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The WAR we have NOT WON
If winning means ending the flow of drugs, there is little evidence it is happening
Carver is a blue-collar town with raised ranches and low-lying cranberry bogs. It’s home to the first divided highway in America, and police cruisers have the town’s motto, “Cranberryland U.S.A.,” sprayed across them in crimson.
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GARY HIGGINS/The Patriot Ledger |
The town’s quiet rural ambiance mirrors that of many other communities on the South Shore, and so does its experience with illegal drugs.
In 1999, 129 of the town’s 11,700 residents enrolled in substance abuse treatment programs, according to state records. Some may have sought help more than once, and some were treated exclusively for alcohol, but 33 reported using heroin in the 12 months prior to enrolling, 13 said they’d used cocaine and 19 said they’d used crack.
In the same year, Carver police made only two drug arrests, both for misdemeanor marijuana possession, according to FBI records. One of the arrested was a 15-year-old boy; the other was a middle-aged woman.
Health experts say only one-third of those who abuse drugs seek help. If that’s true, 99 people from Carver could have had a serious heroin problem in 1999.
Police arrested no heroin users within the 39-square-mile area they patrol.
With all the money being funneled into the so-called war on drugs - $60 million to Massachusetts from the federal drug czar’s office alone - the low arrest numbers in Carver and in other communities seem to indicate that taxpayers aren’t getting much for their money.
Carver Police Chief Diane Skoog said her officers try to stop drug activity, but they can’t do it alone.
“You can jump in and say the cops have to be firm and get out there and kick butt, but if they don’t have (society behind them) it’s not going to work,” Skoog said.
She, like a growing number of police officials, said more arrests won’t change the fact that many people find the use of so-called “recreational drugs” acceptable and others think addicts should be dealt with in the health care system, not the courts. She called drug use a “socially ingrained” problem and readily admitted the war on drugs isn’t working.
“The war on drugs started years ago, and where are we with it?” Skoog said. “After we’ve spent all that money, not very far.”
| “The war on drugs started years
ago, and where are we with it? After we’ve spent all that money, not very
far.” – Carver Police Chief Diane Skoog |
Carver’s situation is not unusual. An examination of statistics from across the South Shore reveals a glaring disparity between drug use - as measured by people seeking treatment - and drug arrests. While thousands seek help every year, FBI records show, police are making scattered arrests.
Most law enforcement officials acknowledge that their departments are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of drugs coming into their communities.
“Statistically, we’re not winning the war,” Rockland police Detective Jack Wentworth said. “Ninety-five percent of the drugs are getting through, and we’re only getting 5 percent.”
A closer look at three of the larger communities in the region shows that even departments with the most resources are not cutting off the flow of drugs.
In 1999, 3,173 people who said they lived in Quincy checked into state-licensed substance abuse treatment programs. Of those, 1,154 reported using heroin. That year, Quincy police made 203 drug arrests.
That same year, 693 people who said they were Weymouth residents checked into treatment programs, the state Bureau of Substance Abuse Services reported. Nearly a third, 215 people, said they had used heroin in the prior year. Police in Weymouth made 69 drug arrests that year.
The problems were the same in Plymouth, although percentage-wise, police made more arrests. There were 888 Plymouth residents who started drug treatment in 1999, with 180 reporting heroin use and even more, 229, reporting cocaine use. Police made 147 drug arrests.
Local law enforcement officials say they are trying their best to stifle drug traffic in their communities, but part of the problem is an unwavering demand.
Thousands of people are regular drug users on the South Shore, and police say many are addiction and crime time bombs waiting to go off.
A quick calculation yields shocking results about heroin use in Quincy.
In 2000, there were 1,197 people entering treatment programs who said they lived in Quincy and were recent heroin users, according to the state Bureau of Substance Abuse Services. That’s more than 1 percent of the city’s population. If health professionals are right, and only a third of heroin users seek treatment, there could have been as many as 3,591 users in Quincy, about 4 percent of the population.
Apply those numbers to Quincy residents 15 to 65 years old, the age range for nearly all heroin users. Almost 2 percent of Quincy residents in that age bracket were in treatment and 6 percent could have been heroin users, or one out of every 17 people in that age range.
| Police say they know how prevalent drug use is in their communities ... They maintain eliminating dealers will ultimately reduce the number of users. |
The problem is not Quincy’s alone. Heroin use led to more check-ins at detox facilities in Massachusetts last year than alcohol. That is the first time that has happened.
Last year, 54,379 Massachusetts residents entered state-licensed detoxification programs and more than 51 percent sought treatment for heroin addiction, while 41 percent were there because of alcohol.
Newer alphabet drugs like MDMA (ecstasy) and the date rape drug GHB are available in every South Shore high school, officials say. The abuse of prescription drugs, in particular OxyContin, has been linked to violent crime while simultaneously draining dollars from the health-care system. And old standbys - cocaine, LSD and marijuana - are available on demand.
So what are local police doing about the problem? Police say they know how prevalent drug use is in their communities, and, when asked about how they are addressing it, ranking officers and chiefs say their departments try to target dealers. They maintain eliminating dealers will ultimately reduce the number of users.
While this strategy sounds reasonable, a recent sampling of police records indicates that most departments are nabbing people for using drugs, not for dealing them.
In almost half of the 26 towns on the South Shore, police didn’t arrest a single dealer in 1999, according to FBI records.
