JULY 1999: PREFACE TO THE TALLAHASSEE PROJECT

Any sensible person will agree there is a place for government in the production, use, and distribution of drugs which, though illegal, enjoy widespread use among Americans. Standards relating to purity and so forth can be enforced, in conjunction with private enterprise, without intruding on the right of citizens to pursue the kind of life they deem worth living, given that the interests of others are not harmed. Government regulation of the production and trade in drugs that today millions of Americans use in violation of the law would benefit society. Regulation would remove the worst features of the policy in force today, known as the War on Drugs but actually a war on people who use illegal drugs or have a connection with people who use them. One hoped-for result of the publication of this book is that it will call attention to the desirability of phasing out the War on Drugs and adopting a policy of regulation in its place

Criticism of US policy in the field of illegal drugs centers on three main objections: the policy is irrational, it is contrary to the best interests of society, and it is demonstrably futile. Prosecution of a War on Drugs is irrational because it advances towards an ever-receding goal, the establishment of a "drug-free America" and a "drug-free world." No world occupied by humans has ever been drug-free, or will be. Pursuit of a goal that is unreachable by definition implies a war that will drag on indefinitely, victory in sight but never won. Blind to the reality of a war that no matter what effort is put into it cannot be won, Drug War policy wonks are guilty of irrational behavior of a far-reaching kind.

Incarcerating people who use illegal drugs and isolating them from society is the cornerstone of Drug War policy. The policy runs counter to the best interests of society because it fosters the illusion that the cost of imprisoning large numbers of people for behavior that is not inherently immoral can be safely overlooked. It cannot. Today in the United States 500,000 people wake up each day in prison for the use of some illegal drug - often not even use, for mere association with someone who uses an illegal drug can bring imprisonment for 20 years or life, as The Tallahassee Project eloquently attests to. Destruction of the life of each Drug War prisoner dooms the lives of separated family members, children, spouses, and others left behind. Add to this the untold number of former Drug War prisoners and the members of their families who bear the taint of a felony conviction and the penalties that brings. The total is incalculable but certainly amounts to millions. Consider the collective hatred, anger, alienation, despair and related pathologies rooted in so many individuals, and it is clear that the society to which these individuals belong will pay for the Drug War folly and pay dearly. It is no exaggeration that the War on Drugs does more harm to society than drugs themselves.

The third objection critics raise is that the War on Drugs has not brought an iota of success. Define success as reduction of the rate of illegal drug use over the period that the War on Drugs has been in operation. Define the onset of the War on Drugs as the day President Nixon took office in 1968 - a convenient landmark. What critics assert as irrefutable is that the rate of illegal drug use is the same today as 30 years ago. A business practice with this sorry record would have long since been dropped and those responsible for it fired. The futility of the Drug War, measured in terms of the consumption of illegal drugs, should be enough to force its termination. The familiar complaint that Drug War policy has "failed" reflects a provable statistic.

The three-day period of June 6-8, 1998 was the occasion of a debate at the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York on the "world-wide threat of drugs." Timed to mark the anniversary of the signing of a UN convention on illegal drugs, the debate was hailed as an opportunity for representatives of member nations to discuss problems associated with illegal drugs and consider new approaches to deal with them. Some time in January of that year, news began to filter through to critics of hard-line US policy that the agenda of the UN debate had been changed to meet the wishes of the US government. To the consternation of those in the know, the refashioned agenda would permit no deviation from the US position. There would be no challenge to the US-led War on Drugs by members of the international community.

At the same time, word surfaced of a demo planned for the weekend before the UN debate to protest the gag placed on the General Assembly's deliberations. A group of Drug War critics in the Mid-West proposed a march up First Avenue to the United Nations Plaza, followed by a rally where speakers would publicize the censorship about to take place across the street. It seemed a golden opportunity for someone like myself to speak out on behalf of America's Drug War prisoners, if not prisoners of the War on Drugs worldwide. The thought then occurred that a Drug War prisoner presence would heighten the impact of the demo. Obviously, none of the current half-million Drug War prisoners in the US would attend, and few if any ex-Drug War prisoners would be prepared to air their grief in public. What later became known as the Tallahassee Project grew out of the search for an answer to the question: how to introduce a Drug War prisoner presence into the rally set for June in New York City.

Suppose a collection of statements by Drug War prisoners themselves, exposing the nature of a justice system that inflicts sentences beyond the scope of most people's imagination - suppose a volume of such statements accompanied by photographs was presented to the Secretary-General of the United Nations. The concept of an appeal by Drug War prisoners to the head of the United Nations, highlighting a rally in defense of common sense and justice, struck a spark that once lit refused to go out. Time to compile the volume, however, was short. A bare four months remained before the rally would take place.

