Seattle Nice: Will All the New Drug Laws Help Drug Users?
Guest expert Caleb Banta-Green helps us navigate the new SODA zones.
By Erica C. Barnett
On this week's Seattle Nice, we brought in a bona fide expert—University of Washington research professor Caleb Banta-Green, who heads up the university's Center for Community-Engaged Drug Education, Epidemiology and Research—to discuss the city's plans to "disrupt" drug use by creating Stay Out of Drug Area (SODA) zones.
The initial zones, which the council approved this week, include areas where drug users congregate in the University District, Capitol Hill, Belltown, downtown, Pioneer Square, and the Chinatown-International District. Judges will be able to order people charged with misdemeanor drug crimes to agree to stay out of one or multiple SODA zones. People who are subsequently caught inside those areas can be charged with a gross misdemeanor, a more serious crime, even if they are never convicted of the underlying misdemeanor offense.
Although Sandeep said the new banishment zones will help police "disrupt" concentrated areas of drug use and reduce "levels of addiction," Banta-Green noted that this strategy has not worked in the past—and you don't even have to go back to the old Sidran-era SODA zones for an example.
When the city adopted a "nine-and-a-half-block strategy" to crack down on drug users and dealers in downtown Seattle, an initial flood of arrests did not lead to lasting changes. In fact, those nine and a half blocks are part of the downtown SODA zone. It's hard to imagine clearer evidence that this "targeted" strategy was ineffective than the fact that drug use and sales have continued, and intensified, in the area.
"The [same] folks are still out there," Banta-Green said. "They're just getting squeezed around, and you're generally able to find them somewhere else. The challenge is that we've really made no attempts to put services where people are."
As for the argument that a "time-out" in jail is just what many people need to inspire them to abstain from drugs and alcohol, Banta-Green agreed that there are people who say jail saved their lives. But, he noted, that's not because jail is a good form of treatment, but because it's often the only form of "treatment" people get.
"Have I heard from dozens, if not hundreds, of people who said, 'Jail is what saved my life?' Yes. And I said [to them], 'But what if you had gotten housing and health care and good quality counseling? And they're like, 'Oh yeah, it's just that I didn't have access to that. I had access to jail. ... And we know that jail is the most expensive place to get those services, [from] the folks who have the least time and resources and qualifications to do it."
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