Reacting to a Baltimore grand jury's call for drug abuse to be viewed as a medical problem rather than a crime, officials said yesterday that policies won't change until more treatment is available.
"We have a lot of discretion [in sentencing] but we have very limited resources. We do not have any treatment facilities we can send people to," said Baltimore Circuit Judge Joseph P. McCurdy Jr., who last September ordered the grand jury to look into the issue of drug decriminalization. The panel released its report yesterday.
Judges, he said, can send nonviolent addicts to jail and hope "that a sentence will somehow shock them out of their drug addiction," or put them on probation and order treatment. "But we know that there is very little drug treatment available to these people."
Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke noted that city police are targeting violent drug dealers "rather than sweeping up a lot of people who are addicts."
"But if you're not going to sweep them up, then you've got to find additional treatment slots," said the mayor, a longtime proponent of the "medicalization" of drugs. He added that the city was seeking foundation money and had earmarked part of its $100 million federal empowerment zone grant for expanded treatment programs.
But if Baltimore were to provide treatment to all its estimated 50,000 to 60,000 addicts, it would need to nearly double the number of publicly funded drug treatment slots, said Mr. Schmoke and city Health Commissioner Dr. Peter Beilenson. That would cost about $15 million a year.
Judges and city officials commented on the grand jury report at Mr. Schmoke's weekly news briefing -- held in a courtroom to highlight the significance the mayor attached to the findings.
The report recommended that marijuana be "decriminalized" and said doctors should be permitted to give addicts heroin and cocaine. But it rejected the broad legalization of drugs, saying that such a policy would increase drug use.
Yesterday, Vanessa A. Pennington, the grand jury forewoman, said the panel reached its conclusion after meeting prisoners jailed for drug-related crimes.
"We definitely felt that incarceration is not the answer," she said. "We saw a lot of desperation in people who are locked up. We felt that the money could be better spent in treatment."
A "drug court" opened last year to sentence addicts who committed minor crimes to counseling rather than jail, said Judge Joseph H. H. Kaplan, the Circuit Court's administrative judge. It has handled about 130 addicts.
"Eventually, we hope to have 600 people in the program," he said. "Obviously, this isn't going to deal with a situation where you have 60,000 addicts in Baltimore City. But it will be a valid experiment."
Police Commissioner Thomas C. Frazier said he opposes the decriminalization of marijuana and said more emphasis should be placed on drug education in elementary school. "We have kids that are making their drug/no-drug decision in the fifth grade," he said.
Dr. Beilenson said such education programs should cover alcohol and tobacco, too.
"Alcohol and tobacco are the gateway drugs that lead to hard drug usage."