Kurt Schmoke
Subject: Criminalize or Legalize Drugs?
Bio: President of the University of Baltimore and former Mayor of Baltimore
Larry Bernstein:
Welcome to What Happens Next. My name is Larry Bernstein. What Happens Next is a podcast which covers economics, politics, and crime.
The topic today is Legalize or Criminalize Drugs?
Our speaker is Kurt Schmoke who is the President of the University of Baltimore. Kurt served 12 years as the Mayor of Baltimore and 8 years as a prosecutor, and he came to oppose the Federal War on Drugs. I want to find out from Kurt if drug legalization has reduced violence and made our communities safer?
Buckle up.
Kurt, please begin with your opening six-minute remarks.
Kurt Schmoke:
My wife jokingly says, I served 12 unindicted years as Mayor of Baltimore. During that time of particular concern was substance abuse and the war on drugs. I was mayor from 1987 to 1999. I not only lodged a critique of the Federal War on Drugs but tried to come up with policies to improve it. If we had to have a war on drugs, it should be a public health war rather than a criminal justice war.
I had been both a federal prosecutor and the elected DA or state's attorney for Baltimore City for a total of eight years. A federal judge who talked about drug traffickers as people who were trafficking in human misery and prosecutors should address this. I was a very effective prosecutor. I was seizing vehicles from drug dealers getting money from them to use for drug treatment programs.
I ran for state's attorney and was elected on a platform of being firm but fair in the drug war. During the time that I was state's attorney, a man that I knew who's an undercover detective named Marty Ward, was shot and killed in a botched drug raid. And as I listened to the body wire that he was wearing, because I had to make a decision about whether to proceed with a death penalty prosecution, because if the person who knew that Ward was a police officer at the time that he shot him that would've been a death eligible case.
The guy that shot Marty Ward was not hooked on drugs. He was hooked on drug money. And so there had to be a way if we were going to be effective in dealing with this problem to try to take the profit out of distributing drugs at the street level.
Yale Professor David Musto wrote a book called The American Disease that this problem was a disease and you don't prosecute your way out of disease. You have medical or public health interventions.
I learned about the writings of a police chief in California, August Vollmer and he wrote this in 1936. He said that drugs like liquor was not a police problem. It is a medical problem and it should be dealt with through public health interventions. In 1936, Vollmer was the head of the National Police Chief's Association. We woke up at a certain point and said, “Hey, wait a minute. We can't become an alcohol-free America by trying to prosecute our way out of alcohol.”
I started talking to our community about this issue after I became a mayor. I criticized the National War on Drugs. People said, “you're criticizing, but what's your alternative?”
I would ask them three questions. First, do you think we've won the war on drugs? Second, do you think we're winning? Third, do you think that doing more of the same is going to win? And I said, if you can't answer yes to those questions, would you consider alternatives? And that really opened people's eyes. They said, no, we're not winning. They can't keep doing the same. So, we came up with a lot of other alternatives.
By the time that I was completing my third term, we had become the first U.S. city to have a needle exchange program, which helped us to reduce the spread of AIDS.
If we look at where we are, we do see a lot of changes. There are states that have legalized marijuana for medicinal and recreation use. The public has changed their view on marijuana. But at national policy, we still see that these drugs are listed by schedule from those most harmful to least harmful. In Schedule 1, which is a drug that under the Federal law would have no acceptable medical use or high potential for abuse, marijuana is listed with heroin. Fentanyl is 50 times more potent than heroin is listed in Schedule 2.
My hope is that we will press science as the lead. If we have to have a war on drugs, let it be run by the Surgeon General not the Attorney General. Baltimore in 2021 we had 300 homicides in our city but we had 970 deaths from Fentanyl overdose. It's something that we need to address collectively as a public health scientific matter and not just a criminal justice matter.
Larry Bernstein:
Okay, let's get into it. In your search for an answer, you went to visit the Netherlands.
Kurt Schmoke:
Larry, it just so happened that we have a number of international sister cities. We are a port city. Rotterdam was Baltimore’s sister city. I visited and talked to the police chief there, and he said, “small amounts of drugs can be purchased legally and it's regulated. We don't intervene there.” They also had treatment facilities, and they were experimenting early on with the needle exchange in the late 1980s. So, it did serve as a model.
