9 ~,~i - National Criminal Justice Reference Service

xii
VOLUME INTRODUCTION
channeled into various law enforcement agencies. Such an overemphasis created latent
problems for many agencies. Using his 25 years of experience as a DEA agent, Michael
Levine critiques the actions of the Reagan/Bush administrations in the war on drugs.
Scrutinizing the lenient treatment given to government figures in the Iran/Contra affair,
he describes U. S. involvement in Costa Rican cocaine trafficking. Levine also questions
the 1992 Supreme Court decision that gave law enforcement authorities the right to
enter other countries and abduct violators of U.S. drug laws (the Iranian government
immediately proclaimed a similar right for violators of Islamic law).
Asset forfeiture has been another controversial weapon in the war against
drugs. Mitchell Miller and Lance Selva use a 12-month observational study to highlight
the problem of case selection based on seizure policies. They note that the result is that
police erroneously concentrate on cases with little social benefit and frequently without
any serious criminal activity, primarily to generate forfeiture income.
Courts and Law
With the effort to control drug use, legislation was the name of the game and every
legislator strove to have his or her name on a bill to demonstrate a politically
advantageous Uhard on crime" stance. As one might expect, hastily and ideologically
constructed laws can have undesirable side effects. James Halsted discusses new antidrug
statutes and demonstrates that wrongful convictions and sentencing inequities
have resulted. With the advent of new Utrafficking" terminology, conviction is easier
and trafficking is assumed through the quantity of drugs in a defendant's possession.
In addition, those convicted of trafficking are mandatorily punished more severely than
defendants convicted of equally serious non-drug felonies.
Corrections and Drug Treatment
When it comes to drug offenses, the public is in a punitive mood and demanding of
prison time for drug users and traffickers. Alternatives have been discussed mostly on
a superfidal level. Annual federal drug-fighting budgets have been approximately 70
percent law-enforcement-related with the remainder split between prevention,
treatment, and research. Todd Clear, Val Clear, and Anthony Braga suggest that the
currently favored one-size-fits-all incarceration approach to drug offenders ignores years
of drug treatment research and wastes resources in an era of prison overcrowding. They
propose four different strategies to create more effective alternatives for drug offenders.
Susan Ennett, Nancy Tobler, Cristopher Ringwah, and Robert Flewelling
examine evaluations of the preeminent drug education program--DARE. They use
meta-analysis to review eight of the more rigorous DARE evaluations for immediate
effects. Not surprisingly, the authors find that DARE is not as successful as other
programs emphasizing social and general competencies with interactive teaching
methods for short-term prevention. They conclude that DARE's limited influence on
behavior is in direct contrast to its popularity and prevalence.
While drug treatment has a long history and an extensive research literature,
the same cannot be said of drug treatment within the criminal justice system. Gregory