Edward H. Jurith, Drug Policy Leader and Attorney, 1951-2013

Edward H. Jurith, a key figure in American drug policy making since the early 1980s, died peacefully at home in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, November 9, 2013. Ed has been my friend since 1981.

Ed served at very senior levels in the Office of National Drug Control Policy at the White House for almost 20 years, including serving as Acting Director for almost all of 2001 at the start of the Bush Administration and during 9-11. Ed had been Director of Legislative Affairs, General Counsel and finally Senior General Counsel at ONDCP, beginning in the Clinton Administration. At the beginning of the Obama Administration he was again Acting Director until Gil Kerlikowske was confirmed on May 7, 2009.

Ed also represented the United States for many years in the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) on the Executive Committee and as chair of the Education Committee.

Ed was a very distinguished lawyer. For over twenty years he was a leading member of the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Substance Abuse, and at the time of his death was chair of its successor entity, the Task Force on Substance Use Disorders of the Health Law Section. He was also a very popular adjunct professor of law at the Washington College of Law at American University.

 Ed was a son of Brooklyn, NY. He graduated from Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School in Brooklyn in 1969, American University cum laude in 1973, and Brooklyn Law School in 1976. He practiced criminal law in Brooklyn and was involved in politics. He worked with U.S. Rep. Leo Zeferetti (D-NY), from Brooklyn, who in 1981 became the Chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control (SCNAC).  That year, Mr. Zeferetti brought Ed back to Washington to be Counsel to the Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control (SCNAC).

The Select Committee on Narcotics was responsible for investigating and reporting on the entire range of drug abuse issues. At that time, I joined the staff of the House Subcommittee on Crime, chaired by U.S. Rep. William J. Hughes (D-NJ), responsible for overseeing federal drug enforcement programs and processing amendments to the Controlled Substances Act in addition to money laundering, organized crime, gun control, pornography and other issues. Mr. Hughes was also a member of the Select Committee on Narcotics and I staffed his participation on the Select Committee. Thus I attended many hearings that Ed organized.

From the start there was a friendly professional tension between us. The Narcotics Committee had a very focused agenda and a fair deal of staff and budget, and some very senior and powerful members, including, after 1983, Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY), a very senior member of the New York Delegation, a senior member of the Ways and Means Committee, and a senior member of the Congressional Black Caucus. But it had no power to report legislation. It could hold hearings and press conferences and issue reports and press releases -- but the Select Committee could not write any bills. The Crime Subcommittee had a very broad agenda: we had a smaller staff and drugs was just one of many important issues that we had to address. But we could write and move legislation to amend the drug laws or to modify DEA's powers. That was genuine power.

In 1983, the Select Committee on Narcotics organized a study mission to Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia and Jamaica to oversee U.S. anti-narcotics activities in those countries, to learn about those countries narcotics problems and anti-narcotics activities, and to meet with the top political, law enforcement and judicial officials of those countries to convey U.S. concerns about narcotics. Mr. Hughes and our Ranking Republican Member, Harold Sawyer (R-Michigan), arranged to accompany the SCNAC, and they were able to bring our subcommittee chief counsel, our Republican associate counsel, and me, an assistant counsel, as well. Since the trip was a Select Committee show, I did not have to work as hard as Ed and his colleagues, but those intense experiences strengthened our bond.

By 1984, I was often sharing with other staff and others my view that the war on drugs was a mistake and that some form of legalization of drugs would better fight crime and protect public health than prohibition. After my deep involvement in the Anti-Drug Abuse Acts of 1986 and 1988 -- along with Ed and his colleagues on the Narcotics Select Committee, as well as the House leadership, I carried out a strategy to leave the Judiciary Committee and work full time to end drug prohibition.


By 1987, Ed had been promoted to Staff Director of the Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control. After I left Capitol Hill, Ed and I became friendly sparring partners on a number of occasions when the fundamentals of drug policy were being challenged.

In 1990 or '91, the American Bar Association established a Special Committee on the Drug Crisis, and Ed and I both were able to participate.

