senate Bill 1473: creates harsher penalties for those convicted of trafficking

Lawmakers approved harsher penalties for the sale and manufacture of methamphetamines. They also limited access to some over the counter drugs used to make crystal meth. We’ll look at what the new laws will do.

Transcript:

>> Michael Grant:
Tonight on "Horizon," an initiative is launched to limit marriage to heterosexuals. We'll talk to a supporter of the effort to prevent gay marriage in Arizona. Lawmakers approved harsher penalties for the sale and manufacture of methamphetamines. They also limited access to some over the counter drugs used to make crystal meth. We'll look at what the new laws will do. Plus, "The Arizona Capitol Times" newspaper is sold. We'll look at the legacy of the publisher whose grandfather started covering the legislature almost 100 years ago.

>> Michael Grant:
Good evening, I'm Michael Grant. When voters head to the polls in November 2006, they may have a hot button issue to vote on. An initiative announced today would ban gay marriage in Arizona. A group called "protect marriage Arizona" held a series of press conferences throughout the state. The group wants to amend the constitution to limit marriage to one man and one woman.

>> Lynn Stanley:
I agree to chair this campaign because I am concerned about the efforts of activists judges to redefine the institution of marriage. The Protect Marriage Arizona Coalition is a grassroots response to a nationwide pact on marriage. We think that Arizona citizens should be allowed to vote on our state's marriage policy.

>> Michael Grant:
Joining me now is Cathi Herrod, a spokesperson for protect marriage Arizona. (Missing portion) Hello Cathi. How many signatures do you need and will you use paid petition circulators to collect it?

>> Cathi Herrod:
The exact number is 183,917. So were saying 184,000 ballot signatures. We will do what it takes to get enough signatures to get it on the November 2006 ballot. We are launching it as a grassroots effort for now, and we'll address that issue as we get to it.

>> Michael Grant:
You've got plenty of time obviously, about fourteen months. Still, it has been historically very difficult to do these kinds of efforts with only volunteer petition circulators.

>> Cathi Herrod:
You know were not making any plans or statements now, we'll start with volunteer signature gatherers, and we'll see how it goes. We expect a lot of support from Arizona's initiative.

>> Michael Grant:
Cathi we got a state statue that defines marriage between a man and a woman and is confirmed by our courts. Why do we need a constitutional amendment?

>> Cathi Herrod:
The reason we need it is for one, we are not done with the court cases that we are going to have on this issue. For example, we haven't seen a court case in our state yet. We have a same sex couple that was married legally in Massachusetts, moved to Arizona and tried to have Arizona recognize their same sex marriage license from another state. So we anticipate further legal challenges to our state defensive marriage. Plus, we have our court changing. The simple example of getting a new supreme court justice on the Arizona supreme court over the next couple of months could swing the balance and we do not know how the court is going to rule on this in the future. So, the only way to legally protect marriage and maintain the status of marriage is by doing a state constitutional amendment.

>> Michael Grant:
Let me take your reference to Massachusetts. That is a problem, and if you perceive it as a problem with the full faith and credit provisions of the United States constitution. That can't be changed by the state constitution.

>> Cathi Herrod:
Well, we would say we need both. We would say we need a marriage protection amendment to the United States Constitution, and state marriage amendments. That's what's going on throughout the country. You have a move in congress to do a federal amendment, and you have the move in the states to the state constitution amendments. So it is really a two prong approach to protecting the status of marriage. So that whether it is a state court judge or a federal judge that we have the strongest legal protection we can to maintain the status of marriage.

>> Michael Grant:
Let me read to you the last clause in the complete text to the proposed amendment. It's only one sentence. "It's no legal status for unmarried persons shall be created or recognized by this state or its political subdivisions that is similar to that of marriage. Is the intent here to prohibit a state or city from granting health care benefits to example, gay couples.

>> Cathi Herrod:
Well, to the extent, the language you said is says that the state or political subdivisions cannot grant legal status to unmarried persons. So to the extent to which partner benefits similar to other benefits to grant the status to unmarried persons, then it would not be allowed under this amendment. It is important to know why that is an issue. Marriage has been granted benefits by society by the government because marriage provides benefits to society. So in turn, society has given marriage status a special place in our lives because marriage provided benefits to society. So that is the intent of this to maintain one man one women marriage because of its foundational benefits to society and we maintain that place.

>> Michael Grant:
If I have two people though caring for eachother regardless of sex, don't I have the same sort of building block.

