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. "Because 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."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dream Of A Worldwide Truce

On the eve of a United Nations special session on drugs, an international
roster of luminaries signed a letter, penned by members of the Lindesmith
Center, that lobbied for radical change. "We believe that the global war on
drugs is now causing more harm than drug abuse itself," read the June 1998
declaration. "Persisting in our current policies will only result in more
drug abuse, more empowerment of drug markets and criminals, and more
disease and suffering."

Among the signatories were Willie Brown, Joycelyn Elders, several former
members of Congress, two former U.S. attorneys general, a former assistant
secretary of state, three federal judges, the San Jose mayor, a former
police commissioner of New York City, a former secretary general of the UN,
28 Spanish judges, past presidents of Bolivia, Guatemala, Colombia, Costa
Rica, and Nicaragua, and current legislators from Australia, Britain,
Canada, European Parliament, Mexico, and Peru.

Non-politicos who signed include Kweisi Mfume, Walter Cronkite, Stephen Jay
Gould, Andrew Weil, Isabel Allende, Gunter Grass, a slew of professors at
top-notch universities, CEOs, various clergy, and Nobel laureates.

Several representatives on Capitol Hill are also bucking for new
approaches. Reformers include California representative Tom Campbell, who
has suggested "experiments in supplying drugs to addicts the way Zurich
tried," according to the Chicago Tribune. Massachusetts representative
Barney Frank has repeatedly introduced a bill to change pot from a Schedule
I drug to a Schedule II drug, thus allowing states to legalize it for
medical purposes. In its current incarnation, the States' Rights to Medical
Marijuana Act is cosponsored by 14 representatives and is residing in a
House subcommittee.

Many on the federal bench have also seen the light. During his tenure as
chief judge of the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (1993-2000),
Reagan appointee Richard Posner argued in favor of legalizing marijuana and
psychedelics. District Judge Warren Eginton of Connecticut wants to see pot
and cocaine legalized, while District Judge James C. Paine of Florida has
condemned the war on drugs.

Other leaders who question prohibition are listed below. --R.K.

Gustavo de Greiff former Attorney General of Colombia

"We should legalize drugs because we here are providing the dead, and the
consumers are there in the U.S." Source: El Diario-La Prensa, May 8, 1994

Peter Bourne President Carter's Drug Czar

"We did not view marijuana as a significant health problem--as it was not.
. . . Nobody dies from marijuana. Marijuana smoking, in fact, if one wants
to be honest, is a source of pleasure and amusement to countless millions
of people in America, and it continues to be that way." Source: PBS's
Frontline: "Drug Wars," October 2000

Joseph D. McNamara former police chief of San Jose and Kansas City

"We should immediately stop arresting people whose only crime is possessing
small amounts of drugs for their own use. . . . Marijuana should be treated
the same as alcohol and cigarettes." Source: The Washington Post, May 19, 1996

Jaime Ruiz senior adviser to the Colombian President

"From the Colombian point of view [legalization] is the easy solution. I
mean, just legalize it and we won't have any more problems. Probably in
five years we wouldn't even have guerrillas. No problems. We [would] have a
great country with no problems." Source: Ottawa Citizen, September 6, 2000

George Papandreou Greek Foreign Minister

"I can officially state that my government and myself believe that all over
Europe we need to open a debate on the 'drug question' in order to create
more coherent and human policies with better perspectives. . . . The policy
of criminalizing consumers has failed, creating many problems to our
society." Source: Transnational Radical Party's Anti-Prohibitionist Days,
Brussels, December 11, 1997

Edward Ellison former head of Scotland Yard's Antidrug Squad

"I say legalize drugs because I want to see less drug abuse, not more. And
I say legalize drugs because I want to see the criminals put out of
business." Source: London's Daily Mail, March 10, 1998

Ray Kendall Secretary General of Interpol

"[I am] entirely supportive of the notion of removing the abuse of drugs
from the penal realm in favor of other forms of regulation such as psycho,
medical, social treatment." Source: Report of Premier's Advisory Council, 1996

Juan Torruella chief judge of the First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals

"There is a need for pilot tests of some types of limited
decriminalization, probably commencing with marijuana, and obviously not
including minors." Source: Spotlight Lecture at Colby College, Waterville,
Maine, April 25, 1996

John Curtin U.S. district judge, New York

"Education, counseling, less use of criminal sanctions, partial
legalization, and legalization are all alternatives. It is a hard road, but
the present course has failed." Source: The Buffalo News, March 2, 1997

Robert Sweet U.S. district judge, New York

"Finally, the fundamental flaw, which will ultimately destroy this
prohibition as it did the last one, is that criminal sanctions cannot, and
should not attempt to, prohibit personal conduct which does no harm to
others." Source: National Review, February 12, 1996

House of Lords, Great Britain

"We consider it undesirable to prosecute genuine therapeutic users of
cannabis who possess or grow cannabis for their own use. This
unsatisfactory situation underlines the need to legalise cannabis
preparations for therapeutic use." Source: "Therapeutic Uses of Cannabis,"
Select Committee on Science and Technology, March 14, 2001

Australian Parliament

"Over the past two decades in Australia we have devoted increased resources
to drug law enforcement, we have increased the penalties for drug
trafficking, and we have accepted increasing inroads on our civil liberties
as part of the battle to curb the drug trade. All the evidence shows,
however, not only that our law enforcement agencies have not succeeded in
preventing the supply of illicit drugs to Australian markets, but that it
is unrealistic to expect them to do so. If the present policy of
prohibition is not working, then it is time to give serious consideration
to the alternatives, however radical they may seem." Source: Joint
Committee on the National Crime Authority, 1988