The one person I knew with the strength and integrity to undertake such a project was Karen Hoffman. Karen, an LSD prisoner incarcerated in the prison known as FCI Tallahassee, was someone I corresponded with in the course of working with The Committee on Unjust Sentencing, a Drug War prisoner advocacy group with supporters in North America and Europe. I wrote to Karen to ask if she would like to convey the idea of a POW appeal to the UN Secretary-General to her fellow-Drug War prisoners in Tallahassee. (Karen, like many prisoners of the War on Drugs, considers herself a prisoner-of-war, and the reader may bear with me if I do the same.) Karen took up the idea, and I was soon hearing of forms being passed around and photographs being taken for the project. For the record, use of the term "Tallahassee project" became current at this time. Tallahassee's POWs used it to refer to the work they were undertaking.

Becky Stewart deserves equal credit for the compilation of this work. Becky was also on the list of POWs I corresponded with. Maria Herrera was the third member of the team that circulated forms and advised women Drug War prisoners in FCI Tallahassee of the opportunity to send a message to the head of the United Nations. The credit for bringing this work to a conclusion belongs exclusively to these three women.

After January, weeks went by, with statements and photographs starting to arrive at the Committee's address in Los Angeles, but with a dearth of information on plans for the demo in New York. By April, it was obvious that something was wrong. In May, the word came that the plan to stage a demo outside the United Nations had been cancelled. Instead, a smaller, more manageable event was in the works. In place of a march up First Avenue and a rally in the vicinity of the UN, the proposal was for teach-ins and press conferences on Drug War policy at some distance from the UN, spread over the three days of the debate, with daily flower-laying ceremonies in honor of those imprisoned.

In the end, the proposal for an event on even a reduced scale fizzled out. What looked like a failure of nerve dealt a double blow. By the end of May I had in my possession about 70 statements from the women of FCI Tallahassee, accompanied by photographs. The material was mounted in an album, ready for shipping to New York where an acquaintance had agreed to show it at the teach-ins - with nowhere for it now to go. In Tallahassee, meanwhile, interest in the New York event had reached crescendo pitch. Confessing failure to deliver on a project that had flopped, I wrote to Karen, and through her to Becky and Maria, for advice on what to do. At this moment of crisis, I was grateful to the women of Tallahassee for not calling it quits. The reply that came back was to hold on to the material and do with it as I saw fit.

With thoughts of getting the document into the hands of the Secretary-General in abeyance, and with the UN debate allowed to proceed without a serious challenge, the next best thing was to secure publication of a volume to be called The Tallahassee Project, if possible in facsimile.

The reader may ask what happened to the Project between May, 1998, when plans for the UN demo collapsed, and November, 1999, when Last Gasp of San Francisco took publication of The Tallahassee Project under its wing. What happened is that the women of Tallahassee took the work to a new level of comprehensiveness. Women now joined the enterprise who for one reason or another were left out the first time around. Accepting that the purpose now was not to present a document to the Secretary-General, but to publish a book for the reading public, new contributors expressed their thoughts, and with the extra time available could do so at greater length. The advantage provided by this added material is that the meaning of "conspiracy," "informant," "set-up," and so forth, part of everyday reality for Drug War prisoners but scarcely known outside the Drug War prisoner community, are fleshed out in convincing detail. The longer statements complement the brevity of not all but many of the responses received before June, 1998, making this work a true reflection of the tragedy America must somehow face.

Included in these pages are copies of the form that Karen and Becky passed out to their fellow Drug War prisoners, requesting name, registration number, age, length of sentence, charge convicted of, and any statement a woman might want to make. Examples filled out with the requested information are reproduced in facsimile. For easy reading, however, the majority of responses are reproduced in typescript.

To distinguish entries intended for the Secretary-General (the "you" the original contributors addressed) from the generally more comprehensive entries received after May, 1998, an asterisk has been placed beside the names of the "latecomers," in the index of names preceding the main body of the text.

Editorial interference has been kept to a minimum. Statements are rendered word for word, grammar and spelling on principle kept intact and only "corrected" when a slip would obviously have been corrected by the writer. The charge for which convicted and the length of sentence - in years or months - have been recorded as the information was rcorded by the prisoner. The other exception to a hands-off policy is where an entry was overly repetitious or had to be shortened to conserve space.

So much for how The Tallahassee Project came about.