>> Cathi Herrod:
Well, studies show that it is one man one woman marriages that benefit society and is the building block of society. So that is our focus on maintaining that. We are starting to get social science data from other countries that granting legal status to unmarried persons does not provide that building block to society.

>> Michael Grant:
To the extent to which I am trying to create small blocks, so that for example the government doesn't have to provide resources that it might otherwise have to focus, because one person is caring for another person. Is that the same as male, male, female, female?

>> Cathi Herrod:
Well, individuals can have contracts to protect themselves if they want to. This is about government and about where the place marriage is going to be defined. And the intent of this initiative is to let the people to decide. Take it to the voters and let the people decide how marriage is going to be defined in our state and our country and not let the judges decide. where it might otherwise ...this conference said is what you're really trying to do is dictate religious belief to the people by this amendment. What do you say to that?

>> Michael Grant:
Former lawmaker Steve said after the press conference that what you are really trying to do is dictate a religious belief on the people.

>> Cathi Herrod:
This is about -- marriage has had a place in our laws for many, many years. This is not simply about religious beliefs. Its about marriage being the building block of society and what -- because marriage benefits society, society benefits marriage. That's what this is about.

>> Michael Grant:
All right. Cathi Herrod, thank you for joining us.

>> Cathi Herrod:
Thank you.

>> Michael Grant:
A bill that cracks down on the smuggling and making of a dangerous drug sits on the governor's desk. Senate Bill 1473 creates harsher penalties for those convicted of trafficking, making or selling the street drug crystal meth. A first offense would carry a presumptive sentence of 10 years in prison, a second and subsequent offense 15 years. It also eliminates probation as a sentencing option. Senate Bill 1473 would make the manufacturing of meth a Class 2 felony if a child is present and physically harmed by that process. The bill prohibits retailers from selling to one person more than three packages of medicine containing the ingredients ephedrine or pseudoephedrine. Senate Bill 1473 also requires the Department of Health Services to look into a successful education and prevention program to address the problem. Joining me is the sponsor of the bill, Senator Barbara Leff. Also here is Representative Tom O'Halleran. He also sponsored bills that also targeted crystal meth. Welcome to you both. Congratulations on completion of the session.

>> Barbara Leff:
Finally.

>> Michael Grant:
In a timely way. That's right. Well, 20 days, give or take.

>> Barbara Leff:
We may be back.

>> Michael Grant:
Senator Leff, let me go to the sort of central issue here and we'll get back to some of the details in just a minute. I think you felt that the more restrictive bill concerning pharmaceutical sales was misdirected. You felt that the better approach was to target the meth that's coming from Mexico. Why?

>> Barbara Leff:
Not just the meth that's coming from Mexico. I felt it's best to target meth cookers, meth abusers, meth distributors, meth traffickers. That's the difference. I thought that with the limited resources we have, I would rather spend those police resources going after people who are cooking meth and distributing meth and let them know that in Arizona meth is not going to be tolerated, that you will go to jail, you will not get probation, there's a chance you won't get bail, that in this state cooking and selling meth is not acceptable.

>> Michael Grant:
Now, given the success, though, of the -- let's call it dispensing-type legislation in Oklahoma, for example, why don't you crackdown on both sides?

>> Barbara Leff:
There's no proof, really, that it was the logbook that created the decrease in meth labs in Oklahoma. They also had a tremendous amount of police activity at the time, actually a couple police officers had been killed in Oklahoma and they really stepped up their enforcement. There's nothing to say the logbook itself created the -- stopped any cooking. My belief is that with the logbook, when you are going in and asking people to sign their name and their birth date and their signature to a logbook, the people that are going to be using that logbook and using Sudafed products for cooking meth are not going to use their own identities, they're just going to sign a logbook with a false I.D., and the hundreds and thousands of normal people just trying to get a Claritin-D or Advil cold and sinus or anything else would be the ones that would be happy to sign this personal information away. My other concern was under the Oklahoma model those products could only be sold in a pharmacy. So every convenience store, every supermarket, every place that didn't have a pharmacy 24 hours a day would not be able to sell any of these products, not just straight Sudafed.

>> Michael Grant:
Representative O'Halleran, the legislation you were backing, I think, would have cracked down on both sides. Why don't you think Senator Leff has some meritorious arguments there?

>> Tom O'Halleran:
The first thing is the Oklahoma model has been proven to work and one of the biggest ways it's proven to work is all the surrounding states by a vote in their legislatures by 528 yes's and 0 no's have stated that they want to go to the Oklahoma model along with five other states.

