Retired Appellate Judge Sonner presides over Md. State Drug and

When he retired from the Court of Special Appeals last summer, Judge Andrew L. Sonner never thought that a few months later, he would find himself in the State House. But there he was, spending a perfectly gorgeous September afternoon presiding over the first meeting of the newly formed Maryland State Drug and Alcohol Abuse Council.

Not that he expected to be idle, of course. He knew he would continue to hear cases as a retired judge and also planned to sit in the Montgomery County Circuit Court from time to time.

Even when the phone call came from the governor's office, informing him of the new task force, it took a little persuasion for Sonner to take on the role as chair.

But by the time Sonner addressed the group assembled in Annapolis - made up of representatives from various state agencies, the governor's office, the legislative branch and the judiciary, as well as State Superintendent of Schools Nancy S. Grasmick - it was perhaps apparent to him what the governor's policy advisor, Alan R. Friedman, had known all along.

Sonner was just the man for the job.

Before they were born

From the standpoint of the governor, it was really the first name that came up, says Friedman, who will be overseeing the day-to-day operations of the council. Judge Sonner brings such an incredible history with this issue, going back three decades - we're talking 30 years worth of involvement.

Thirty-eight, to be precise. Indeed, the question of how to deal with substance abusers came to Sonner's attention when he became a Montgomery County prosecutor in 1966 - long before many of today's offenders were even born.

When I first started prosecuting in 1966, possession of marijuana was a felony - people were going to jail for possession of small amounts, Sonner said. In Montgomery County we were thinking about adopting a local ordinance because the state law was so harsh, but before we could do that, the state amended its law.

The change in the law did not entirely solve the problem, of course.

We went through several different phases in Maryland, and I was part of it: the heavy law enforcement - arrest as many people as you can - jump-out squads who would go to parking lots outside of bars looking for people who were out smoking dope, he recalls. Before long, we saw in Montgomery County that it was going to gobble up all of our resources. The police department was devoting more and more people to catching people in possession of drugs, the courts were getting bogged down with large numbers of cases coming in with simple possession, the jails were full of people awaiting trial or getting sentenced for possession.

By the mid-1990s, Sonner thought he'd found a solution - in a book called Malign Neglect, written by Michael Tonry.

He took the whole prosecutive and punishment approach to deterring drug abuse and showed what a deleterious effect it had on society in general, Sonner explained. That we were prosecuting very large numbers of minorities disproportionately; we were filling the prisons with people [whose] only offenses were drugs; [and] that making the drugs so difficult to get had a kickback effect - raising the price and then requiring people to go out and commit crimes in order to sustain their habits.

So I read that book and got together with some other people in law enforcement, and we decided to try to do something in Montgomery County, to change the emphasis, he said.

The program he helped to develop, however, faced opposition by county political figures and was never put into effect. In 1996, when Sonner left to serve on the Court of Special Appeals; his successor did not continue the plan.

It died as a program, but it continued as an attitude, the judge said. There was a de-emphasis on making as many arrests as possible; judges, too, became less insistent on jail time, more sympathetic to treatment. But the prosecutor's office did not continue to take a lead in that area.

Fast forward eight years to 2004 - to that sunny September afternoon in Annapolis.

I took this job because it was something of an unfinished business I had as a prosecutor, he told the newly assembled council.

The state council

Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., on his way to inspect flood damage in Port Deposit, stopped by to wish the group good luck just before Sonner took the floor.

It's a time for action - there are many savables out there, the governor said. You in your own way are dealing with hundreds of thousands of Marylanders who have their own storms.

According to the executive order creating the Maryland State Drug and Alcohol Abuse Council, signed by the governor this past July, 289,000 Marylanders are in need of substance-abuse treatment; the problem costs $5.6 billion annually to the state.

Following this year's legislative session, the governor signed into law HB 295/SB 194, a plan to divert nonviolent substance abusers into treatment instead of jail. The law, which went into effect on July 1, requires $3 million in the Fiscal Year 2005 budget to be specifically dedicated to the new plan.

Among other things, the legislation requires counties to create local substance-abuse councils, with representatives from law enforcement, prosecutors, the public defender's office, educators, administrative judges and treatment providers, among others.

It's not the state coming down and saying this is how you're going to do this, this is a local planning group, Friedman noted.

Each local council must submit a plan to the governor identifying the jurisdiction's strategies and priorities for evaluating, preventing and treating substance abuse, both in the general public and within the criminal justice system. Plans must be filed by July 2005 and every two years thereafter.

That document then comes up to the various state funding sources and the state funds what's identified at the local level as a priority and a strategy, Friedman said.

One task of the state council, meanwhile, will be to ensure that the local councils have the data necessary to do their jobs, using the technology system of the state drug and alcohol abuse administration.

Every substance-abuse treatment provider in the state reports everything online, electronically, Friedman explained, allowing the council to draw data from individual treatment locations or counties and break it down in any way the planners need.

