OTHER STATES FASTER AT REFORMING DRUG LAWS

While New Mexico's governor has taken a lead among elected officials
calling for an end to the War on Drugs, other states are making more
headway with real reform -- thanks mostly to ballot initiatives that allow
voters to circumvent their legislatures.

Five of seven drug-law proposals on states' Nov. 7 ballots met with voter
approval. The initiatives include measures to legalize medical marijuana,
to require treatment -- not incarceration -- for nonviolent drug offenders
and to change civil asset-forfeiture laws.

"The public is really quite a bit ahead of the politicians on most of those
issues," said Katharine Huffman, director of the New Mexico Drug Policy
Project.

"Things that politicians consider too hot to touch, when the public has the
opportunity to deal with it directly, they're perfectly willing to take it
on and to move forward."

Since 1996, 17 of 19 proposed initiatives and referenda across the country
have passed in favor of drug-policy reform, according to The Lindesmith
Center -- Drug Policy Foundation.

Yet Gov. Gary Johnson has taken a political drubbing on the controversial
issue from Democratic legislators and even many fellow Republicans.

Johnson says that drugs should be viewed as an issue of public health and
that crime-and-order approaches have only amplified the social costs of
drug problems. Johnson also thinks marijuana should be legal -- an opinion
that has made him the butt of more than a few "what's he been smoking" jokes.

The Legislature's political pulse on the issue will be critical in
determining if Johnson has any luck pushing drug-law reforms in the
legislative session that begins Jan. 16.

Johnson's comeback in public-opinion polls -- after an initial slump when
he began talking about drugs last year -- should help his cause, Huffman said.

Also, progressive drug initiatives across the nation might "increase the
comfort level of New Mexico legislators," she said, "that they're not
striking out in some radical, new direction, but instead are moving in the
direction that many other states are moving."

In the ballot initiatives approved Nov. 7, Nevada and Colorado joined seven
other states, plus the District of Columbia, in making marijuana legal for
medical use. The drug has been shown to relieve symptoms from cancer
treatment, multiple sclerosis and AIDS-related wasting syndrome.

Hawaii's medical-marijuana law -- passed by that state's legislature, not
through voter initiative -- will likely be a model for efforts next year to
revive New Mexico's dormant medical-marijuana program.

The New Mexico program was the first of its kind when passed by law in
1978, but it is no longer considered feasible to administer and has not
been funded since 1986.

Also this month, ballot initiatives in Oregon and Utah put a legal stop to
a practice that allowed police to seize and sell assets of drug-crime
suspects without proof of guilt.

Now, police and prosecutors must establish that the seized property was
involved in a crime. And the proceeds from seizures no longer fall into
police budgets; they go to public education and drug treatment.

The most sweeping reform initiative came in California, where 61 percent of
voters approved Proposition 36, which requires treatment, not jail, for
drug possession or use.

Proponents call the measure a major turning point in the get-tough
mentality that has pervaded state and national approaches to drugs. The
initiative provides $ 120 million a year to pay for expanded drug
treatment, along with job and literacy training and family counseling.

The treatment-first measure is expected to divert 24,000 nonviolent
offenders and 12,000 parole violators into treatment programs each year,
saving more than $ 200 million in incarceration costs, according to a
legislative analysis.

A similar measure, Proposition 200, passed in Arizona in 1996. A report by
Arizona's Administrative Office of the Courts found the law saved the state
$ 2.5 million in fiscal year 1998, diverted 551 adults from state prison
that year and brought more substance-abuse "treatment capacity" to every
Arizona county.

"The Arizona law that mandated treatment and made incarceration illegal has
shown the rest of the nation that treatment works, by saving money and
lowering drug use," said Jacqueline Cooper, a public defender in
Albuquerque who is lobbying the New Mexico Legislature to lower penalties
for drug possession and street-level sales.

Cooper said an addict arrested twice for selling single rocks of crack
cocaine ends up serving more prison time -- a mandatory 18 years -- than a
person convicted of second-degree murder in New Mexico.

"The war on drugs has distorted our reason," she said.