>> Michael Grant:
When you say surrounding states, you mean, like, for example, Texas --

>> Tom O'Halleran:
Kansas, Missouri. These are the states that all the cooking people went to after Oklahoma put in their logbook and some of the other provisions that were in my bill. Now, to some of the other issues, the Oklahoma model does work. Every attorney general in the Western United States wants that program in their states. We have -- Senator Leff had mentioned about convenience stores. The convenience stores still would have had the gel caps, which is the same product, and the liquid form, which is the same product, as the caplets. So there was not going to be a limited amount -- ability for people to take care of their issues in those times when they couldn't get to a pharmacy.

>> Michael Grant:
Senator Leff, I always thought that was a pretty good point to those who were saying that this was going to be just a ton of hassle for people who had a cold because other forms of it that I could buy were being left not behind the counter.

>> Barbara Leff:
Actually, it's not -- it's not true that everybody can use just liquids or gel caps. There are probably 400 products out there, and for every single person, especially in the combination products, what you can use, what works for your body, is different. If you need Claritin-D, that was one that was going to be locked up. If you needed Advil Cold & Sinus, that's one of the ones that was going to be locked up. The different variations of what they put in those affect the body differently. In my family alone, all four of use something different when we have colds or allergies. I need to make one comment about states around Oklahoma. The states around Arizona have not passed the logbook provision. It's been introduced in every state and it's been taken out. Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and California have not chosen to the logbook. I believe part of it is because we're a border state. You mentioned earlier about the meth coming up from Mexico. I think part of it is that we need to deal with the meth that's coming up from Mexico and put our resources into stopping those traffickers. They have found the superlabs in Mexico, when they've done busts on those labs over the border, they're finding sudaphedrine products from China and India and Mexico, they're not finding it from the United States. It's cheaper. I believe all the border states understand the need to go after the enforcement and making the enforcement so strong people realize they're not getting out of jail if they do this.

>> Michael Grant:
If you've got limited resources and you're a border state, what about the argument that you focus on the stuff coming across the border because it's the larger problem?

>> Tom O'Halleran:
You focus on a comprehensive approach. You deal with it across the board. Arizona is not unique as a state. Oklahoma had 80% of its methamphetamine drugs coming from Mexico. We also do. Colorado and Utah are not border states. Their attorney generals want the Oklahoma model. Law enforcement throughout our state wants the Oklahoma model. They understand the consequences of what's occurring. Have we had a reduction in Arizona of laboratories? Yes. Have we had a more sophisticated cooking process out there? Yes. They are now breaking up their laboratories and only coming together with the equipment when they have to do a cooking and then split up again. They have adapted to the changing environment. Pseudoephedrine must be taken away from them, and being able to go out and buy three packs or 9 grams at a time is not going to stop the smurfing issues out there. There is no I.D. shown, there is no logbook. There is no way of deterring the process. You saw something on Channel 12 the other day about the dentists and the look of the mouth of these methamphetamine addicts. Druggists and others know what they're dealing with. When you tell a person they have to go up to a counter, interrelationship with another human being, be shown on a camera, because most pharmacy counters have cameras, a lot of the major Target, Wal-Mart, many of the major firms are going to that. It must be behind the pharmacy counter.

>> Michael Grant:
Doesn't at least placing it behind a counter, even though without the logbook and other restrictions that you had, accomplish some of that chill?

>> Tom O'Halleran:
It doesn't stop the smurfing. I went and bought --

>> Michael Grant:
What's smurfing?

>> Tom O'Halleran:
Smurfing is going around and buying the product, stealing the product. It will slow down on the theft of the product. I congratulate the senator for that part changing the bill to do that. But the fact is when you can buy three our four packs at a time, I was able to buy enough pseudoephedrine for an ounce of methamphetamine in 20 minutes at stores, and that's under this type of a bill.

>> Barbara Leff:
Every single time they have busted a meth lab they have found piles of fake I.D.s. So the person who is going to go from store to store could certainly use a fake I.D. as they go from store to store. The other thing that we have found is that a lot of people are bringing pills up from Mexico, the little red Sudafed pills can come up from Mexico in bulk and cook here if they choose to cook here. They can be ordered over the internet. There are a lot of ways to get ahold of a product if you want to do something illegal. But to make hundreds of thousands of people sign a book and give private information in that book that could be stolen at any point, it's possibly someone could use a camera phone and take a picture of that logbook, and you have somebody's name and their birth date and signature. That could easily be used to increase identity theft. That was my other concern with the logbook.