A few years later, the Special Committee was formalized as the Standing Committee on Substance Abuse. Ed, then the General Counsel of the White House "drug czar," was warmly welcomed. I was appointed by the ABA Section on Individual Rights and Responsibilities -- the powerful organizational home the ABA's "liberals" -- to be their liaison to the standing committee. The Standing Committee strongly embraced an ABA-Join Together study that identified the crippling problem of continued stigmatization of persons in recovery, and Ed and I worked together on ABA policy to address that. Ed took the lead in encouraging the ABA House of Delegates to endorse Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMP), but the proposed policy was defeated on privacy grounds. Today PDMPs are widely respected tools to identify doctors who are irresponsibly prescribing prescription narcotics or persons who are using multiple doctors and pharmacies to obtain large quantities of opiates and diverting them away from legitimate pain patients.

At the ABA Standing Committee, after a few years, most lawyers would move on to another project in the ABA, but Ed and I stayed on. When the Raich v. Ashcroft medical marijuana case headed for the Ninth Circuit, U.S. Court of Appeals, Ed and I began to collaborate on what became a series of continuing legal education programs on the subject held at three ABA annual meetings over the years. Prominent members of the ABA, including judges, served on the Standing Committee, but rarely with the experience in drug policy matters that Ed and I had. Often some matter of drug policy would provoke a mini-debate between us. A number of times I was told by one or another member how educational, stimulating and respectful they found our impromptu debates.

On Feb. 7, 2007, Ed spoke to a forum that I moderated, hosted by the Drugs and the Law Committee of the New York City Bar Association, on proposed legislation to regulate medical marijuana in New York State. As always he was generous with his time, completely prepared, powerfully cogent in making his points, and unfailingly polite and gracious before an audience largely composed of those opposed to his position.

Ed Jurith was an extremely intelligent and diligent lawyer deeply dedicated to making the world around him better. He built an enormous network of friends who treasured his relaxed and open sense of humor, and his loyalty. We all knew him as a man who told the truth and honored his commitments. We learned how he adored his wife and boys, and treasured his joy as a father and husband.

In early August when I learned that ONDCP Director Gil Kerlikowske was being promoted to Customs Commissioner, I hastily wrote a blog and threw out some prominent names as appropriate successors, such as former Baltimore City and Howard County Health Commissioner Peter Beilenson, U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA), or U.S. Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO). But as I reflected on who, in the real world, would really be the most effective successor, I realized it would be Ed Jurith. Ed knew every aspect of the job, he had the long experience of working closely with Congress, with all of the involved federal and international agencies, and with all the private and state agencies in the field regarding prevention, treatment and enforcement. Ed also had profoundly good judgement. He knew what could work, and what wouldn't and had the courage and drive to fight for what was needed. His vision of the work was not driven by ideology, by partisan advantage seeking, or by personal ambition. He deeply wanted to free individuals, families and communities of the pain of substance use disorders. He was not interested in preserving organizational budgets or fiefdoms, but in justice and mercy. I knew that open support from a "drug legalizer" like me was not the most strategic approach, and so I worked behind the scenes to put Ed's candidacy for ONDCP Director before the President, the Vice President and other key players. If Ed's treatment for cancer had not failed to restore him, I think we could have found the perfect ONDCP Director to work with Attorney General Eric Holder and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to re-balance our drug policy in a world with the parity for treatment  and expanded coverage of the Affordable Care Act, with legal marijuana in Washington, Colorado, and other states, and medical marijuana being demanded by legislatures and voters across the nation. His death is a real loss to the nation and the world, as well as his family and friends.

I shall my conclude this tribute to Ed Jurith with a much longer version of a story I briefly told his family and friends after his funeral mass Friday.

Advocates of "drug policy reform" or drug legalization (and journalists, civic association and academic programmers) often have a hard time finding prominent, qualified representatives of the prohibition-based national drug strategy to debate in public forums. What legalizers criticize as their opponents' strategy of trying to win the argument by ignoring its legitimacy, or an unwillingness to risk the embarrassment of defending the indefensible, is partly a legitimate unwillingness to face what is often a highly partisan audience willing to indulge itself with mocking laughter and snarky outbursts.