We can use the data to identify what is working and then help the counties, provide technical assistance to the county to do their planning, he said.

And the state council will, itself, do what the county councils have been asked to do - identify strategies and priorities for meeting Marylanders' treatment needs.

We have the Department of Public Safety and Correction that's doing treatment behind the walls for incarcerated offenders [and] supervising in the community offenders who are required to get drug or alcohol treatment as part of their probation or parole. We have the Department of Juvenile Services doing the same thing with the juvenile cases; the Department of Human Resources doing it in the social service field, the state Department of Education - a lot of different programs, Friedman notes. The governor said if we want the local jurisdictions to do this, we have the obligation to do this.

The state council will help to coordinate both the state and the county efforts so that no one is working at cross-purposes, duplicating efforts or resources, Sonner and Friedman said. While individual jurisdictions are free to pursue the type of plans that best suits their needs - whether it be in Baltimore City, the Eastern Shore, Allegany County or Montgomery County - the goal is to have coordinated efforts.

Planning expenses for the state and local councils will be aided by the Maryland Substance Abuse Fund created by the legislation, consisting of administrative fees paid by drug-offender defendants, appropriations by the state, and money accepted for the benefit of the fund from public or private sources. Each jurisdiction has already been awarded $5,000 to support administrative costs, Friedman said.

The state council will meet every few months and has until August 2005 to present its two-year plan to the governor.

We'll spend a year looking at all these systems, and all these priorities, and say to the governor, this is what we're doing that seems to work and we need more of it; this is what we're doing that doesn't seem to work and we need to reconfigure, Friedman explained. All these recommendations, he can then use as a budgeting guide and a policy guide.

Measuring progress

To Sonner, the major challenge will be selling the idea to the public at large.

There's a need to show that the state government is sincere about this and that that's where we are going, he said, adding that it was unique to see the executive branch taking the lead in this area. It's usually handled mainly locally without a lot of assistance from the state government; I think it's highly significant that the state will be willing to work with the local jurisdictions to see to it that there are adequate facilities and better facilities.

Progress will be measured by looking at such things as completion of treatment programs, recidivism rates, caseloads and prison admissions, as well as anecdotal evidence, he said.

I think the people who will be on the ground and administering these programs - police officers, prosecutors, judges, probation officers - will give us some idea as to whether or not [the programs] are working, he notes.

And those people will likely be more than willing to voice an opinion.

We're trying to find meaningful alternatives to incarceration, says Judge George M. Lipman, of the District Court of Maryland for Baltimore City. Lipman is chairman of the Mental Health, Alcoholism and Addictions Committee of the Maryland Judicial Conference and a member of Sonner's state substance-abuse council. I think a lot of judges are looking for that, more than probation with standard outpatient treatment or incarceration. We want to expand those options.

Not everyone is willing to forego tough jail sentences, however. Sen. J. Robert Hooper, R-Harford, was one of those who opposed the legislation.

If we only smack their knuckles a little bit, it doesn't hurt so bad, said Hooper, who has hired ex-offenders in his role as owner of Harford Sanitation Services. They need to be [in jail] long enough to learn that they don't like the place.

Some substance abusers will leave their treatment meetings and head for the nearest bar, he said.

As long as they're clean two or three days ahead of time, it's not going to show up, he said. Someone needs to pull them in [for testing] more often.

Sonner, however, hopes that his longstanding beliefs as to what works will finally be borne out by experience.

I think it's a change in emphasis, that in the past, prosecutors and police have been attempting to do away with drug abuse primarily through punishment, and treatment has been pretty much incidental, he said. There's been a recognition that what we were doing was really insufficient and that we needed better coordination and some deference to the treatment people.

While he recognizes that the problem of substance abuse won't go away overnight, Sonner likens the government's duty in this area to the Hippocratic Oath.

The government has a responsibility not to injure, just as a doctor has a responsibility not to injure, he said. I do think it's a question of having policy follow experience and research, and that's where the experience and research has taken us - to a much more understanding role of what government can do and how treatment can work.

Tracking the numbers

The longer someone is in substance-abuse treatment, the better his or her chances of doing well, Peter F. Luongo, director of Maryland's Drug and Alcohol Abuse Administration, told the Drug and Alcohol Abuse Council at its inaugural meeting last month.

Luongo presented data from Fiscal Year 2003 showing that time in treatment not only reduces substance abuse but increases employment, and completion of treatment reduces crime arrest rates. He also presented data from three different substance abuse programs, showing variations in length of stay, completion of treatment, percent change in substance abuse and arrest rate.

This information, he said, should not be interpreted program by program; rather, the system should be evaluated as a whole.

If you try to interpret programs, you'd reach different conclusions and they'd be wrong, Luongo said, explaining why he believes the data screams for a systems approach. If a county only has outpatient programs, you can't compare it to a county that has all levels of care.

The presentation can be found at www.maryland-adaa.org.

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