Today the Star presents three differing opinions of what to do about marijuana trafficking through Tucson. While Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik advocates cracking down on growers abroad, a drug-treatment counselor, Mo Salgado, argues for more treatment. Legalization advocate Drew Foster says neither approach will eliminate the black market's estimated $350 million footprint in Tucson.
Stories By Tim Steller
As a crossroads of marijuana commerce and conspiracy, Tucson has more at stake than most communities in how to deal with the trafficking.
Arizona voters showed a willingness twice before to voice their opinions on marijuana: They voted in 1996, and reaffirmed in 1998, to allow doctors to prescribe otherwise illegal drugs, letting patients with serious or life-threatening diseases possess them without fear of being arrested for violating state law.
In 1996, voters also called for diverting first-time drug offenders to probation and treatment.
The Star asked three Tucsonans representing the spectrum of opinion on marijuana laws what should be done about the trafficking, which creates an estimated $350 million in local revenues.
Among the questions: How much does the local economy depend on marijuana? How well do our marijuana laws work? And should we consider further measures toward decriminalization?
A small army of federal police here, along with local law enforcement officers, argue that the trade could be minimized if the United States used its full might against traffickers and source countries. So does Clarence Dupnik, Pima County's longtime sheriff and an experienced drug investigator.
Mo Salgado, a counselor at a Tucson drug-treatment center, points out we could significantly reduce the amount of marijuana traffic by increasing funding for drug treatment instead of enforcement. Fewer users mean less drug traffic, he said.
Marijuana-law reformers say the illegality of pot makes it a social problem, not the effects of the drug itself. But Drew Foster, the chairman of the Arizona branch of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said the legalization he favors would cost Tucson its marijuana-trade and drug-war revenues.
Ex-abuser, counselor rate treatment as best way to combat drugs
Ex-New Yorker Mo Salgado came to Tucson to end dependence on methadone and has become a Casa de Vida counselor.
Mo Salgado knows Tucson's illegal-drug trade, and he sees no benefit to it, economic or otherwise.
Salgado came to Tucson from his native New York City to kick his addiction to methadone, which he had begun taking as a substitute for heroin.
Salgado spent 28 days camping alone in the Santa Catalina Mountains, he said, trying to rid himself of the need for methadone, which is a synthetic narcotic that imitates the effects of heroin. He did come down off the methadone, but when he came off the mountain, he started using again and was jailed.
"My plan was to get out of jail, stick up one of my connections and go to New York," Salgado said.
Instead he made his last attempt at a cure, this time at La Frontera Center's Casa de Vida residential treatment center near Silverbell and West Grant roads, and succeeded quitting his habit. Now Salgado is a counselor at the center.
Salgado shares the view of many law-enforcement officials that marijuana use leads to using other illegal drugs. But he acknowledges one of the reasons marijuana functions as a "gateway" is that marijuana is illegal.
"When you're messing with an illegal substance, whatever that may be, the fact of its illegality in itself carries a trip for some people," Salgado said. "You get a rush."
He does not favor the legalization of marijuana or other drugs. What he advocates is making treatment a much bigger part of the efforts against drugs.
"If you're going to start a war on drugs, you've got to have care for the wounded," he said.
Right now, he says, it seems the approach is 90 percent enforcement, 10 percent treatment.
"If I was the drug czar, I'd put at least 60 percent treatment," Salgado said.
Joe Parker, the supervisor of Casa de Vida, said even a much smaller shift in emphasis would reap big rewards. "If we could get to the point of 65 percent enforcement, 35 percent treatment, you'd see massive social changes," Parker said.
Salgado said that far from increasing the availability of substance-abuse treatment, the health-care system "keeps cutting us off shorter and shorter."
Even the state's drug courts don't provide an adequate solution, Salgado said. Those courts, which offer drug offenders a chance at treatment instead of jail time, give an addict one chance.
And for many, as Salgado well knows, that isn't enough.
