs. It wasn’t the totality of the devastation.”
There is not yet a timetable for all this, only a vision. But that’s a good place to start.
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