Ed Jurith was unafraid of critical audiences and faced them often, always with grace and good humor. I witnessed both the rudeness of the pro-legalization audiences in mocking the government's spokesman, and Ed's self-composed presentation.

On March 17-18, 2000, three very prominent New York City institutions arranged a two-day conference on the questions, "Is Our Drug Policy Effective? Are there Alternatives?" The distinguished sponsors were the Association of the Bar of the City of New York (now known as the New York City Bar Association), the New York Academy of Medicine, and the New York Academy of Sciences. The proceedings were to be transcribed and were published in the Fordham Urban Law Journal (Vol. XXVII, No. 1, October 2000, pp. 3 - 361). Forty-two distinguished experts across a wide range of fields were invited to speak. Most of the well known drug legalizers or critics of the status-quo policy were on the program: former Mayor Kurt Schmoke of Baltimore, MD, Ethan Nadelmann, JD, PhD,  U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet (SDNY), Harvard Professor Lester Grinspoon, David Boaz of the Cato Institute, et al.

Ed was invited and knew that it would be a hostile audience, but he was willing to come. In fact he was the only representative of the federal government. His remarks were greeted by jeers and laughter. Near the end of his remarks he said, "I was surprised that when I showed those slides earlier there was laughter concerning youth misbehavior and marijuana use.You may not believe the data, but I do not believe anyone thinks that it is healthy for young people to abuse drugs. This is the cynicism we need to get beyond." (p. 46).

Mayor Schmoke made the next speech, and I followed him. At the beginning of my remarks I said,

"I want to commend my old friend and colleague, Ed Jurith, for his thoughtful presentation a few minutes ago and for his willingness to come and speak to what he anticipated was going to be a critical audience, not a warmly receptive audience. I do not see you, Ed, in the audience, but Ed has always been a man whom I could talk to in a very civil and informed manner about drug policy, even though we have disagreed. Ed is an honorable and bright public servant who is genuinely committed to the public interest in these matters." (pp.53-54).

Ed, thank you for being my rival, ally and partner, and always my friend.

Ed's family would welcome gifts in Ed's memory to be made to his high school alma mater, Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School in Brooklyn, NY.

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Drug Czar Kerlikowske leaving ONDCP

Corrections below.
On August 2, President Obama nominated Gil Kerlikowske, the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, to be the Customs Commissioner.

Kerlikowske has been an unimaginative drug czar, often invisible. Having come from Seattle, Washington where he had been police chief, he was shrouded with hope that he would have enlightened views about harm reduction and marijuana use and enforcement. Those hopes were soon dashed. His office has accomplished little and his public statements have been uninspiring. He demonstrated no ability to influence the federal bureaucracy, and left ONDCP irrelevant in national drug policy efforts. ONDCP's role in forums of the United Nations, such as the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, has been to stifle adoption of harm reduction, a singularly backward approach. His departure is good news for drug policy but bad news for the Department of Homeland Security and people who care about Customs enforcement.

Once again, Obama has an opportunity to reshape drug policy. Perhaps he could nominate U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA), a leader in drug policy and criminal justice policy reform in Congress; Peter Beilenson, M.D. (CEO of Evergreen Health Co-Op; former Howard County, MD health commissioner, and former health commissioner under Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke); or U.S. Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO) who also served for six years on the Colorado State Board of Education, including serving as Chairman. These men would bring a long missing sophisticated vision of drug policy to the White House.

CORRECTION!
At the Spring 2012 Meeting of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs, Resolution 55/7 endorsing the use of Naloxone as a technique to prevent opiate overdose deaths was adopted with amazing speed.  The U.S. appeared to have dropped its long-standing opposition to harm reduction measures and explicit overdose prevention strategies. The U.S. emissaries were representatives of Kerlikowske's ONDCP.

In November 2012,  by video, Kerlikowske addressed the conference of the Harm Reduction Coalition in Portland, OR, and asked to work together.