U.S. needs to force source nations to ban drugs, sheriff says
We talk about a war on narcotics, but the fact is there isn't one now, and there never has been one
Clarence Dupnik Pima County
sheriff
Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik has been investigating drug crimes since before the war on illegal drugs was declared by President Nixon, and he thinks he knows a winning strategy.
The problem, Dupnik said, is the United States lacks the will to adopt that strategy.
"The U.S., if it had the will, could eliminate all the drugs in source countries," Dupnik said. "They know specifically where each acre of cocaine and marijuana is planted.
"If, for example, we had the will, we could tell a Latin American country tomorrow: 'Either you deal with this problem, and we'll give you the resources to do it, or we're going to come down and do it for you.' "
Dupnik developed his opinion over three decades of a quiet rise within the drug-war hierarchy. He started in drug investigations as commander of Tucson's Metropolitan Area Narcotics Squad in 1967. Now he is a member of the executive committee that oversees the Southwest Border High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, or HIDTA, as well as the Arizona HIDTA, a branch of the bigger organization based in Tucson.
The Southwest Border HIDTA coordinates drug-trafficking enforcement efforts by all levels of law enforcement along the Southwest border and is affiliated with the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
"We talk about a war on narcotics, but the fact is there isn't one now, and there never has been one," Dupnik said.
Dupnik acknowledges that marijuana is not as addictive as other illegal drugs and even some legal drugs, such as the nicotine in tobacco. But he believes marijuana has an overall harmful effect on the character of the people who use it, which justifies marijuana's illegality.
The same is true of tobacco, said Dupnik, himself a former smoker.
"I say outlaw tobacco," Dupnik said.
While Dupnik favors expanding the law enforcement efforts against illegal drugs, he also wants drug treatment made more available to addicts. Dupnik said he tried quitting tobacco several times before he finally succeeded.
"Almost any addict would love to rid themselves of the plague of addiction," Dupnik said. "Rehabilitation has always taken a back seat. It shouldn't. But that doesn't mean we should reduce our efforts at enforcement."
Legalization only way to beat black market, ardent fighter insists
Drew Foster is the chairman of the Arizona branch of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
Drew Foster is so opposed to the marijuana black market that he took his argument to the source in Mexico.
In 1996, Foster said, he traveled to Sinaloa state, the homeland of Mexico's marijuana trade, to try to convince a trafficker to grow industrial hemp instead of marijuana. Hemp would grow in the same areas and also be profitable, he said he argued.
But the trafficker was uninterested because the illegality of marijuana provided too many attractions, Foster said. Most important was the big profits generated by marijuana's black market, but there were other attractions.
"They like the power trip," Foster added. "Legal business to them means no more power."
Foster, the chairman of the Arizona branch of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, favors legalization.
If marijuana were legalized, Foster said, the big profits and underworld power trips would vanish. At a minimum he favors decriminalizing marijuana use.
Legalization would mean permitting the cultivation and consumption of marijuana, while decriminalization would mean making possession or consumption of small quantities a civil violation, like a traffic fine.
It's the illegality of marijuana, Foster said, that breeds the violence associated with the drug and that creates its associations with other illegal drugs such as cocaine. Marijuana's main side effects, he said, are much less severe, including short-term memory loss, munchies and a dry mouth.
"It's a gateway drug due to the fact that to use it you have to go to the black market," Foster said. "There's been no overdose deaths, ever, from marijuana. That's why it should not be illegal."
The main resistance to legalization comes from law-enforcement officers whose jobs depend on the endless effort to enforce drug laws, he said.
"If the drug warriors really want to end the war on drugs, and they don't want to continue this for their own benefit, then they would legalize, because it would completely eliminate the black market," he said.
But if marijuana were legalized, it would harm Tucson economically, Foster warned. "I think we would drop off as a distribution hub. The other states could produce their own, because it grows in every state."
Although Tucson might lose marijuana-traffic revenues, Foster said, it would also lose the crime that goes with the black market.
