Drugs winning in war on drugs
By Chip Drago
Mobile Bay Times
When Tom Haas began his law practice here, give 'em hell
Harry Truman was in the White House and drugs were such exotic criminal rarities that they were inserted almost parenthetically in the code under "poisons."
Given the course of criminal justice over the intervening years, the designation seems both quaint and all too appropriate, according to Haas.
Haas, 81, looks back over more than 55 years as an attorney, mostly in criminal defense but also including a stint as a federal prosecutor, and declares that drug and alcohol abuse and related crime have never been more poisonous to society than they are here today.
Haas tells a story early on in his young assistant U.S. Attorney days, of which more later, when the sole drug enforcement agent for the 13 counties in the U.S. Southern District of Alabama recommended prosecuting a local physician on narcotics charges. Haas, one of two assistants in the federal prosecutor's office (the other was Quina Blackmarr), passed on the case, the only one presented to him in his tour as a prosecutor. It was as close as he ever came to prosecuting a drug case. Now there are hundreds, even thousands of drug cases in federal and state courts every year.
Drug and alcohol abuse is epidemic and an ill-designed legal system is not dealing with it effectively, according to Haas.
"There is a whole lot more of a drug problem than we realize," he said. "The best way to notice it is to ask people how many of their friends, family and neighbors have a drug problem. I think you would be surprised at how widespread it is."
Mandatory minimum sentencing, three strikes and you're out, just say no, the war on drugs, it's a jobs program or a political tactic at worst or a feeble slogan or well-intentioned mistake at best, in Haas's view.
In failing to distinguish between criminals and addicts, the system is dealing with neither adequately, said Haas.
Few escape blame in Haas's estimation, certainly not the criminals, not the addicts, not the defense attorneys and not the police, not the prosecutors, not the judges, not the probation officers, not the counselors, not the treatment clinics, not the politicians, Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative, not the public, neither the churches nor the synagogues and not the spiritual leaders in them.
The various degrees of fault can be traced to as many sources from ignorance to indifference and benign neglect to cynical participation and outright exploitation, according to Haas.
Haas does have kind words for Mobile's drug court, the Salvation Army, the Home of Grace for Women and Catholic Social Services, but they are just small boats beating against a running tide.
Substance abuse is one thing and the manner in which the criminal justice system deals with it is another, according to Haas.
Haas makes a distinction that the system all too often fails to make, he notes. Most of his clients have addictions that lead them to crime, he said. Without the addiction, there would likely be no crime, he said. On the other hand, there are a smaller number of genuine criminals who usually have addictions themselves. The difference, said Haas, is that the latter would thieve, steal, burgle, rob, rape and murder even if they didn't use drugs.
One group belongs in jail and the other group belongs somewhere else, according to Haas.
The system has pretty much abandoned treatment and rehabilitation in favor of punishment and collaboration, according to Haas. Authorities may want to backtrack and reconsider their choice of path, Haas suggests.
Many a hapless but harmless offender is doing long time while a truly dangerous criminal has his sentence reduced because he ratted on someone, usually a middling cog in the wheel who with any savvy and a little information will also game the system to gain an early release.
Haas admits to having no answers, though clearly he favors segregating addicts from criminals and dealing with each accordingly. Also, Haas believes society might be better served if the criminal justice system gave greater weight to personal accountability and lesser reward for collaboration.
As it is, Haas figures maybe the time has come to replace Lady Justice, with her blindfold and balancing scales, at the entrance to the courthouse with a statue of an index finger pointing accusingly; call the place what it is -- the Snitch House.
How it got like this is a mystery, said Haas.
Haas recalls being excited when Truman exited the White House to make way for Dwight D. Eisenhower who along with his running mate Richard Nixon defeated the Democratic ticket of Adlai Stevenson and John Sparkman in the 1952 election. Eisenhower was the first Republican to occupy the White House in 20 years and that meant turnover in the U.S. Attorney's office. Haas and 35 other young and not-so-young south Alabama lawyers sought the two slots for assistants to the new GOP U.S. Attorney (Ralph Kennamer, though it was more than a year later that Kennamer actually took over the office from his ailing Democratic predecessor Percy Fountain; it was a more civil time politically, Haas remarked, and the parties involved in the transition agreed not to oust Fountain during his ill health).
Then a Republican, Haas filled one of the positions. (Later, Nixon cured Haas of his Republicanism and he became a Democrat.)
His close encounter with a narcotics prosecution came when the federal agent sought an indictment against a physician whose medical practice was housed in the Van Antwerp Building. Apparently, the doctor took it upon himself to minister to the dozen or so heroin addicts in downtown Mobile by writing each a prescription for a single tablet of morphine which they would fill at the doctor's personal expense in the pharmacy on the ground floor. The agent contended that the prescriptions were not based on a sound medical reason. Haas said he asked the agent if he held a degree in medicine. The agent said he did not and Haas said he told the agent that he would decline to prosecute the case. The agent found a more willing advocate in Haas's colleague in the federal prosecutor's office. They obtained an indictment and the doctor was soon enough on trial. The courtroom held a large number of spectators, almost all of whom were friends, supporters and/or patients of the doctor. Haas himself observed the proceedings from the defense's side of the gallery. Having heard the testimony and examined the evidence, the jury retired to deliberate and nearly trampled itself in its haste to return a verdict of not guilty.
"In four years we had one drug case and we lost that one," said Haas.
Certainly, that was long ago if not far away.
This fall when 100,000 fans pack a stadium for a college football game, 30,000 of them will be on drugs, not to mention some of the players themselves, said Haas. Whether you live in Theodore or Toulminville, Spring Hill or Maysville, Prichard or Dauphin Island, drug addicts call your neighborhood home, according to Haas. Haas said he doubted whether there was a single family in the county that wasn't touched in some way by substance abuse.
"It used to be in Mobile everybody knew one another; the town was a truly human, wonderful place to live," said Haas.
Now you won't see Tom Haas on the street after dark. It's a risk not worth taking.
Haas doesn't have a detailed program for fixing the problem. He's just convinced that the system is broken and in need of repair.
As certain as he is of the failure of the system, Haas is equally certain that drug addiction is the work of "the devil," that drugs steal souls and produce an otherworldly evil and misery. He also believes that release from the grip of addiction usually requires a spiritual intervention. It is disappointing that so many churches don't reach out into the community beyond their congregations to help battle this evil in their midst, said Haas. Furthermore, a broad misreading of the Constitution as guaranteeing freedom from religion in public life hinders efforts to defeat drug and alcohol addiction, according to Haas.
"What I'm really advocating is some realistic treatment and a facility to do it in," said Haas. "The drug court doesn't have any place to lock people up. They're all out on bond. Still they have a higher rate of success in drug court (than with other approaches). I was surprised to find that out."
"I just think we need to start building places where people can be put to be treated for their drug addiction rather than just counseled at night while they go about their business during the day," he said. "Real addicts, you've got to lock them up to get them clean. We don't have a big facility to put them in with the right people who know how to counsel them, to help them, to take urine and blood samples and analyze them, a facility and staff that is dedicated to the treatment of drug addictions. We'd fill it up, I guarantee that. Now they're in the jails and penitentiaries, too. They're getting some care, just not enough as in a full-scale treatment center.
"I have people come in with drug addictions and if it's a man I send him to the Salvation Army and if it's a woman I send her to the Home of Grace for Women, but they stay full. The guy at The Shoulder in Baldwin County is swamped with people wanting to get into his place."