Now, what didn't serve as a model was Switzerland, where the Swiss had decided, we're going to have open air areas. You can go and shoot up heroin. And it became a nightmare. But that wasn't regulated. We didn't have health officials. It just had an open area where the Swiss were going to allow people to do serious harm to themselves. They ended that practice saying, “no, we can't just have it completely unregulated. We've got to have some reasonable regulation.”
Larry Bernstein:
The TV series The Wire I loved that show. It was so good in terms of dealing with urban problems and highlighting the issues as it relates to Baltimore. And in season three, in the fourth episode, there was an episode on Hamsterdam, which was the application of some of these ideas to open market selling of drugs in Baltimore. Tell us about that episode, your role and involvement with that.
Kurt Schmoke:
The producers and directors of that show former police officer and a former newspaperman both from Baltimore and one of them with a particular sense of humor thought that it would be interesting to have me play the Health Commissioner in that episode of The Wire. I sit across the table from the mayor when he's talking about the possibility of allowing Hamsterdam to go forward. And I say Mr. Mayor, if you do this, you'll be considered one of the most dangerous men in America. And that is something that had been said of me way back in the 80s.
The program tried to convey the complexities of dealing with the urban drug problem. I was invited by the British newspaper The Guardian, to write an op-ed comparing The Wire to the real Baltimore. I went through four episodes and saying, this was fiction, this is fact. I did have to admit that we had one of the toughest drug problems in the United States.
We instituted a needle exchange program and we were the first of the big cities, then others followed. Needle exchange in 1988 was as controversial as having the open-air market that the Hamsterdam contemplated. They just took a little license there and the Mayor on The Wire was contemplating something equally controversial that was an open-air regulated market.
But no, we didn't do open air, but we did do needle exchange when other cities were not. And the federal government had a law that said no institution receiving federal dollars could run a needle exchange program. Johns Hopkins could not run the program. They could study it and make a report about it, but they could not run the program.
Larry Bernstein:
In that episode of The Wire, it starts out with one of the senior police officials at a public meeting, and the public is angry that they don't feel safe in their homes. There's a lot of violence that these dealers have taken over the corners. They're not safe in their own homes.
The senior police official says, we can't do more of the same. Almost quoting you from the opening remarks and saying, we're going to have to try something new. Tell us about the danger of having dealers at the corner and whether legalization will resolve the drug violence.
Kurt Schmoke:
Most of the homicides that were occurring in our city at the time were wars over turf. People were standing at certain corners dealing drugs, and it got to be sophisticated. A customer would come up to that corner. Do you want heroin? Do you want cocaine? Then the guy on the corner would signal somebody else in another building who would get the substance. Then the buyer would be told where to go to pick it up.
It was difficult if you're going to arrest the guy on the corner, his defense was I'm just having a conversation. You can't arrest me for just talking to somebody.
But bottom line is that it was profitable for them. So, how do we take the profit out of that business? The only way we could see to do that was to have a legal distribution. You go not to a corner but to a regulated store, which is what happens now with marijuana. With respect to harder drugs, we still have a problem. You can see our homicide numbers have gone down in the city, and that at least with respect to marijuana, you certainly don't see the street battles that we saw prior to the legalization and that's been a big benefit to our community.
Larry Bernstein:
I don't know what to think about 300 murders in Baltimore? In Chicago where I grew up even though marijuana has been legalized the violence continues. I was told that if we just legalize this stuff, there would be no more violence.
Kurt Schmoke:
It's not as simple as we had hoped because there's still people that are trying to compete against the regulated stores. But what has happened most recently has nothing to do really with marijuana. Fentanyl is the big issue that's driving drug related crime in our area.
We've got to figure out how to reduce a person's appetite for that drug because it's logical, why would you put something in your body that most people either are going to have serious medical problems or die.
Larry Bernstein:
The criminalization of these drugs was a sincere desire of policymakers to make the sale and use of drugs challenging. Some drugs are very dangerous. You've highlighted fentanyl. We've made it illegal. But it gets in that same trap that you talked about before, it's should it be a police matter or should it be a medical health science matter? Which gets to the heart of the question, and I'm sympathetic to both sides, these are children who are going to die, and we don't want them to be hurt.
