BUSH AND DRUG WAR

Your Dec. 27 editorial, "Bush's executive pardons strike a different
chord", said George W. Bush's holiday pardons spoke volumes, and indeed
they did.

While President Clinton did issue some very questionable pardons in his
waning days in office, he also took a very minor stab at doing the right
thing by pardoning a handful of nonviolent drug offenders sentenced to long
mandatory minimum sentences for minor involvement with illegal drugs.

In addition, in a Rolling Stone magazine interview released as he left
office, Clinton called for decriminalizing possession of small amounts of
marijuana, and acknowledged that many drug sentences "are too long for
nonviolent offenders".

Clinton certainly was no leader on drug policy, but his policies were a
"velvet fist" in comparison to the iron-fisted drug policies George W. Bush
has embraced. Bush has ratcheted up the drug war, with Attorney General
Ashcroft sending militarized Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents
into California medical marijuana dispensaries, handcuffing and arresting
seriously ill Americans and stealing their medicine. In addition, the White
House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) has launched a massive
disinformation campaign trying to paint marijuana as a substance more
dangerous than cocaine or heroin, and the office's head, drug czar John
Walters, illegally campaigned against state drug policy reform ballot
initiatives on the taxpayer's dime. Meanwhile, virtually every Western
government is running headlong 180 degrees in the opposite direction and
treating substance use as the public health problem it is.

Bush's stingy use of the pardon process is just another example of the
emptiness of his "compassionate conservative" agenda. There are many
thousands of prisoners who merit pardons, including medical marijuana
patients and people of conscience who cultivated marijuana for patients in
states which have legalized it, like a 70-year old couple in California who
are serving 30-month sentences in federal prisons, who also lost their
property and social security benefits for their humanitarian efforts.

Another Californian, Bryan Epis, a patient himself, was recently sentenced
to a 10-year mandatory minimum for growing marijuana for sick and dying
Californians. It says a lot about Bush's priorities that he is entirely
comfortable with the fact that people like Epis are taking up jail space
better used for violent offenders or some of the corporate criminals who
stole from Americans who are getting a pass because they gave big donations
to Bush and other GOP candidates.

Gary Storck Madison