>> Tom O'Halleran:
The Walgreen's I deal with has over 40 pieces of information on me from my checking account number to my driver's license number to the doctor I go to. That information is behind the counter already. So the idea that the name and date of birth of a person is going to be something that's going to be used for identity theft is just not right.

>> Michael Grant:
Representative O'Halleran, let me shift to another subject. I think you think the child endangerment provisions of the bill did not go far enough?

>> Tom O'Halleran:
The child endangerment provisions have a problem in that it has to show physical injury. Isn't it enough that a child is in a meth lab that physical injury, then there's the third-party issue, and that's an issue also. But a child just by being in that laboratory is inhaling methamphetamine, and the proof of that is going to be a very hard to deal with in a court of law.

>> Barbara Leff:
I think we need to clarify this. If you are cooking in the presence of a child and there is no physical damage, you get 20 years in prison and no possibility of probation and perhaps no bail. If you are cooking in the presence of a child and there is physical harm to that child, that can be shown, that is life imprisonment. That is very severe --

>> Michael Grant:
Why not presume harm, though? I think that's Representative O'Halleran's point.

>> Barbara Leff:
It's 20 years in prison when you're presuming harm. Still 20 years in prison, no probation if you are cooking at all in the presence of a child as opposed to life imprisonment. Actually we talked to the county attorney, and the fact is we want to make sure the laws we put in place will be upheld by a court and we were told what we would need to do to make sure they wouldn't be thrown out as excessive. 20 years of prison is a pretty serious prison term.

>> Michael Grant:
General agreement on strengthening the penalties though and also, for example, ruling out probation?

>> Tom O'Halleran:
I think the penalty strengthening is mandatory, and -- but the bottom line is that it's not enough. We need a comprehensive hard approach across the board. Penalties, we have a death penalty for murder. Guess what? We have murders. These people are psychotic. They have holes in their brains. They have their teeth falling out. They have shown time and time again they don't care for the people around them or anybody else. They care about being able to get ahold of the drug. This drug is the worst drug that we have seen in America so far. And we need to take strong action against it.

>> Michael Grant:
Almost out of time. You get the last word.

>> Barbara Leff:
That's exactly my point. We need to put all our resources in going after the people who are cooking meth, trafficking meth, dealing meth. That's why we need to go after. Putting resources into spending time tracking people who are just trying to take care of colds and allergies makes no sense to me.

>> Michael Grant:
You willing to revisit if this doesn't seem to be the silver bullet?

>> Barbara Leff:
I don't know that I would ever think the logbook is the proper way to go. I certainly am willing to revisit other ideas on dealing with this problem. This problem is absolutely severe.

>> Michael Grant:
Senator Barbara Leff, thank you very much for joining us. Representative Tom O'Halleran, good to see you again.

>> Tom O'Halleran:
Thank you.

>> Michael Grant:
For almost 100 years, capitol insiders have related on the Creighton family to let them know what's going on at the Arizona Legislature. This month Ned and Diana Creighton sold their company which publishes the "Arizona Capitol Times." Paul Atkinson reports the Creightons may be leaving capitol but their legacy will live on.

>> Reporter Paul Atkinson:
With a staff of two dozen, the "Arizona Capitol Times" publishes a weekly newspaper, daily legislative report and various reference publications. It covers the political process at the state capitol but doesn't play politics with its coverage.

>> Diana Creighton:
We think of it as community newspaper for the capitol. By that -- because of that, we've never had an editorial page because we haven't wanted to take a position because our readers are from both sides of the aisle, both sides of the political spectrum, or all sides, and they just want us to report stories that interest them.

>> Reporter Paul Atkinson:
The Capitol Times does more than report stories. It also offers a state of the art online bill tracking system called LOLA available only by subscription.

>> Diana Creighton:
We were one of the first online services in the nation because our customers kept saying, Well, what I would like to see -- why can't we get this on computer so I don't have to rearrange it to get it all in the order I want it in.

>> Reporter Paul Atkinson:
The program was developed by Ned Creighton whose grandfather started providing legislative updates in 1906.

>> Ned Creighton:
He would send a wire about what the Territorial Legislature was doing to these interests, the copper industry and the rail industry. They obviously had exposure here in Arizona and they wanted to know what was going on. So my grand dad would send those wires from the lobby of the old Adams Hotel downtown.