In the past year, there has been important evidence of constructive policy change in ONDCP. I apologize for misrepresenting Kerlikowske's record.

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Jail violence illustrated in New York

Defenders of the drug prohibition status quo like former ONDCP Director John Walters have always said that those millions of young people who get arrested for marijuana don't get sent to prison. But they do get sent to jail for a time.
Here is a gruesome report from May 8, 2012 Village Voice on conditions inside the New York City jail, known as Rikers Island.

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SSDP confronts Kerlikowske at National Press Club

Daniel Pacheco, a student from Colombia and a member of the Georgetown University Students for Sensible Drug Policy chapter, respectfully challenged Gil Kerlikowke, Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, on Sept. 16, 2010 at the National Press Club, on the suggestion of the past Presidents of Colombia and Mexico, that legalizing drugs would defund the violent cartels that are ravaging Mexico. See the YouTube clip here.

Kerlikowske said a couple of times that the cartel revenues from marijuana were a "small part" of their income, and that taking away this revenue would not transform these criminal organizations.

Pacheco, politely retaking the microphone, noted that revenues from marijuana amounted to 60 to 70 percent of the cartel's total revenue -- not a small part -- and that to summarily dismiss the suggestions of the former Presidents was disrespectful to the victims of the cartel violence.

Kerlikowske then said that the 60-70 percent estimate was released by ONDCP in 2006, based on 1997 data, and therefore was out of date. He offered no better, more recent number or alternative number, and thus simply repudiated data and analysis generated by his own office.

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Thoughts from a trip to the U.S.-Mexico border -- fixing the violence?

Eric L. Olson, a very distinguished American analyst at the Mexico Institute at The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, has just issued a ten-page report on his recent trip to the borderlands.

This balanced and thoughtful report gives a very straightforward description of the crisis of violence and lack of respect for the government that prevails in Mexico -- without the hyperbole that characterized the trip report of Gen. Barry McCaffrey after his visit in December to Mexico, "fighting for survival against narco-terrorism."

The report should be read by everyone interested in what is happening in Mexico as it struggles against violence and the drug trafficking organizations.

Most Americans are probably completely unaware that Mexico is in the process of completely transforming its justice system from the Napoleonic (or inquisitorial) approach which relies upon documents to the Anglo-American-style approach with trials involving witness testimony. The challenge of re-training prosecutors, judges and defense attorneys across Mexico is profound. In Chihuahua, it lags behind Baja California.

The problems are not simply that the cartels are powerful, drugs are profitable, or the government's response is wrong. The problems are more universal: deep-seated, endemic mistrust of the government, widespread poverty and lack of economic opportunity. Some of the problems are similar to problems that face anti-crime initiatives in the United States: politicization of anti-crime initiatives, intense bureaucratic rivalries among agencies for credit and resources, and lack of cooperation across jurisdictions and the levels of local, state and federal administration, and quick fixes that attempt to employ military assets (i.e. drug interdiction), techniques (i.e., S.W.A.T. tactics and raids) or ideologies (i.e., zero tolerance).

There is nothing wrong with Olson's recommendations -- they clearly identify the general areas in which Mexico and the U.S. need to move forward. Calling first for a reduction in demand for drugs in the U.S. by increasing treatment and prevention is perfectly appropriate, if utterly predictable.

Tragically, America has reached the sorry state in which any reasonable suggestion to reduce demand by improving our ability to prevent illegal drug use and increase the availability of treatment is a cliche.

However, most states are now cutting back on drug treatment and prevention programs as they address what has been estimated to be a collective $300 billion gap between current expenditures and projected revenues that must be closed.

I believe that treatment works. Of course, not everyone who is using illegal drugs needs treatment. In simple numerical terms, most of those who use illegal drugs do not need treatment, but there is a minority who use drugs heavily or compulsively who could use treatment. Those who have committed crimes -- robbery, burglary, shoplifting, domestic violence, etc. -- who use expensive and addictive drugs can and should be compelled to abstain from drug use by using programs such as Hawai'i's Operation HOPE. There, most hard core drug users stop without treatment. They modify their behavior to avoid the inconvenience of guaranteed arrest if one of their frequent drug tests comes up positive for illegal drugs. But in most of America, probation for offenders is ineffective supervision, treatment beds insufficient, and access to treatment screwed up. In your community is there a central intake for treatment that is conveniently reached at convenient hours? If you show up for treatment, will you get a bed -- or a place at the back of the line?

