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In New Mexico, Drug Reformers
Go Mainstream
May 25, 2007
By Bob Curley
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Courtesy of Join
Together Online
If you're a governor running for president
of the United States, going out of your way to sign
a medical-marijuana bill as one of your last acts before
hitting the campaign trail certainly isn't a move out
of Presidential Politics 101 -- even if you are a Democrat
like New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. But when it comes
to alcohol and drug policy, Richardson is no ordinary
governor, and New Mexico is no ordinary state.
In March, a medical-marijuana bill
in the New Mexico House of Representatives seemed headed
for defeat when Richardson interjected himself into
the debate, helping to force a revote that saw the bill
pass by a slim 36-31 margin. After the vote, Richardson
said the measure would "provide much-needed relief
for New Mexicans suffering from debilitating diseases
while including the proper safeguards to prevent abuse."
Richardson wasn't the first governor
to endorse a medical-marijuana bill, but he has presided
over a state that has passed a number of progressive
addiction-related laws during the past decade. The latest
of these was the "911 Good Samaritan" bill,
approved in April, which provides limited protection
from prosecution for friends and family members who
call 911 when an individual is overdosing on illicit
drugs. The bill was the first of its kind in the U.S.
"New Mexico has led the nation
in innovative programs that educate addicts about how
to reduce harm and prevent overdoses," said Richardson
at the time. "If we can encourage people to save
themselves or others from a drug-related death or trauma
then we should do that. This bill will encourage families
and friends of addicts to seek medical care and prevent
their loved one from dying."
Responding to Richardson's medical-marijuana
vote, Bush administration drug czar John Walters charged
that Richardson approved the measure "to curry
the favor of wealthy donors who are marijuana legalization
advocates," apparently referring to George Soros
and the Soros-funded Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), which
has an office in New Mexico. But Richardson is hardly
the first New Mexico governor to run afoul of the drug
czar's office; indeed, by comparison to his predecessor
the current leader of the Land of Enchantment is practically
a conservative.
Gary Johnson, a Republican who served
as New Mexico's governor from 1995 to 2003, famously
became the first state chief executive in modern times
to call for drug legalization. "For the amount
of money that we're putting into the war on drugs, I
want to suggest that it is an absolute failure,"
said Johnson in 1999. "Under a legalized scenario,
we would see the level of drug use remain the same or
decline. And the same would happen with respect to drug
abuse."
Of course, drug legalization has not
been adopted in New Mexico or anywhere else in the U.S.
in the intervening years. And so far, the New Mexico
legislature has failed to pass a bill introduced for
the past several years that would create a Proposition
36-style treatment-over-incarceration system for the
state.
But during Johnson's watch, state lawmakers
did approve the New Mexico Harm Reduction Act, which
since 1997 has allowed the state Department of Health
to provide clean needles to injection-drug users in
exchange for dirty ones. Beyond its effectiveness in
reducing transmission of HIV/AIDS, the measure has been
symbolically important: the notion of "harm reduction"
has been integrated into the state bureaucracy for a
decade, providing a framework for discussion of other
alternative drug policies, observers say.
Drug Policy Alliance: A Broad
Agenda
Another part of Johnson's lingering
legacy has been the activism of the DPA's
New Mexico office, headed by former state health
department official Reena Szczepanski. Opened at the
height of drug-policy reformers' fervor for Johnson's
proposals, the local DPA office faced a cloudy future
when Richardson took the governor's chair. But the DPA
office has continued to be deeply involved in a number
of legislative victories, including a campaign to increase
funding for addiction treatment, the recent medical-marijuana
and 911 bills, and efforts to revise asset-forfeiture
laws.
In what may be a first for a drug-policy
reform group, the New Mexico DPA office also recently
received a $500,000 federal grant to do methamphetamine-prevention
programming in New Mexico high schools. The federal
funding came courtesy of an earmark appropriation by
Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.); competitive federal addiction-related
grants generally exclude any organization that advocates
for drug decriminalization or legalization.
