A high-ranking federal judge criticized America’s current anti-drug efforts while speaking before students at Colby College, reported The Associated Press. Calling our drug war strategies a “losing battle,” Chief Judge Juan Torruella of the First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals proposed that America seriously rethink its methods and goals, and suggested that the establishment of a national pilot program to alleviate marijuana-related prosecutions might be a first step in the right direction.
At minimum, “a shift has to be made in the funding for drug enforcement toward an intense educational campaign,” he said.
Torruella, who went on the federal bench in 1975 and joined the appeals court in 1984, called for a national debate on the drug issue. In addition, he said that an independent national commission should be empaneled to analyze alternative approaches to curbing drug use. Currently, any legitimate debate on the issue is clouded by political “rhetoric” and anti-drug “hysteria,” he claimed. Torruella likened this attitude to the zealotry exhibited by anti-communists during the McCarthy era.
Torruella was also critical of the ways in which he felt drug prosecutors and law enforcement officials have run rampant over the bill of rights. “You can’t have one Constitution for the good guys and another Constitution for the bad guys,” he said.
Torruella has served as chief judge of the First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals since 1994.