THE WRONG STUFF

President Bush has had some sensible things to say about drug policy
- - emphasizing the importance of treatment and other alternatives to
incarceration, for instance, and questioning mandatory minimum
sentences. But news stories suggest that he plans to appoint a
hard-line drug warrior who sees punishment as the only effective tool
and views the war on drugs as a moral crusade.

John P. Walters, now head of the conservative Philanthropy
Roundtable, was the top aide to William Bennett when he had a notably
unsuccessful term as "drug czar" in the first Bush administration.
Walters is on record as favoring harsher penalties and more
aggressive drug enforcement, including more military involvement,
stiffer federal penalties for marijuana possession and more
aggressive pursuit of suspected drug traffickers in Latin America.

Before Mr. Bush hands the Office of National Drug Control Policy to a
person with such a philosophy, he should consider not only common
sense but also recent political history.

In every state where a medical marijuana initiative has been on the
ballot, voters have approved it by landslide margins. California and
Arizona voters have OK'd new policies requiring probation and
treatment instead of jail for simple drug possession, and other
states are likely to follow. Polls show that most Americans believe
the drug war, as conducted in the old punitive way, is a failure.

The American people are ready for a different approach. Mr. Bush
should appoint somebody - perhaps with a medical background -
committed to reassessing federal drug policy rather than clinging to
unpopular policies with a record of failure.