DPA (and other drug-reform groups)
certainly have had their share of legislative successes
in other states, notably California, where national
and grassroots advocates created and won approval for
Proposition 36 in 2000. California also is one of 13
states with medical-marijuana laws on the books, testament
to the effectiveness of well-funded drug-policy reform
efforts.
From Pariahs to Partners
Even in many of these states, however,
groups like DPA are often viewed as outsiders at best,
pariahs at worst, by the mainstream addiction community
and state governments. In New Mexico, however, the DPA
office has built a reputation of credibility and collaboration
with both communities.
Ethan Nadelmann, head of the DPA national
office, says the group's effectiveness is partly due
to the makeup of New Mexico's government and partly
a credit to Szczepanski, who continued her close relationships
with the New Mexico governor's office, health department,
and legislative staff when she moved from her government
job to head the DPA office. "We found remarkably
good people, especially in the state health department,"
said Nadelmann. "New Mexico really stands out as
a positive environment to work with."
New Mexico has a similarly progressive
reputation within the broader addiction community: the
state was one of the first to embrace brief interventions
and screenings for addiction in healthcare facilities,
has a unique managed-care program to manage its federal
addiction block-grant funding, and is considered a national
model for the strategic prevention framework process,
which seeks to improve prevention effectiveness and
accountability. "New Mexico probably has the most
progressive prevention system in the country,"
says Joe Wiese, director of the Southwest Center for
the Advancement of Prevention Technology (CAPT). "They've
done things others have only talked about."
Underlying the state's open-mindedness
is New Mexico's long and troubled history with alcohol
and other drug problems, DPA's Szczepanski tells Join
Together. "There's such a huge need and demand
for results and change that people and policymakers
are more open to new solutions," she said. In such
a small and close-knit state, she added, "everyone
knows someone with a substance-abuse problem. They don't
want their family members to go to prison. They want
them to get help."
Szczepanski was as stunned as anyone
when Richardson rode to the rescue of the medical-marijuana
bill at the 11th hour. "To have the governor step
in like that was incredible," she said. "We
never expected him to do it." However, from a local
perspective, at least, "It actually wasn't a very
risky thing for him to do," said Szczepanski. "I
think Richardson realized that medical marijuana is
an incredibly popular issue."
The 911 overdose bill had its origins
in a 2001 law that allowed drug addicts and their families
as well as police and emergency personnel to administer
the drug Narcan to prevent accidental overdoses. Overdose
deaths have been rampant in the district of state Sen.
Richard Martinez, who worked for seven years to get
the "911 Good Samaritan Bill" passed. Newspaper
coverage of an incident where a pair of friends were
arrested by police after driving an overdose victim
to a hospital helped finally push the bill over the
finish line, said Szczepanski.
"In voting for this bill [lawmakers]
were saying that the life on a drug user is more important
than jailing someone for possession of drugs,"
she said. "It's an incredible confirmation that
yes, people do care -- that drug users do have value."
But if issues like medical marijuana
and harm reduction are DPF's bread and butter, the group
also has won points by working with local provider organizations
to call for more funding of addiction treatment. The
recovery community has been somewhat less accepting,
said Szczepanski, in part because many still believe
that prison is a necessary lever to get addicts to hit
bottom, confront their problems and get help. "We
think that that bottom is so low that no one should
ever have to go there," she said. "It's an
education process -- what would happen if we had treatment,
instead?"
"We're invited to the table for
so many things in the addiction and criminal-justice
realm," said Szczepanski. "People respect
us and our opinions. We're definitely part of the mainstream,
and I love it.
"I don't think that what we're
advocating for is that radical," she added. "It's
common sense."
Visit www.jointogether.org
for complete news coverage, resources and advocacy tools
to advance effective drug and alcohol policy, prevention
and treatment.
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