POLITICIANS ON DRUGS

Bill Clinton said in his farewell interview with Rolling Stone magazine, "I
think most small amounts of marijuana have been decriminalized in most
places and should be. We really need a reexamination of our entire policy
on imprisonment."

Good timing, Bill. We wait eight long years for this enlightenment. Eight
years that began with not inhaling and ended with the world's record for
the most marijuana arrests of any administration in the history of
presidents, kings, queens, tyrants and dictators - 4,175,357 to be exact.
Our former president and pot smoker is the leading incarcerator of pot
smokers. Is this hypocrisy, Bill Clinton or politics as usual?

Vice President Al Gore burned a few bowls himself, according to an
obviously not authorized biography that describes the
president-for-about-an-hour-on-election-night as a "regular and chronic"
marijuana smoker. Gore admitted to experimenting with marijuana and blamed
his crime on youthful indiscretions. But he kept experimenting and
experimenting and experimenting - for at least four years after he claimed
to have quit forever. He was experimenting in college. He conducted more
experiments in Vietnam, and as a reporter in Nashville he was still
experimenting, according to eyewitnesses cited in the book. Who knows, he
might be experimenting right now. And though some may argue this point,
after all that experimentation, Gore's brains aren't as hopelessly
scrambled in the frying pan of marijuana addiction as the popular
advertisement suggests they would be. Gore's brain turned out far better
than the omelet we were promised by drug war crusaders.

Our Drug Enforcement Agency has confused the illicit drug issue by
classifying marijuana as a Schedule 1 Drug along with "hard drugs" such as
heroin and methamphetamine. If these drugs pose similar threats, why
should our children believe their "brains on drugs" will be any more
scrambled by mainlining methamphetamine or heroin than they would by
smoking marijuana? Schedule 1 Drugs are classified as having a high abuse
potential and addictive. They are said to be potentially lethal and can
lead to violent behaviour.

Marijuana might lead to violence on a bag of potato chips. But death? It's
never happened. Addiction, maybe, but not as tough as a coffee
habit. Maybe the real "gateway drug" to abuse and addiction is
misinformation and drug war propaganda.

Even former House Speaker Newt Gingrich who led the Republican charge in
the 1990s admitted to smoking marijuana in college. He said, "It was a
sign that we were alive and in graduate school in that era." But it's not a
sign of going to graduate school in this era. It's a sign on the way to jail.

Republican Governor Gary Johnson of New Mexico asked a crowd at a rally in
Albuquerque last year, "Does anyone want to push a button and retroactively
punish the 80 million Americans who have used illegal drugs?" The crowd
roared, "Duh! We don't have enough prisons for the 10 million Americans who
have used illegal drugs before noon today." Or something like that.

Prior to his election, the two-term governor admitted to using cocaine and
marijuana. But he confessed to more than not inhaling and youthful
indiscretions. He was a pothead and more. But today the gubernatorial
tri-athlete abstains from all drugs, even sugar.

Since dismissing any plan to run for higher officer when his term expires
in 2002, Johnson has turned up the volume of anti-drug war oratory. It
hasn't exactly been politically healthy to acknowledge the drug war's
failure to curb violence, reduce the flow of drugs, cure addicts and to
save our children from drug abuse and addiction. But the governor is saying
what many people know already and many more haven't admitted yet: The drug
war is a failed attempt by the criminal justice system to solve a public
health crisis. Remove the illegal money from the illicit drug trade and
the criminal element disappears immediately. Crime rates will plummet and
the billions of dollars saved can be invested in treatment, education and
jobs. With Al Capone and alcohol as instructors, we should have learned
this lesson 70 years ago.

But taking drug war money away from the judicial industrial complex that
has become addicted to lucrative asset seizures, privatized prisons, and
billions in government appropriations is not popular with those on the
payroll. But Bush is not popular with those who don't want to see America
turn into a faith-based charity to oil companies with a voucher program and
a $400 billion national missile defense system that has proven never to
work while violating the 1972 Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty the US signed
with Russia. And now every nation but Antarctica wants to gang up on us.
But that doesn't mean Bush should be illegal. Does it?

When the little Shrub had his youthful indiscretions he liked nose candy
the best. I wonder if John Ashcroft knows about his president's hankering
for the Texas marching powder. The attorney general refers to drug addicts
and recreational users as the "lowest and least" in society and believes
they should not be rewarded with treatment and truce, but punished with
prison. Can this mean that President Bush will be going to jail soon? The
leader of the free world who was born on third base and thought that he hit
a triple might soon be safe behind bars where he poses no threat to anyone?
No, Bush gets to live in the White House while others who committed similar
crimes live in the big house.

There is a marijuana arrest about every 45 seconds in the United States.
Approximately eighty-eight percent are for simple possession. You'd think
with all these arrests that marijuana would be wiped clean from the face of
God's green earth by now. But after a thirty-year drug war and billions of
dollars spent on drug interdiction, eradication and incarceration, the
country might as well be a Grateful Dead concert. Drugs are everywhere.
Penal construction is booming in the land of the free and we release child
molesters, rapists, and murderers early so the half million non-violent
drug offenders will have a place to stay. American citizens are locked in
prison today for the same indiscretions that our country's leaders have
admitted to. But that's America's drug war for you. Some drug users can
be presidents, congressman and governors, and others can be prisoners.