We have different social techniques to minimize use. One is shame and another is having cops on the corner to prevent it. And third is having social workers there to either persuade or treat. And you can see how the police officer and the prosecutor got involved.
Kurt Schmoke:
There's absolutely still a role for law enforcement. I went to a meeting when I was mayor and Bill Clinton was president that was organized by the Conference of Mayors. I had the opportunity to ask a question. I said, “Mr. President, you've been doing an outstanding job on the issue of smoking and tobacco.” I said, “The Center for Disease Control said that 400,000 people died last year from smoking. This green leafy substance in my left hand, the Center for Disease Control said that there are no known deaths. Given that Mr. President, which one of these do you think should be criminal? The one that killed 400,000 people or marijuana.” He looked at me funny, and he was still into the gateway theory that that smoking marijuana is a gateway to heroin. I knew a lot of friends in college who smoked marijuana and never thought about a needle. Never. I mean, they went on to be very prominent citizens in their community without getting hooked on anybody's drug.
The ideas that you talked about are vitally important. We still have deaths out there. We still have crime out there. There's a role for law enforcement, but law enforcement ought to be looking at those who are hooked on the drug money not hooked on drugs. The ones that are real parasites on society and try to redirect our resources to preventing addiction and to get them on treatment. Prosecution, we've done that, and that's led us to a mass incarceration, another significant problem for our community. And we were releasing a lot of guys and women back into our community with criminal records who can't get jobs, and they're going back to crime. It gets pretty complicated.
Larry Bernstein:
There was a recent study published by the Kansas City Federal Reserve on the implications of legalization of marijuana. And what they said it's cheaper, there's more use, and that there are health consequences to the greater use. And nothing seems that surprising from that. What should public policy be on marijuana use? Is it something we should discourage? Are there lessons that we can learn from the smoking that we can apply to marijuana use?
Kurt Schmoke:
Absolutely there are similar lessons. Although we have some states that have legalized medical or recreational use, we shouldn't promote the advertising of the product. The private sector may decide to intervene on the insurance side. And that is if you choose to be a user, then your insurance premiums go up. There are things that we can do that are not incarcerating folks but are also sending the signal that this is conduct that we are not promoting.
Larry Bernstein:
You mentioned in your opening remarks that marijuana was on schedule one but fentanyl was on schedule two.
And as a former prosecutor, you're given tremendous liberty as to what to prosecute. And I had a book club with Michelle Alexander, and I had three prosecutors to discuss it with her. And they said that they never prosecuted a marijuana case.
This is 15 years ago in Chicago with federal and state prosecutors.
Kurt Schmoke:
I can tell you from in the 1980s and 1990s, there were more people incarcerated in this country because of marijuana than for heroin or crack cocaine, more people in jail because of marijuana.
Larry Bernstein:
The State of Illinois Department of Corrections has a spreadsheet you can pull it down and it lists all the crimes that people were in jail for. Tens of thousands, and I didn't see anyone in there for marijuana. There were very few for heroin sales, exceptions where you can't sell heroin near a school or next to a church, stuff like that.
How should we think about the fact that we have different schedules, but how the prosecutors will act is something else. Just because it has certain schedules doesn't mean that you have to act on it.
Kurt Schmoke:
You're going to get variations in prosecution because of the individual interpretations of the law and their sense of the community. For example, when I was a prosecutor from 1982 to ‘87, Maryland still had a death penalty law. It was a city of about 750,000 people and we had about 300 homicides a year. But during the time that I was a state's attorney, we only sought the death penalty 12 times over that five-and-a-half-year period. The prosecutor in Baltimore County, which is the county right past us less than 10% of the homicides we had. So, let's say we had 300; they had 30.
They were leading the state with people being prosecuted for death penalty. That was a choice of individual prosecutors. And unfortunately, the way our system is structured, that is, you'll continue to have that breakdown around the country unless there was some federal law that said that for this particular schedule drug, you could only pursue misdemeanor prosecutions, and for this schedule, they would be eligible for felony. But that's not the case. The law on drugs, you got federal law and you have state law, you have local decision making by individual prosecutors, and that's why you get this disparity.
Larry Bernstein:
You mentioned the role of Johns Hopkins in the city. Tell us about the role of a very prestigious university like Johns Hopkins, its influence on the city, its positive feedback loops, and why we need to encourage more great universities to embed themselves in our cities.
