We've known for decades that the so-called War on Drugs was an abject failure. It did not stem the flow of illegal drugs into the U.S. and it did not stop the demand for them. What it did do was ensure that thousands of young people – disproportionality young men of color – were locked up for years for low-level drug buys and sales. When the medical marijuana movement gained traction in the late 1990s, drug convictions decreased, at least for those involving cannabis. Politically, there has been bipartisan consensus for years that "America was guilty of excessive incarceration and that large prison populations were too costly in tax dollars and the toll on families and communities," Carl Hulse of the New York Times recently wrote.
But once Jeff Sessions became attorney general in the Trump administration, all bets were off. And last week Sessions affirmed his hard line stance when he ordered federal prosecutors to pursue the highest penalties possible for criminal defendants. That, of course, includes people charged with drug crimes. Never mind that the country is in the midst of an opioid epidemic that is ravaging many communities in every state, or that more states have taken action to legalize recreational marijuana for adult use. Sessions' efforts to undo Obama-era sentencing policies and ramp up the war on drugs comes as no surprise, and we see it as just another example of the Trump administration trying to put the screws to anything that Barack Obama did as president.
Under Obama, the Justice Department took steps to ease penalties for nonviolent drug offenses. Now, Sessions is reverting to mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines that will surely result in more poor, minority men being sent to prison for longer stretches of time. In the years since Bush was in office, however, there's been a push by Republicans and Democrats to overhaul the criminal justice system. States have also been working on criminal reform. Former Attorney General Eric Holder, who served under Obama, encouraged prosecutors to consider the individual circumstances of defendants, and to exercise discretion in charging drug crimes, the Times reported. "In cases of nonviolent defendants with insignificant criminal histories and no connections to criminal organizations, Mr. Holder instructed prosecutors to omit details about drug quantities from charging documents so as not to trigger automatically harsh penalties," the paper noted.
Even the well-funded network overseen by conservative billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch opposes Sessions' push for tougher punishments for drug offenders. "We favor a different approach which requires changing some of the existing federal laws," Mark Holden, a top Koch network official who worked closely with the Obama administration on criminal justice reform told the Associated Press. "There are less costly and more effective ways to help low-level offenders who aren't a threat to public safety other than incarceration."
The criminal justice system works best when prosecutors can do their jobs unfettered by strict policies to bring mandatory charges. Judges can do a better job when they have the ability to take the facts of a case into account to fashion a just sentence. In short, no one wins with Sessions' new order. No one, that is, except the power-hungry Trump officials who would rather see young men of color sentenced to lengthy prison terms for buying a small bag of weed or a rock of crack than get the help they need to become productive members of society. The private prison industry has seen an influx of new investment in anticipation of a growing prison population. California pays about $70,000 per year to house an inmate. That money could be much better spent on re-entry and job-training programs for ex-convicts, or to provide diversion instead of prison for low-level criminals.
During the campaign, Trump drew a distinction between medical and recreational marijuana, supporting the former. Sessions, however, supports neither and Trump seems to have forgotten his earlier position. Now, with California readying regulations for the implementation of Proposition 64, which legalized adult use of cannabis, proponents should be very concerned about how Sessions' new policy will affect the state's effort to roll out legalization of recreational pot.
Senator Kamala Harris (D-California), a former state attorney general and district attorney, got it right this week when she said that it's time to fight a "war on addiction," rather than the failed war on drugs. She was critical of Sessions, telling the Center for American Progress Ideas Conference, "He is calling for a renewed focus on essentially what is the neighborhood street-level drug dealer." What the country needs, Harris said, is a national drug policy that "finally treats substance abuse not as a crime to be punished, but as a disease to be treated." She said the nation needs to build on reforms instead of reviving mandatory minimum sentences and boosting the bottom line for private prisons.
Harris also stated what we have believed for years, that marijuana should be decriminalized. Taking such action at the federal level – or at least getting it out of Schedule I, the category for the most serious drugs – would be a better administration of measured justice, rather than Sessions' outdated and extreme position of enforcing harsh mandatory sentences regardless of the particular circumstances of the crime.