for abuse by young people is so great that I don't want to take the chance on them using it, is what I am saying.

Mr. CORNWELL. Let's face it, they are using it.

Mr. EVANS. I understand they are using it.

Mr. CORNWELL. We want to hold that down to a minimum.

Mrs. ROSENBLOOM. What you want to teach them to do is not to abuse it.

Mr. EVANS. I am not sure that you are right.

Mrs. ROSENBLOOM. Teach them not to use it.

Mr. CORNWELL. We understand that is under consideration. Later on, maybe we will figure this out, and I wish you would get with us, because we would like to know, too.

Mr. EVANS. I think certainly you have the right to try to change those laws you disagree with. We recognize that. That is the reason we worked out the time for you to present your views.

Mr. CORNWELL. Thanks very much.

Mr. EVANS. We appreciate it.

Mr. Coughlin now has a question.

Mr. COUGHLIN. Are you aware of the statistics of the National Institute on Drug Abuse that 3 out of 10 highway fatalities are a result of drug use?

Mrs. ROSENBLOOM. Not necessarily marihuana, just drug use.

Mr. COUGHLIN. Drug use.

Mrs. ROSENBLOOM. I think half of all highway deaths are due to alcohol.

Mr. COUGHLIN. Does it bother you that 3 out of 10 are

Mrs. ROSENBLOOM. Absolutely. I wouldn't drive with anybody who seems inebriated in any way, nor will I drive

Mr. COUGHLIN. The alcohol can be identified in a traffic fatality. And, of course, drugs cannot, generally.

Mrs. ROSENBLOOM. Well, they are developing tests. There is a finger test where, you know, they run your hand to see, and there is a tongue test that they are working on also from marihuana.

Mr. EVANS. We appreciate your time.

Mrs. ROSENBLOOM. Thank you.

Mr. CORNWELL. Thank you very much.

Mr. EVANS. Deputy Wood and Mr. Owens?

Is Warren MacClendon here? I thought Mr. Wood might need Warren to back him up in some of his testimony.

Mr. WOOD. Could possibly.

Mr. EVANS. Our next witnesses are Deputy Sheriff Wood of Laurens County and Chief of the Dublin Police, Frank E. Owens.

Gentlemen, would you raise your right hand, please.

[Mr. Wood and Mr. Owens were sworn by Mr. Evans.]

Mr. EVANS. Mr. MacClendon, I asked that you be in here in case Mr. Wood does not give the proper response, that you could assist him. Mr. MACCLENDON. I will.

Mr. Evans. All right. If you gentlemen have prepared statements, you can give those first, and then we would have questions after that.

TESTIMONY OF PORTER WOOD, DEPUTY SHERIFF, LAURENS COUNTY AND FRANK E. OWENS, CHIEF OF POLICE, CITY OF DUBLIN, GA.

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I have a few remarks that I would like to make in the beginning.

Dublin is a town of approximately 17,000 people, located in Laurens County. At present, we have two investigators with the department. During the fourth quarter of 1979, which was October through December, these two officers worked 334 cases during that 3-month period.

During that same time, 13 of those cases were drug-related or drugarrest cases. In those 13 cases, those officers worked a case, made an arrest and brought the person to the court.

Now, my question is, when these officers are working these types of cases, they are overburdened with the amount of work that they have. A drug case in itself is completely different hours, the way you investigate a drug case, the time that is involved, the expertise involved. Therefore the normal and daily work of these officers almost prohibits them from working drug cases, because they do not have the time to spend, surveillance and these type of things, the equipment and that. They kept specifically on drug cases, rather than as the opposite of a burglary or robbery where the crime has already been committed, rather than attempting to be there when the crime is committed, as in the buy or sale.

A court calendar in Dublin is also another problem, if not only the area of drugs, but in general, the overall area. The many times we have people that are involved in drugs, involved in other illegal activities, that are out on bond, and actually violating the law several other times before the original case is brought to trial.

Now, the effect that this has on the young people in drug-abuse cases is probably the most serious effect of any. And what I am saying is it doesn't affect a robber or burglar the same way it would a drugabuse person. They see their friends arrested, charged with the drug violation. Yet, 3 days later they are back in school or back out on the street. And for the time being, they have won a victory. In other words, we are out, no big thing. And this is generally in the younger people, the attitude they take, whereas if the trial date could be worked into a little bit closer, shorter time frame, the punishment would be more relative to the crime.

I think this is something our young people have become disassociated to. And those are basically the remarks I wanted to make. And that is about it.

Mr. EVANS. Mr. Wood, you said you did or did not have an opening statement?

Mr. Wood. I do not have an opening statement, Mr. Evans.

Mr. EVANS. All right. Did you have any questions for these officers at this time?

Mr. COUGHLIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Information that the committee had received indicated that there was, particularly in Laurens County, a considerable backlog of drug

cases. That is, a great many of them were nolle prossed, I take it. In fact, one point, almost 300 cases were nolle prossed at one time.

Mr. WOOD. Yes, sir, approximately 300 cases were nolle prossed at one time, but not entirely drug cases. Since the time they were nolle prossed in January of 1979, of those 300 cases approximately 40 cases were drug-related cases. Some were multiple buys or numbers accounts. The reason for nolle pros was age of the case and witnesses, or by using undercover GBI agents, some of the cases date back as far as 1974. GBI, we're just using them for undercover agents, and they were contract agents. And from 1974 through 1979, these individuals were no longer employed with the State, for various reasons. They were employed maybe in other States.

And due to our backlog of cases in murder cases and stuff of this nature, along with the office we requested the judge to nolle pros these

cases.

Mr. COUGHLIN. Is there a reason why so many cases have to be nolle prossed, why they couldn't have been handled more expeditiously by the courts?

