
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, September 10, 1994                   TAG: 9410140004
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

DRUG OFFENSES

U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders made a regrettable error when she responded recently to a question about the conviction of her son on charges of selling cocaine.

"I don't think it was a crime," she said.

Well, it certainly was a crime. Elders was criticized last year when she suggested that the option of legalizing drugs should be "studied" as a potential way to cut crime. It should be studied.

But, meanwhile, drug peddling remains against the law. Elders shouldn't have let her son's tragedy confuse her understanding of this point or her responsibilities as a role model.

Other people's understanding might be informed, though, by considering her son's case. Kevin Elders sold one-eighth of an ounce of cocaine to an undercover policeman in Arkansas. He was not linked to any drug ring. He had no prior convictions. His sentence: 10 years in prison.

Under Arkansas' mandatory-sentencing statute on the books at the time of his arrest, a decade was the lightest punishment possible. He could have been sent away for life.

This not uncommon episode should serve as a reminder - including to those considering sentencing reform in Virginia - that judges need to retain discretion, particularly with first-time and nonviolent offenders. And alternative-sentencing options ought to include some sort of probation with supervision.

This isn't just in hopes of diverting the nonviolent from careers in crime. For every drug offender sent to a treatment or probation program, an expensive prison cell opens up for a violence-prone criminal who belongs there.

Under the new anti-crime law pushed by President Clinton, money will be available to state and local governments to set up intensively supervised programs for nonviolent offenders who are addicted to drugs. They'll get help, but they'll also be routinely drug-tested. If they mess up, they go to prison.

That's a much smarter way to fight crime - while focusing longer imprisonment on violent predators - than indiscriminately locking up drug offenders and throwing away the key.

by CNB