WHAT HAS THE GOVERNOR BEEN SMOKING?

Tight budget years are notorious for their pain and suffering but
often go unappreciated for their contributions to public insight.

The squeeze on spending pushes to the surface things that otherwise
might never have been revealed. Don't underestimate the cathartic
effect of that red ink hemorrhaging from Tallahassee.

Last week, for example, Gov. Crist was talking to a Miami Herald
reporter about whether the state should change its drug laws. Florida
is likely to have more than 100,000 inmates in its prisons by year's
end, and about 20 percent of them are serving sentences for nonviolent
drug offenses.

Growing ranks of prosecutors and lawmakers believe that it's time to
treat these offenders as addicts, rather than convicts, and send them
to rehabilitation clinics, instead of prisons. It could save the state
untold millions.

But Gov. Crist, whose anti-crime crusades in the Legislature years ago
earned him the nickname "Chain Gang Charlie," told the Herald that he
opposes changing the drug laws: "I don't want to sacrifice public safety."

Reporter Marc Caputo asked him whether he had ever used
marijuana.

"Yeah," the governor answered.

But that was long before he entered public life, the governor said,
and he said he never tried cocaine. The marijuana use was purely
recreational - as opposed to ceremonial, therapeutical or
ministerial.

Then, the obligatory Bill Clinton question, did he
inhale?

"I did," the governor replied.

This is a fascinating revelation for all sorts of reasons.

First, think of how Tom Gallagher took the news. The state's former
chief financial officer ran against Ol' Chain Gang Chuck in the
Republican primary for governor two years ago. Mr. Gallagher was
trying to run as a social conservative, but his campaign imploded when
he was pressured into admitting an extramarital affair and smoking
marijuana in the '70s.

The pressure came from candidate Crist, whose supporters passed out
copies of Mr. Gallagher's divorce records. The governor has earned a
reputation for knee-capping opponents. When he ran for education
commissioner in 2000 against Democrat George Sheldon, Mr. Crist dug up
a 16-year-old DUI conviction against his opponent and made it into a
TV ad.

Mr. Gallagher ran an awful campaign and deserved to lose. But, had he
known then what he knows now, at least he might have knocked a hole in
Mr. Crist's sanctimony and said: "Yes, I smoked some pot, but so did
you, Chain Gang. Hey, it was the '70s. Who didn't?"

The immediate issue for Floridians, however, is whether the governor
is right that changing drug laws would "sacrifice public safety." Or,
to put it another way, is the public safer because hundreds of
thousands of minor drug offenses are prosecuted in the court system?

The Palm Beach County State Attorney's Office handled more than
100,000 traffic and misdemeanor cases last year, roughly twice as many
as six years ago, and many of those were nonviolent drug offenses. The
increase in misdemeanor cases is linked, in part, to the statewide
crackdown against gangs. Police are arresting gang members for
marijuana possession and other minor drug charges, besides serious
crimes.

Last week, the state's prosecutors got together and took the
extraordinary step of warning the Legislature not to pass bills that
create new crimes. The prosecutors say their caseloads already are too
high, and the next round of budget cuts will make the backlogs worse.
They can't handle more crimes.

The debate over decriminalization has become the unexpected
philosophical border war of the legislative session. On one side are
the tough-on-crime conservatives who came to office promising to fill
prisons; on the other side are the realists and pragmatists who have
to make the system work with not nearly enough money. Somewhere
between them are a lot of dangerous criminals and recreational drug
users the courts need to sort out.

If a young man can smoke pot and go on to become governor of the great
state of Florida, maybe it's time to take a second look at what
penalties fit what crimes.