WORLD LEADERS ON DOPE

Right Joins Left In Call For An End To The Drug War

The American drug war may yet grind on, but one by one, the troops are
hiking out. Right-wingers like Jesse Ventura, Gary Johnson, Dan Quayle,
William F. Buckley, and George Schultz have all voiced support for either
ending the costly campaign of interdiction and imprisonment, or at least
decriminalizing pot.

Through the years, in statements little-noted or splashed onto front pages,
they've aligned themselves with leaders around the world, all standing in
unlikely opposition to the frat-boy chief commander in the White House.
President Bush shows no sign of yielding, instead choosing to harden his
stance. In May, announcing the appointment of a drug czar who makes John
Ashcroft look like a hippie, Bush thundered, "John Walters and I believe
the only humane and compassionate response to drug use is a moral refusal
to accept it. We emphatically disagree with those who favor drug legalization."

These days, that means disagreeing with a lengthening list of international
heavyweights--former presidents of the United States, current presidents of
Latin American countries, legislators, governors, high-ranking judges, and
law enforcement officials. Not that all of them favor outright
legalization--most don't--but each has broached the possibility of relaxing
the laws.

Two weeks ago, as the U.S. Supreme Court shot down medical marijuana like
Christian missionaries over Peru, the Canadian Parliament was questioning
whether soft drugs should be decriminalized. "It's time to be bold,"
lawmaker Derek Lee told the Ottawa Citizen. "Everything has to be on the
table."

Bush finds himself hemmed in by opinion south of the border as well, where
some of his strongest allies in free trade break radically with his
policies on drugs. President Vicente Fox of Mexico, for one, assures the
Bush administration he will be an obedient, merciless drug warrior, while
he tells his own country's newspapers that someday humanity will recognize
universal drug legalization as the best course.

A parade of brutal statistics has long made clear the merit of Fox's
legalize-it zeal. According to the National Organization for the Reform of
Marijuana Laws, police in 1998 arrested 682,885 Americans for marijuana
offenses, more than the number for all violent crimes combined. After eight
years of Bill Clinton, a supposed progressive who could have provided
relief, some 450,000 drug offenders sat behind bars--a total almost equal
to the entire U.S. prison population in 1980. The president who later told
Rolling Stone he believed small amounts of pot should be decriminalized
spent his terms fueling a multibillion-dollar escalation of the drug war,
in which people were killed in raids of the wrong homes and constitutional
rights were shredded. On average, the Lindesmith Center reports, a federal
offender in the Clinton era drew twice as much time for drugs as for
manslaughter.

The Drug Policy Foundation calculates that in 1999, the feds spent $1.7
billion to guard America's borders and coasts--$17,700 per mile--only to
have 70 percent of the coke and 90 percent of the heroin make it through.
Drug use continues to climb, with some 72 million Americans believed to
have tried pot.

While the U.S. continues its self-destructive orgy of arrests and wasted
money, other parts of the world move forward. The Swiss government has
endorsed a plan to legalize pot and hash consumption and allow some shops
to sell cannabis. Belgium allows people to grow pot for personal use. The
Netherlands allows coffee houses to sell marijuana. Portugal, Spain, and
Italy punish the use of any drug (including heroin and coke) with only an
administrative sanction, such as a fine.

Britain has loosened its laws a tiny bit, allowing low-level marijuana
offenses to be immediately expunged from arrest records. In an effort to
control the damage from opiate addiction, Australia has opened the world's
largest heroin-injecting room in Sydney.

But it's in the regions most wracked by narco-violence that the cry for
legalization rings most clear. Having been shot in the neck by a police
officer thought to be acting under orders from drug lords, Patricio
Martinez Garcia, governor of the Mexican state of Chihuahua, told El
Universal in March that he believed a proposal for legalization must be
considered. "[B]ecause if the war is going to continue being lost, with the
deterioration of the life of communities and even the nation, and with the
deterioration of the quality of life for the citizens of the country, well,
then, where are we heading?" said Garcia, whose state borders Texas and New
Mexico. "There has to be a remaking of the law."

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Vicente Fox, Mexican President -

"My opinion
is that in Mexico it is not a crime to have a small dose of drugs in one's
pocket. . . . But the day that the alternative of freeing the consumption
of drugs from punishment comes, it will have to be done in the entire world
because we are not going to win anything if Mexico does it, but the
production and traffic of the drugs . . . to the United States continues.
Thus, humanity will one day view it [legalization] as the best in this
sense."

Source: Unomasuno, March 17, 2001

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Jorge Castaneda, Mexican Foreign Minister -

"In the end, legalization of certain substances may be the only way to
bring prices down, and doing so may be the only remedy to some of the worst
aspects of the drug plague: violence, corruption, and the collapse of the
rule of law."