Mr. Wood. Yes, sir. Our superior court judge handles, I believe four counties. At the time we had only one district attorney. Now, we still have a district attorney and assistant DA. We still have a caseload, Laurens County, from law enforcement standpoint-I believe we have enough business for one judge, one full-time judge, just for our county. The court is once every 3 months, 1 week of superior court or criminal court, 1 week for civil cases. We may try three cases.

Mr. COUGHLIN. Have you requested additional judges?

Mr. WOOD. Yes; I believe we have a piece of legislation before the State at this time that possibly will end up with another judge. We operate in Laurens County in the State court system. In a superior court system, misdemeanors go to State, felonies go to superior court.

Mr. COUGHLIN. It seems both a waste of resources and a drain on law enforcement morale that renders ineffective any law enforcement efforts if you have situations where cases are nolle prossed in that kind of volume.

Mr. WOOD. Yes, sir, I agree with you. I started-I was employed by the sheriff's office in the year 1974. And a number of these cases I was directly involved with, or even worked on them a considerable bit.

Mr. COUGHLIN. I wouldn't think that would make you very encouraged to go out and enforce the law if when you did bring cases they were nolle prossed.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. EVANS. Mr. Wood, do you find that fewer cases are being made against mere possession of marihuana? In view of what you have just said, do law enforcement officials really enforce this law or is it more or less people being arrested for some other offense and then, if they find marihuana on them, they charge them with that, too?

Mr. WOOD. Yes, sir, there would be, as you indicated in the last part of the question. In 1974, when I first started to work for the Laurens County Sheriff's Department, a matchbox containing marihuana-it was headlined, so to speak. Now, we are not after that individual anymore; we are after the people-we call it, we will swap a minnow for a

bass-we are after bigger people. And we found out from using undercover agents with the GBI that these agents stay in 2 to 3 weeks, maybe a month at the most, for undercover work, and they end up with the street seller.

We are not getting to the big people. We are spending our money for the little street peddler. If we would get the big man off, the street peddlers would

Mr. EVANS. Well, in effect, aren't your individual police and sheriff's officers doing that by decreasing the emphasis on individual possession

cases?

Mr. WOOD. Yes, sir.

Mr. EVANS. But you can't avoid the fact if somebody commits a burglary and you arrest them and they have marihuana on them, that you charge them with that.

Mr. Wood. Yes, sir, we definitely do.

Mr. EVANS. You see, Mr. Wood, one of the points that was made by the previous panel was the fact that the FBI reports indicated that all these people had been arrested for possession of marihuana. I asked for a breakdown about a month ago-about 2 months agoof what the original arrest was for, and I found out that most of these cases were made for some offense other than marihuana and that marihuana was a charge that was ancilliary to the original arrest. That information was requested by the head of NIDA, Dr. Pollin. I just wondered if that is the situation as you find it, because I know that before I left Macon several years ago, mere possession of marihuana was almost totally ignored by the police department.

Mr. WOOD. Yes, sir, I agree with you.

Mr. EVANS. Is that true with your sheriff's department?

Mr. WOOD. Yes, sir.

Mr. EVANS. Is it true with your department? Do you go around arresting people for smoking pot unless it is absolutely flagrant, out in the open?

Mr. OWENS. No, sir. Approximately 70 percent of our cases have an original charge and marihuana is found as a result of that case.

Mr. EVANS. What type of charges do you make against people? What are the basic categories of charges?

Mr. OWENS. Traffic charges would be the first major offense, you know, the major group of offenses that we would have. We deal a lot more in traffic in the city, and when we stop a person for traffic, we know that they are under the influence of something-drugs or alcohol or whatever. And during that process, many times we find that they

Mr. EVANS. So that these people that we are talking about, who say that marihuana is not harmful or the use of it is not harmful are using it in such a way that it is very harmful to other people. We are not talking about something that they are exercising in their own homes or in a position where they would not be in a position to hurt someone else; is that the case?

Mr. OWENS. That is the case.

Mr. EVANS. Because if you are talking about liquor or you are talking about marihuana or any other drug, if they are using it improperly, then they are a danger to the rest of society; are they not?

Mr. OWENS. Yes, sir, that is correct.

Mr. WOOD. Mr. Evans, along the same lines, we followed a line of thought that as individuals, as law enforcement personnel, as taxpayers, as citizens, we are going to pay for the use of drugs either through crimes such as house burglaries, automobiles, accidents, insurance premiums—we are going to pay for it in a medication or through psychiatric treatment for these individuals, once the abuse gets so far along.

Our idea is to spend the money on law enforcement. They are better acquainted with the individuals that are involved with the drugs, but due to finances and cooperation of different agencies, this is our handicap in combating the drug problem in our local area.

Mr. EVANS. Well, you have heard the alternative stated over and over. And while we are not trying to determine the feasibility of doing this, are the people from CAMP correct in saying that we should legalize marihuana for anybody 18 years old or older? Is that the way to handle it? Is that the way to remove it from our children? Do you think that is a valid way to do it?

Mr. WOOD. No, sir. Personal opinion of mine definitely is not. In the last year in Laurens County we made an investigation on marihuana that was grown in this county. I have two photographs. These were plants that were grown locally. I don't know the grade of it-but we are not geared up, as agricultural people in Laurens County, to grow marihuana instead of peanuts, cotton, and corn, and soybeans. This plant is something we don't want in the county, and it grows real well in Laurens County, due to the climate, the soil. And those plants, I believe, are almost 13 feet 2 inches, the taller one. One is taller than the other one. And I think it was something like 70 to 80 pounds, all totaled, located along with one of those plants.

Mr. ÉVANS. May we submit these photographs for the record, please? Mr. Wood. Yes, sir, I brought them to give you. [The photographs referred to follow:]