THE POT WARS GO ON

Tony Knowles is the young, dashing Democratic governor of Alaska, and he
cannot like it to be treated as an old fogey, which is what is happening.
One aggressor writes in the Anchorage Daily News on Monday asking the
governor to grow up on the question of Proposition 5. If the proposition is
carried, marijuana would be legal in Alaska, as it is in the Netherlands and
(de facto) in France, and prospectively in Switzerland.

The writer titled his message to the governor, "Alaska adults can decide if
pot is good for them." Now that formulation is unsafe. Alaska adults can't
decide whether pot is good for them; they can decide whether to take pot,
never mind whether it's good for them or isn't. The position of the
Anchorage Daily News article is, quite simply, that if you want to smoke pot
in Alaska, all you have to do is buy it on the black market, where it is
readily available. The alternative, under Proposition 5, would be to buy it
from licensed sellers, paying a royalty to the state exchequer, which would
oversee questions of quality and, of course, distribution. Kids could always
buy it even if it were proscribed, but then kids can do anything, including
smoke tobacco, consume liquor and procreate.

And now hear this: Proposition 5 goes further, creating a commission to
examine reparations for people whose assets have been seized in the ongoing
travesty on civil rights, which authorizes confiscation of property, and
often encourages it by permitting such property to meander over into police
treasuries.

In Utah, there is a similar plebiscite before the voters, called Initiative
B, the Utah Property Protection Act. There is high dudgeon in Utah
protesting the long arm of George Soros, the billionaire who has made an
alleviation of the drug-penalty laws a cause. His motives in doing so are,
not persuasively, explained by an associate, Ethan Nadelmann, who heads up
the Lindesmith Center, a drug-policy research institute in New York. It's as
simple as this, says Nadelman: Soros' father was a Jewish lawyer in
Naziland. He shielded his 14-year-old son by changing his name and having
him pose as a godson of a government official. The boy had then to accompany
his guardian, who went about confiscating the homes of Hungarian Jews sent
to Auschwitz. This (we are told) permanently sensitized Soros to the dangers
of statist usurpations.

Many Utah lawmakers acknowledge the extremity of the state's law-enforcement
establishment, but insist that moderated behavior should be an instrument of
the legislature, not plebiscitary eruptions financed by a billionaire on the
loose. Local supporters of Initiative B comment that human rights are not of
mere parochial concern. They point out that the Mormon community in Utah
felt no compunction about lobbying against gay marriages in Hawaii.

What's inching along, with tortured slowness, is a reaction against the
excesses of the marijuana laws. Critics of moderation correctly point out
that there is a difference between a reform of the marijuana laws designed
to permit patients to get relief from marijuana, and flat-out legalization.
Dr. Herbert Kleber, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University and
medical director of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse,
makes the point that there is less reason to put medical marijuana on the
ballot than the legalization of it. "They really are two totally different
issues. One is in many ways a political issue, but the other is a scientific
issue. Marijuana for medicinal purposes should not be decided by referendum.
Would you have had a referendum on penicillin for pneumonia?"

But that license, acknowledged and approved in California, Hawaii, Oregon,
Washington, Arizona, Alaska, Maine and D.C., is being used to propel the
more general sanctions, as under Proposition 5 in Alaska. California's
Mendocino County, upholding the tradition that Californians will always --
somewhere, somehow -- identify themselves with extremes, has scheduled a
county initiative that would permit anyone to grow marijuana anywhere in
Mendocino. There is cultural attraction to the idea, in part because
Mendocino is a fertile area for the best pot -- or so, I hasten to comment,
I have heard.

Although the subject comes up, it certainly will not appear on the agenda of
either of the political parties. A politician running for national office
might as well acclaim Arafat as sanction the legalization of pot. In little
enclaves of intelligence and courage one spots the exceptions: Gov. Gary
Johnson of New Mexico, and (former) Mayor Kurt Schmoke of Baltimore. But all
that can be said with absolute confidence about them is that they will never
run for national office. Even with George Soros behind them.

Write to William Buckley at Universal Press Syndicate: 4520 Main St., Kansas
City, Mo. 64111.