Source: Newsweek, September 6, 1999

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Jorge Batlle, President of Uruguay -

"Why don't we just legalize drugs? ...
The day that it is legalized in the United States, it will lose value.
And if it loses value, there will be no profit. But as long as the U.S.
citizenry doesn't rise up to do something, they will pass this life
fighting and fighting."

Source: El Observador, December 1, 2000

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Bill Clinton, former U.S. President -

"I think that most small amounts of marijuana have been decriminalized in some
places, and should be."

Source: Rolling Stone, October 6, 2000

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Joe Clark, Head of Tory Party, member of Canadian Parliament,
former Prime Minister -

"I believe the least
controversial approach is decriminalization [of marijuana], because it's
unjust to see someone, because of one decision one night in their youth,
carry the stigma--to be barred from studying medicine, law, architecture or
other fields where a criminal record could present an obstacle."

Source: Globe and Mail, May 23, 2001

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Jimmy Carter, Former U.S. President -

"Penalties against a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than
the use of the drug itself. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws
against possession of marijuana for personal use. The National Commission
on Marijuana . . . concluded years ago that marijuana use should be
decriminalized, and I believe it is time to implement those basic
recommendations."

Source: speech to Congress, August 2, 1977

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Dan Quayle, former U.S. Vice President -

"Congress should definitely consider decriminalizing possession of marijuana.... We
should concentrate on prosecuting the rapists and burglars who are a menace
to society."

Source: Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics
of Failure by Dan Baum, quoting Quayle from 1977

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George Schultz, Reagan's Secretary of State -

"We need at least to consider
and examine forms of controlled legalization of drugs."

Source: Associated Press, November 6, 1989

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Abigail Van Buren, Advice Columnist -

"I agree that marijuana laws are
overdue for an overhaul. I also favor the medical use of marijuana--if it's
prescribed by a physician. I cannot understand why the federal government
should interfere with the doctor-patient relationship, nor why it would
ignore the will of a majority of voters who have legally approved such
legislation."

Source: "Dear Abby," March 1, 1999

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William F. Buckley, Conservative Author

"Now it's one thing to say (I say it) that people shouldn't consume psychoactive
drugs. It is entirely something else to condone marijuana laws the
application of which resulted, in 1995, in the arrest of 588,963 Americans.
Why are we so afraid to inform ourselves on the question?"

Source: syndicated column, October 21, 1997

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Gary Johnson, Governor of New Mexico -

"Make drugs a controlled substance like alcohol. Legalize it,
control it, regulate it, tax it. If you legalize it, we might actually have
a healthier society."

Source: The Boston Globe, October 13, 1999

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Ben Cayetano, Governor of Hawaii -

"I just think it's a matter of time that
Congress finally gets around to understanding that the states should be
allowed to provide this kind of relief [medical marijuana] to the people.
Congress is way, way behind in their thinking."

Source: Associated Press, May 15, 2001

Jesse Ventura, Governor of Minnesota -

"The prohibition of drugs causes crime. You don't have to
legalize, just decriminalize it. Regulate it. Create places where the
addict can go get it."

Source: Playboy, November 1999

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Kurt Schmoke, former Mayor of Baltimore -

"Decriminalization would take the
profit out of drugs and greatly reduce, if not eliminate, the drug-related
violence that is currently plaguing our streets."

Source: The Washington Post, May 15, 1988

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Frank Jordan, former mayor of San Francisco -

"I have no problem whatsoever
with the use of marijuana for medical purposes. I am sensitive and
compassionate to people who have legitimate needs. We should bend the law
and do what's right."

Source: Los Angeles Times, February 26, 1995

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Ron Paul, U.S. Congressman from Texas -

"When we finally decide that drug prohibition has been no more successful
than alcohol prohibition, the drug dealers will disappear."

Source: Paul's Web site, www.house.gov/paul

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Jorge Sampaio, President of Portugal -

"Policies conceived and enforced to
control drug-related problems and effects have led to disastrous and
perverse results. Prohibition is the fundamental principle of drug
policies. If we consider the results achieved, there are profound doubts
regarding its effectiveness. Prohibitionist policies have been unable to
control the consumption of narcotics; on the other hand, there has been an
increase of criminality. There is also a high mortality rate related to the
quality of substances and to AIDS or other viral diseases."

Source: Madrid's El Pais, April 7, 1997

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Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize winner for economics -

"Legalizing drugs would
simultaneously reduce the amount of crime and raise the quality of law
enforcement. Can you conceive of any other measure that would accomplish so
much to promote law and order?"

Source: Newsweek, May 1, 1972