Kurt Schmoke:
Absolutely. It's a great question. Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland Medical School both are in Baltimore City. When we decided to have this needle exchange program, the professors from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health said that we will provide the objective research for it. Now to do needle exchange, I had to get a state law passed because it was illegal for anybody except a doctor to distribute needles. It took us three years, Larry, and the only way we were able to get it passed, we went down to the legislature first with researchers, then we came down with police who said that they were not against it as a pilot. Then we brought in the police chief from Rotterdam, and then finally we brought in a group of clergymen who said that they were tired of burying people because of dirty needles. It was just by one vote that we won. Four years later, after the program had been reviewed and the Hopkins report had been submitted to the legislature, they granted a further extension of the program with all but one person voting against it.
Larry Bernstein:
Tell us about how your experience with this drug issue as Mayor of Baltimore, how did that influence your decision to go into academia?
Kurt Schmoke:
Well, I must say that all candor that proposing decriminalization of drugs back in 1988 was not a politically career enhancement activity. I decided after my third term that I would step away from elective office and pursue something else. I was very fortunate to get the opportunity to become Dean of the Law School at Howard University. And that allowed me to continue my interest in legal matters but also public service.
The University of Baltimore was looking for a new president and I was selected. But clearly, by making the statements that I made in 1988, I got a lot of strong reaction. The Clinton administration was considering me to succeed Henry Cisneros as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. They received a lot of criticism that I was even being considered. Some congressmen saying that if Schmoke is nominated, we absolutely will oppose the nomination because of his position on drug policy.
Larry Bernstein:
Do you think you've won?
Kurt Schmoke:
On this one, there's no final victories. What I'm pleased is that the rhetoric from our elected officials has changed so that you hear more people talk about treatment as well as the use of law enforcement. I must say that the opioid crisis and fentanyl changed the debate about drugs in America because the opioid crisis showed that it was not just an inner-city people of color drug problem. The opioid situation showed elected officials that it was suburban middle-class people.
Larry Bernstein:
I want to go back to The Wire that dealt with the police, education, unions, newspapers, and city government. Each had its own set of failures that negatively impacted the City of Baltimore. Tell us about the Baltimore 20 years later.
Kurt Schmoke:
Over the last 20 years more collaboration and not working in silos to deal with these problems. Unfortunately, our lead newspaper being not the same robust paper. The police department the major change with officers carrying Narcan to help addicts.
We've got currently a young mayor who is looking holistically at these problems and recognizing that he has to have positive intervention early on, whether it's better recreation programs, a gun violence strategy that has led to a reduction in homicides. It's both the collaboration and the role of our public health institutions that has made a difference.
Larry Bernstein:
What are you optimistic about Baltimore?
Kurt Schmoke:
My university graduates are mostly older. The average age of our undergraduates is 28. Transfers from community college, military veterans, second career people. And we also run a program in one of our prisons. We have 45 students in Jessup Correctional Institution who are seeking a degree. Every May, I go to the graduation and listen to students talk about how getting a degree has enhanced their career.
This generation of young people want to participate; they are engaged in the city and want to make it a better place. They're moving in the right direction. But things take time. Larry, I always fall back on the old saying from my grandmother, by the yard, life is hard, but by the inch, life's a cinch. We're moving along, we're inching along, and I'll take every little inch of progress that we can to make ours a better community.
Kurt Schmoke:
Thanks Kurt, for joining us today.
If you missed our previous podcast, check it out. The topic was Expelling Students Who Misbehave. Our speaker was Daniel Diermeier who is the Chancellor of Vanderbilt. Daniel explained that politicalization caused the current chaos on college campuses and that universities should be neutral on controversial political matters.
Daniel explained what the university rules of the road should be and that students who disobey the university’s code of conduct should be expelled.
I would like to make a plug for next week’s show with Scott Turow who is the author of the book Presumed Innocent which has recently been made into an 8-part Apple TV mini-series. I want to learn from Scott about adapting his novels into film.
You can find our previous episodes and transcripts on our website whathappensnextin6minutes.com. Please follow us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Thank you for joining us today, good-bye.
Check out our previous episode, Expelling Students Who Misbehave, here.
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