Of course one can drill down into the wide variety of treatment offerings and find a mixed bag. There are plenty of poorly run programs and outright scams. But treatment works for those who are in well-run programs or who are sufficiently motivated.

Will we see more treatment? The Obama Administration is asking for $137 million more for treatment in FY 2011 compared to FY 2010. Chickenfeed! The Administration is asking for $180 million more for its enforcement programs (excluding increased federal spending on prisons, prosecutors, etc.). Not since President Richard Nixon has there been a serious high-level national commitment to providing effective drug treatment in a scale that approaches the need.

The other half of the cliche to reduce demand is for more drug abuse prevention. Most of the expenditures for dedicated drug abuse prevention "programs" are a proven waste. D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), founded by Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates (who famously said that "casual drug users should be taken out and shot"), was found to be worthless after numerous evaluations. D.A.R.E. revised its curriculum, but a Google search finds no new evaluations published in the past twenty years. Even D.A.R.E.'s website can only report some preliminary -- first year of a five year evaluation -- from 2003! Another bogus prevention program is the ONDCP White House Media Anti-Drug campaign. Once again, the program was found to be ineffective in scientific evaluations. But the Obama Administration is asking for almost a 50 percent increase -- from $45 million to $66.5 million. They want to throw away another $21.5 million on a program that has been proven to be ineffective.

My daughter is in her middle school health education program this quarter which includes drug abuse prevention. Last night at dinner, she told my wife and me about the program's self-esteem enhancing exercise that she and her classmates engaged in Wednesday. Go around the circle and tell the next student what you like about them. She said that everyone was embarrassed and resorted to saying vapid things like, "I like your hair. I like your blouse. I like your personality." She didn't have to tell us explicitly that she thought this was silly and pointless, her sarcasm was unmistakable.

Scholars, policy experts, commentators and politicians have been exhorting one another about the urgency and importance of reducing demand for drugs for more than thirty years. In the 1980s, successive heads of DEA would testify that more money should be spent on demand reduction. DEA even started its own demand reduction programs. America may someday get serious about demand reduction, but not in time to do anything about Mexico's violence and corruption. One could ask which will come first, a regime to regulate and control drugs (usually crudely called "legalization") or adequate and effective prevention programs and treatment capacity.

Regulation and control of the now illegal drugs will not be easy to execute, even after the political consensus adopts it. But there is little likelihood that any less radical strategy will appreciably reduce violence, other than engaging in corrupt accommodation of the drug trafficking organizations along the lines of the pre-Fox, PRI governments.

Among the obvious consequences of drug regulation and control in the U.S. is that schools and parents will have to have much more meaningful conversations with their children about drugs legally distributed. Teachers potentially can be truthful and accurate, freed of serving as propagandists in the "war on drugs" crusade. Parents will be able to speak truthfully about their experiences with drugs without the stigma of law-breaking. Drug prevention may rely less upon stigma ("Users are losers!") and more upon science and reinforcing positive behaviors.

The demand for illegal drugs that Eric L. Olson and other observers of the crisis in Mexico lament is not going to be reduced by exhortation or policy papers. The most well-meaning "drug czars," DEA Administrators, HHS and Department of Education Secretaries, Surgeon Generals, Congressional leaders and other have a thirty year record of insignificant actions. Drug use declines have been real at various times but, as factors affecting the global criminal trade, negligible.

To reduce the demand for illegal drugs in the scale that will substantially impact corruption and violence in Mexico demands that their illegal character be eliminated. When that happens, notwithstanding the repeated warnings of the International Narcotics Control Board, the global drug control regime will have more "coherence" and "effectiveness."

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