As a physician residing in California, I can assure Joseph Califano that
voters here were well aware that the drug czar, several ex-presidents,
local sheriffs and political leaders of both parties were all urging a "no"
vote on Proposition 215 ["Devious Efforts to Legalize Drugs," op-ed, Dec.
4]. There was a lot of early voter awareness thanks to the bust of the San
Francisco Buyer's Club in August. The "no" campaign may not have had money
for advertising, but it received lots of free ink and air time from the
media. The "yes" campaign had spent George Soros's money to gather enough
signatures to qualify the initiative for the ballot. Precious little was
left for TV ads, which were confined to the last weekend before the
election.

While voters heard the urgings of the drug war hawks, in the end they were
persuaded by common sense and personal knowledge of patients who had been
helped by marijuana, either friends and relatives or through reports they
found credible. Mr. Califano needs to come up with a different scenario to
explain this defeat; the one he is floating simply won't do.

THOMAS J. O'CONNELL