GOVERNOR FACES DRUG-WAR FOE ON CNN

Gov. Gary Johnson finally got a bout in the ring with the man who called
him "Puff Daddy" and said the governor's rhetoric was undermining the
nation's war on drugs.

But a technical mess-up left Johnson with a faulty audio link, and the
governor was largely unable to hear his drug-czar foe - or anyone else, it
seemed - during the brief Wednesday afternoon debate on CNN.

A disappointed governor said afterward it was like fighting with one arm
tied behind his back.

"I was so ready for this," Johnson said, breaking into a few bars of the
theme music from Rocky for emphasis.

Johnson had been itching to get some licks on Barry McCaffrey, the former
Clinton-administration drug-policy director, since McCaffrey came to New
Mexico in October 1999 and called Johnson on his advocacy of legalizing drugs.

McCaffrey said children in New Mexico were citing Johnson's drug talk as
evidence that smoking marijuana is OK. He said the governor now had a new
nickname, "Puff Daddy Johnson," on schoolyard playgrounds.

There was no name calling on Wednesday's TV segment, aired live by CNN.

But while Johnson had trouble hearing what was said, his opponent was
apparently able to listen to the governor's mind.

"We think we're moving in the right direction," McCaffrey said, "and we're
dismayed by the kind of - to be blunt - irresponsible thinking that I'm
hearing coming out of Gov. Johnson."

McCaffrey claimed the moral high ground, starting with his first response,
to a question on how he sees the status of the nation's "war on drugs."

"First of all," McCaffrey said, "many of us have tried to shift the
metaphor to a cancer affecting American communities."

He went on to suggest that the cancer is in remission: Drug use in America
has declined by more than 50 percent since 1979. "We do believe that if we
stay on focus for the next decade," McCaffrey said, drug use will drop even
further from the current-use rate of about 6 percent of Americans.

Johnson said it's foolish to think the war on drugs can ever be won.

"I don't think you can continue to arrest 1.6 billion people a year in this
country on drug-related crime," Johnson said.

"By no figment of the imagination is this something that we're winning.
This is a war against ourselves. There are 80 million Americans who have
done illegal drugs. I happen to be one of them, and but for the grace of
God, I'm not behind bars.

"And give the federal government enough time and essentially they're going
to arrest and incarcerate everybody in this country. ... How's that?"