{news} Bongs Over Bridgeport--another reformer running for office

[Clifford Thornton]

http://www.fairfieldweekly.com/blogs/home.cfm?uid=83<http://www.fairfieldweekly.com/blogs/home.cfm?uid=83>

Tuesday, June 10, 2008 . 3:40 PM Post a Comment<http://www.fairfieldweekly.com/blogs/home.cfm?uid=83#post> 

Bongs Over Bridgeport
posted by Erin Lynch<http://www.fairfieldweekly.com/blogs/profile.cfm?uid=83&auid=85> 

Picture this: Bridgeport's 130th District transformed into a drug-tolerant zone. Think of it as a mini Amsterdam, in which cannabis cafes and safe-injection rooms are the norm, and the use of pot, cocaine and heroin within the city is regulated and controlled. 

You'll be able to stroll into coffeeshop, take a gander at the menu, order a joint or two of Purple Haze and light up without the threat of Johnny Law. If you are struggling with an addiction to coke or heroin, afforded to you will be clinics where you will have access to the drug, under strict medical supervision, to help ease your pain and possibly control your addiction.

Sounds like a dope fiend's utopia, doesn't it? It's actually the brainchild of Sylvester Salcedo, a Democrat and political neophyte who is looking to represent the district in Hartford's House of Representatives. (Currently he is trying to secure enough John Hancocks to get approval to run in the August primary.)

Salcedo says the War on Drugs isn't working. In fact, it's failing on every possible level. It has failed law enforcement, filled our prisons to maximum capacity and torn apart families and communities. 

The plan, he says, is simple, "I am floating around this idea of the Covenant of the 130th District, which is to declare the district as a zone of tolerance?

"What we want to do is focus not on law enforcement, not on criminalizing addiction, not on arrest and incarceration but to shift the effort towards a public health initiative," Salcedo says.

The status quo, Salcedo says, does not make drugs disappear from our streets; instead it makes the issue worse. "I feel the War on Drugs is your root of most urban issues, whether you're talking about public education reform, affordable housing, job creation, social justice, fairness and equality," he says.

Salcedo says the tough 130th is a perfect example of the drug war backlash. "Whoever is there has been in jail, heading to jail or coming back from jail. It's all drugs, so any politician who is running for this district really should say, 'I'm running because of drugs and that is exactly my platform.'"

Salcedo looks at drug addiction as a public health issue, not a criminal one. In this zone, heroin addicts would come in, "be properly screened and their heroin intake would be managed and supervised by a public health official, not a law enforcement official." Also on-site, he says, would be social workers and addiction specialists. 

Salcedo is very different from the stereotypical anti-drug renegade. He is soft spoken, clean-cut and generally appears to be a follow-the-rules type of guy. He is a lawyer and a 20-year Navy veteran. 

The 51-year-old moved to Bridgeport in 2000 with his then-wife, Sonia (she's the former Bridgeport schools superintendent). It was also the year he began publicly protesting the War on Drugs by sending back his Navy and Marine Corps Achievement medal to President Bill Clinton.

In a letter, Salcedo told Clinton: "Narcotics use and abuse is our problem here at home. The solutions should be applied here and not in Colombia or elsewhere. To spend this additional amount of money overseas is wasteful and counterproductive." He went on to say that the drug war "is senseless, wasteful and counterproductive."

Salcedo says many local politicians look to Washington, D.C. to handle the issue. But, he says, the only way to tackle it is by community activism. "Martin Luther King did not wait for Congress to move on civil rights. The women suffragettes did not wait for some congressman in Washington, D.C. to take the initiative to give women the right to vote. It started from one neighborhood in the community level to force the issue into a national issue," he says. 

Not surprisingly, Bridgeport mayor Bill Finch strongly disagrees with Salcedo: "This is not something I want to seriously pursue? I would encourage people to look to a candidate who wants to [fix] the system of school funding, rather than creating initiatives that will only create more violence," Finch says.

The way to combat drugs, Finch says, is through education, treatment and law enforcement, not by tolerance. While other cities murder rates are increasing, Finch says, the Park City's has had a significant decrease in homicides and violent crimes. "We are on track to reducing these serious crimes by 10 to 20 percent," Finch says. "We can reduce violence without Sylvester's ideas."

But Finch adds, "I do admire Sylvester for his out-of-the-box thinking, but I don't think we can create an Amsterdam here in Bridgeport. Drugs are highly addicting and they promote violence. If we reform the way we fund our schools than there is a better chance for kids to stay away from drugs or gang violence."

Cliff Thornton feels Salcedo's pain. Thornton attempted to unseat Gov. M. Jodi Rell in 2006 on a platform of decriminalizing drugs. 

According to recent U.S. Department of Justice stats, "The rate of drug abuse in Connecticut is slightly higher than the national average? 7.1 percent of individuals surveyed in Connecticut reported having abused an illicit drug in the previous month compared with approximately 6.3 percent nationwide."

That's a lot of petty drug offenses. "Look at how much money we are spending on the criminal justice system versus the education system," says Thornton. "Look at how much we are spending versus universal healthcare."

The state, Thornton says, spends "$600 million to $800 million a year to operate the prison system in Connecticut. What if we can take that and use it for health care for every resident? What I am talking about is the redistribution of income and wealth."

Thornton cites figures that say there are at any time between 18,000 and 22,000 people locked up in Connecticut prisons, 70 percent of whom are in for a wide range of drug-related offenses, including "robbery, possession, prostitution and manufacturing." 

The way to fix the epidemic, Salcedo and Thornton say, is to first admit the system is broken. "You have to bring in some sort of regulatory control," Thornton says. The state has to focus more on drug abuse and addiction, rather than locking up offenders. Legalization, regulation and control, he asserts, could solve the problem.

But critics say that even a regulated-drugs scheme could lead to more organized crime and gangs into Bridgeport. "I am against keeping those guys in business," says Finch. "In fact, I want them out of here." 

- Erin Lynch

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