Although South Shore communities don’t have abundant open-air drug markets, drug use is pervasive. Only Norwell had fewer than 50 residents in state-sponsored treatment programs in 1999. So, if the users are out there, the dealers who supply them are, too. Yet they seem to slip by, largely unhindered by law enforcement.
Capt. Michael Botieri of the Plymouth Police Department said he’s not surprised police are catching more users than dealers, even though they try to target dealers.
He said users far outnumber dealers, so police tend to happen upon them during routine traffic stops or when they respond to crimes like fights and robberies.
On the other hand, he said, arresting dealers often requires lengthy and expensive investigations that are difficult to conduct when police personnel are occupied with the daily demands of crime fighting. The war on drugs is often not the primary focus of local law enforcement.
| “Some judges are so opposed to
minimum mandatory sentences, they slant the scales of justice to allow defendants
less time.” – Michael Sullivan, the U.S. attorney in Boston |
Local departments also maintain they’re more successful at making drug arrests than the FBI numbers indicate.
Marshfield police Capt. Al Knight said arrests are catalogued by the most serious offense for which a person is arrested. Because of that, he said, drug charges sometimes don’t end up getting counted.
Knight said his department also sometimes opts for issuing court summonses instead of arresting every person caught with drugs.
Knight supports the war on drugs and stands by law enforcement’s current battle plan.
“You’re never going to totally eliminate it,” Knight said. “We’d love to if we could, but you can control it and improve the quality of life.”
From local police stations to federal offices, responsibility for the drug problem is easy to spread.
Police say they lack the resources to be effective against increasingly sophisticated and well-financed drug dealers. District attorneys say that arrests that do lead to prosecutions often don’t produce worthwhile results because judges do not stick to sentencing guidelines, and some judges say issuing longer sentences to drug offenders wouldn’t solve anything.
While those points are debated, suburban communities struggle to combat addiction and increases in crime.
In Holbrook, Police Chief Jonathan Cordaro said his department doesn’t have the capacity to conduct major investigations.
“We’ve been understaffed for the last three or four years,” Cordaro said. “It’s pretty hard to do undercover work when you don’t have the resources.”
The Norfolk and Plymouth county district attorneys say they try to assist local departments by lending them the services of the State Police detectives assigned to their offices.
Yet, even when state and local police are able to conduct successful investigations, the district attorneys say, sentencing often falls short of their expectations.
“Sometimes the court system frustrates me,” said Michael Sullivan, the U.S. attorney in Boston who was the Plymouth County district attorney until last fall. “I feel we’re not operating on a fair and level playing field. Some judges are so opposed to minimum mandatory sentences, they slant the scales of justice to allow defendants less time. ... It’s a part of the system the public doesn’t see, and we can’t do much about it.”
Sullivan also said certain drug laws are antiquated. In Massachusetts, a person now must be caught with 14 grams of heroin, slightly less than half an ounce, to be charged with trafficking, which brings a minimum mandatory sentence of three years. Fourteen grams is enough for about 700 users to get high once, and Sullivan said the quantity defined in the law is unrealistic. People are getting arrested as users when, in fact, they’re dealers, he said.
| In Massachusetts, a person now must be caught with 14 grams of heroin to be charged with trafficking ... enough for about 700 users to get high once. |
“Addicts break into houses, and the system responds with treatment,” Sullivan said. “We’ve had 1,200 bags of heroin on one person, and it’s not considered trafficking. We have to lobby the Legislature to change the laws.”
At the federal level, drug enforcement officials say it’s not their job to come in and sweep up local problems.
Vincent Mazzilli, a recently retired special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration in New England, said that if local departments are not stopping the flow of drugs into their communities, nobody is.
“They are our first line of defense,” he said. “We’re not here to arrest street dealers. We have to direct our resources to assist state and local authorities.”
When asked why the billions of dollars spent annually to fight drugs are not eradicating the problem, Mazzilli shifted the blame from law enforcement to legislators, and finally onto voters.
“The effectiveness of money that’s allocated comes into play,” he said. “How it’s spent is decided by the political process, in the Legislature by legislators who answer to the people.”
The blame is easy to toss around, but on the front lines, where local residents are checking into treatment programs or dying from overdoses before they get there, local police had little more than frustrated words to offer.
In one department after another, officers toed the party line and asked for even more money to fund a strategy that many admit doesn’t work.
Weymouth police Capt. James Thomas, whose town saw four overdose deaths from heroin last year, said police there do the best they can, but he feels they are fighting not only an endless supply of drug users, but a government that calls the war on drugs a major priority, and then offers little to the people charged with fighting it.
“Ever since the Sept. 11 tragedy, all of a sudden the government is finding tons of money - billions here and billions there - to combat terrorism,” Thomas said. “Where was all that before when we could have been using it for drug enforcement?”
NUMBERS
Click here to see chart displaying drug seizures on the South Shore
208
Children younger than 17 arrested on the South Shore on drug charges in one year
229
Plymouth residents treated in one year for abusing cocaine
0
Ecstacy seizures by South Shore police departments in 1991
27
Ecstacy seizures by South Shore police department in 2001
33%
Percentage of people in substance abuse programs in New England who were there for heroin
15%
Percentage of people in U.S. substance abuse programs who were there for heroin addiction