NEWSLETTER
NOVEMBER 2000
VOLUME VIII
ISSUE 4

DPFH Annual Meeting: A SPECIAL EVENT

 

DPFH will host a festive annual 
 meeting to celebrate its seventh 
 anniversary on Friday, January 5, 2001, at the Maple Garden Restaurant, 909 Isenberg St. in Honolulu, just across the street from Old Stadium Park. (Entrance to the banquet room is at the rear of the restaurant. Ample parking is available in the bank parking lot adjacent to the restaurant.) The doors will be open at 5:30; dinner service will begin at 6:30 p.m.
The featured guest will be Eric Sterling, President of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation (CJPF), a non-profit educational organization, which he co-founded in 1988. Some of you might have seen Eric recently on the PBS Frontline special on the Drug Wars.
An acknowledged expert on the war on drugs and an ardent reformer, Eric brings a unique background to his efforts.  As counsel to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee from 1979 to 1989, Eric was a principal aide in developing the comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 and the Anti-Drug Abuse Acts of 1986 and 1988. These acts included some of the draconian measures such as expansion of mandatory minimums and federally charged crimes whose dire consequences we are now seeing in our nation’s courts and prisons.
A dynamic and impassioned speaker, Eric lectures frequently at colleges and 

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE

Report from DPFH Rules Committee....2
Board Member: Karen Umemoto..........2
Reducing Drug War Harms..................3

universities and is regularly quoted in the New York Times, the Washington Post and other newspapers. He works tirelessly to prevent crime and improve the quality of justice through CJPF’s education pro grams, publication and media outreach. Among many other writings, Eric is author of “Friendly Fire: Rethinking the War on Drugs from a Quaker Perspective” 
(Continued on page 2)
Announcing the First Annual Ho‘omaluhia Award
DPFH is proud to announce that we are inaugurating an award to be given to a person or organization in Hawai‘i for achievement in the development and advancement of rational, peaceful and humane drug policies.
The award, accompanied by a cash prize of $1000, is being underwritten by Honolulu resident Leslie Wilbur, Professor Emeritus, University of Southern California. It will be presented at DPFH’s Annual Meeting on Friday evening, January 5th (see related article.)
We have chosen the term ho’omaluhia “make peace” as the title for this award in the belief that it’s appropriate for recognizing a person or organization who has advanced peace and understanding in the context of America’s failed War on Drugs.
The nominee can be a person or organization who has made a contribution in the state of Hawai‘i in one or more of the following areas:
• Journalism
• Law
• Scholarship
• Citizen action
• Control and enforcement
• Medicine and treatment or
• Education
The purpose of the award is threefold:
>   To bring attention and recognition to their work 
>   To encourage continuation of these efforts 
>   To highlight the accomplishments of these persons or organizations thereby   encouraging others.
Any member of the Drug Policy Forum of Hawai‘i may submit a nomination. The nomination must be in writing and include the reasons for nomination and a brief bio of the nominee. The nominee need not be a member of the organization. It can be e-mailed to our office dmt@hawaii.rr.com, faxed to (808) 988-4386, or mailed to DPFH, P.O. Box 61233, Honolulu, HI 96839. Please include your contact information in case we have follow-up questions. Members of the Board or contract employees are not eligible. The deadline for receiving nominations is 5 p.m., December 12, 2000. The awardee will be selected by the DPFH Board and Professor Wilbur. –Pau 
1

Report from the DPFH Rules Committee
by Jeff Crawford
DPFH’s committee on medical 
 marijuana (MMJ) rule implemen-
 tation has been busy studying the Department of Public Safety’s (PSD) proposed rules. While the rules currently proposed are not as bad as a previous draft, we have significant concerns with specific areas.
For example, PSD’s proposed rules restrict patients’ rights to fly between islands or elsewhere with MMJ, require physicians to make unrealistic judgments about the necessary amount of MMJ, force resident “aliens” using MMJ to identify themselves separately from US citizens, and criminalize a host of easily overlooked details and deadlines in the registration process. 
A further problem is that PSD has not produced a copy of the form that they 		 propose to be used for registration and that may hinder our ability to fully evaluate this draft of their rules. The requirements for the forms, however, are clear in the act, and DPFH believes that its proposed form, which complies with the act, can be used until PSD proposes a rule for its form.
We are particularly frustrated with PSD’s proposed draft of the rules because, in early August we objected to and offered a detailed rationale for our objections to almost all of the current areas of concern. At that time we submitted to PSD a “model” set of rules and registration form that outlined a smooth registration process, asserted the protections offered in the MMJ law, and eliminated the excessive and unwarranted restrictions contained in PSD’s current draft. At a 		 meeting several weeks later, Mr. Kamita, of the Narcotics Enforcement Division, refused to discuss our “model” rules and suggested only that we prioritize our concerns about his initial draft.
Despite the problems described above, many other instances where the rules conflict with the MMJ law, and technical violations of rulemaking procedures, we plan to support a speedy promulgation of PSD’s proposed rules along with removal of some of the most obnoxious requirements, referred to above. We have concluded that it is better to have in place an imperfect set of rules that may help most users of MMJ, than to have no rules at all, and months of more delay. –Pau 
 