>> Reporter Paul Atkinson:
Creighton's father began helping out around World War II and added a newspaper in 1946. Ned began reporting for the paper in 1966 and became publisher a few years later.

>> Ned Creighton:
I got a phone call. My dad had a heart attack. So I went over to his house, lived over on Wilder Road, and he was on a stretcher being carried out to the ambulance, and he looked up at me, and he said -- this is ridiculous -- he said, "Make sure you get the Report out." It was like a movie line. And I thought, sure, I'll get the report out, no problem. I came down, and he was out of commission, then, for quite a while. The heart attack did not kill him. That's when I learned how to run this business.

>> Reporter Paul Atkinson:
Ned was the ultimate one-man band turning out a daily legislative report and a weekly newspaper all by himself.

>> Diane Smith:
When I started in the chief clerk's office in 1979, that's when I first became acquainted with Ned, and he would come in and pick up all the information that he utilized to send out to all of his subscribers, and he was always dedicated, hard working, very -- there until 2:00, 3:00 in the morning many nights, not like nowadays where we meet once in a while late at night. There were a lot of late nights. His dedication was phenomenal.

>> Diana Creighton:
He used to come in on the weekends and very early in the morning. He's an early bird. So he would be in here when it was dark, like 4:30 or 5:00, and he would listen to opera. And he loves Puccini. So during the legislative session, and even sometimes during the legislative session, he would close his door and crank up the Puccini and start writing legislative bills. That was one way he kept everything else out and focused his mind and, yet, he read every bill.

>> Paul Atkinson:
Diana Creighton came to work at the paper after raising their three children. She started out writing summaries of attorney general opinions.

>> Ned Creighton:
Then she said, "I bet we can sell advertising this paper." This paper never had advertising except public notice advertising and really only one main client for public notice advertising. It was a much smaller operation than it is today. And I thought, display advertising in a specialty newspaper this size? Well, let's see. She did it.

>> Reporter Paul Atkinson:
Diana became president of the company and helped expand its operations. But after three generations and 99 years of covering the legislature, the Creightons sold the paper to Dolan Media, a company they say has the same commitment to quality journalism.

>> Diana Creighton:
Sad thing for us is that we're going to be leaving all of our staff, who we know very well and like very much and who have really helped create this, and we're going to be leaving these clients after a time you know clients so well they become your friends and that's the way it is in business, I think. So those are the things we'll miss. Our kids are not -- this is a third-generation family business, and not many last past three generations, our children are interested in other things, are in other places, and so it seemed like this is just the right time to do it, and it's -- we leave it with some sorrow, but also with a great deal of good feeling about the hands it's in now. We think it's in good hands.

>> Ned Creighton:
There's no doubt in my mind that in two years this place is going to be much bigger and more useful than it is now. No question about it.

>> Reporter Paul Atkinson:
The "Arizona Capitol Times" may become bigger and better, but it will be without Ned Creighton and his vast legislative knowledge.

>> Karen Fullenwide:
It worries me that we don't have him here now to bounce ideas off of, to say, "Do you remember what happened in 1984?" or something like that. So that we will really miss.

>> Reporter Paul Atkinson:
Not to worry. Over the years, Ned filled an entire wall with tidbits of knowledge, information you won't find anywhere else.

>> Ned Creighton:
We had to fill the paper with editorial material, and we didn't have the horses to write those stories then, so we created all these boxes of information to fill the paper with editorial material, and they turned out to be really valuable all by themselves because nobody else pays any attention to this stuff. It will put most folks into a coma, but should you need to know who vetoed the most bills or how many propositions were on the ballot in 1936, and how many of them passed, or what is the general trend in propositions for, we can tell you. We can tell you anything.

>> Reporter Paul Atkinson:
The sale of the Capitol Times is not just another statistic, another business sold. For many at the state capitol, the paper is a tremendous body of knowledge and the Creightons, its heart and soul.

>>> Merry Lucero:
Requirements for passing the AIMS test may be a little easier because of a vote by the State Board of Education as well as a bill passed by state lawmakers. Good or bad, you decide. Plus, May is motorcycle safety awareness month. Find out how you can be safer on the road whether you are on a motorcycle or not. Wednesday on "Horizon."

>> Michael Grant:
Thursday we're going to take a closer look at that U.S. Supreme Court decision on the sale of wine and its potential impact on Arizona. And then Friday, please don't miss the Journalists' Roundtable when journalists join me to talk about the week's news events. Thank you very much for joining us on this Tuesday evening. I'm Michael Grant. Hope you have a great one. Good night.