Board Member:
Karen Umemoto
DPFH Annual Meeting
(Continued from page 1)
Karen Umemoto, PhD, is an 
 assistant professor in the Depart
 ment of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. She received her master’s degree in Asian American Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles (1987) and her doctorate in Urban Studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1998). 
She conducts research in the areas of multicultural governance, race relations, hate crimes and community building.  She teaches courses in planning theory, planning and diversity, community-based planning, social policy and community economic development, and she also works with various community organizations on community planning projects. She is also a consultant for the National Institutes Against Hate Crimes, a program of the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. 		 “I became involved in the DPFH so that we can make more informed policy decisions in the state of Hawaii concerning drugs, rehabilitation and imprisonment. Nationally and locally, more and more people are recognizing that current drug policies are only increasing the prison population and taking needed resources away from education and other vital programs.” 
“I know from my experience living in California that this trend will only cripple our communities and our state, since present policies are not designed to heal problems related to substance abuse, but only punish drug users.  Policy change often begins with education, and this is the important role that DPFH plays along with many other concerned organizations and individuals.  Being on the board of DPFH is my small contribution to these efforts.” –Pau 		 which appeared last spring in the Haverford College Alumni Magazine.
Eric will provide a report from the front lines of the drug reform movement – on the eve of General McCaffrey’s resignation – about the progress that’s been made, the prospects for the future and the formidable roadblocks still standing.
The annual meeting will also feature an award presentation for the winner of the Ho‘omaluhia award (see related article), a terrific dinner, and plenty of opportunity for visiting with old and new friends. The cost of the dinner is $10 for members and $15 for non-members or guests (anyone signing up for membership the evening of the event will pay only the members’ rate.) Drinks will be available on a no-host basis.
We’ll need a head count for this special event, so please contact our office by January 3rd at 988-4386 or call Darlene Hein at 263-7794 to reserve a place. Or you can e-mail us at dmt@hawaii.r.com. This will be a unique and exciting evening – don’t miss it! –Pau 
 2

 
Reducing Drug (War) Related Harms
by Timothy McCormick
The Third National Harm Reduction 
 Conference was held in October in 
 Miami, Florida, where drug-related harm flourishes. Three of the state’s urban areas, Miami-Dade County, the West Palm Beach to Boca Raton area, and Orlando, all rank among the top 20 US metropolitan areas in terms of injection-related AIDS cases. In 1999 Miami-Dade County had the second highest AIDS rate in the nation, higher than every US city except New York. The setting was particularly appropriate for this conference, not just because of high HIV rates, but more for the lack of any public health intervention: needle exchange is still illegal in Florida. 
In many ways this perverse situation was echoed throughout the conference. Harm reduction, the public health movement that aims to improve the health and well-being of drug users, their families and communities, continues to spend much of its energy trying to reduce harms that are a direct result of US drug policies.
 The Miami conference, titled “Communities Respond to Drug Related Harms: AIDS, Hepatitis, Prison, Overdose and Beyond,” brought together more than a thousand people from all over the US, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Africa and Vietnam. Most of the conference attendees came with significant experience in implementing or researching harm reduction programs. Many work in HIV prevention for injection drug users (IDUs), but a significant number work in other contexts, and represent the expansion of harm reduction applications to fields such as addiction treatment, housing and shelter, health care for the homeless, mental health services, domestic violence, and “safety-first” drug abuse prevention education.
 Many harm reductionists came to the movement as a result of frustration with systems that either refuse services to individuals who use drugs, or automatically view their substance use as the part of the problem that must be solved, i.e. 		 abstinence, before anything else can happen. One of the most useful concepts in harm reduction is that individuals experience different relative benefits and harms related to their drug use. Acknowledging benefits does not underestimate the harm that can result from drug misuse, but rather it is a recognition that individuals weigh different sets of harms and benefits that make their drug use “worth it” or not. Harm reductionists recognize that people experience benefits even from clearly harmful, chaotic drug use. The people who experience the greatest benefit… and have the most intractable drug use problems… are those for whom drugs are a way to survive physical or emotional pain associated with childhood sexual trauma, physical and sexual violence, mental illness, and alienation. 
The Miami conference highlighted how harm reduction-based HIV prevention, housing, mental health, and healthcare outreach programs across the country are finding ways to improve the health and well-being of even the most chaotic drug users. And a recurring theme was that the greatest barrier to improving the health of clients is neither a lack of client motivation, nor their substance use per se. Rather it is the war on drug users.
 Dealing with problematic substance use as a criminal justice issue, rather than the public health issue that it is, has devastating implications. The failed war on drugs has disproportionately impacted people of color and the poor. It has hindered effective national responses to HIV, hepatitis, and overdose. It has driven the incarceration of our citizens at a rate far higher than that of any other country. And it has been used to intentionally prevent vast numbers of our citizens from accessing a wide range of services that could dramatically improve their health and well-being, as well as that of their families and communities. 
 		 For the drug warriors, drugs, in and of themselves, are apparently not sufficiently harmful, and their effects need to be made worse though threats of disease, incarceration, and loss of child custody, shelter, public housing, voting rights, even eligibility for college loans. Presumably, the drug war logic is that people will be discouraged from using drugs by increasing the harm. 
This approach is least effective and most harmful for the people who experience the greatest benefits from their drug use, those for whom drug use is a strategy for surviving physical and emotional pain. Prisons are filled with drug law violators with untreated (or poorly treated) mental illness and childhood sexual and physical trauma. For many of these people, prison re-traumatizes them in hideous ways.
 Despite drug warrior rhetoric, the harm reduction agenda is not drug legalization. It was apparent from listening to conference attendees that harm reductionists who work with chaotic drug users are acutely aware of the harmful effects of drug misuse, and hold a wide range of opinions of how far decriminalization should go. What harm reductionists do agree on is that current drug policy is unjust and inhumane, and desperately in need of reform. 
The conference closing ceremony featured the Reverend Edwin Sanders, a minister who runs a harm reduction program for IDUs through his church in Nashville, Tennessee. He spoke of harm reduction as being about much more than access to sterile needles in the same way that the civil rights movement of the 1960s was about much more than where people can sit on a bus. It is about addressing the interconnected issues of substance abuse, mental illness, childhood sexual and physical trauma, racism, and poverty in a reasonable, ethical, and humane way. –Pau