RICK STEVES, AN UNLIKELY VOICE FOR DRUG LEGALIZATION

Public Television's Rick Steves Is Offering Fresh Ideas for a Tired
Crusade, Says Timothy Egan

The travel writer and public television host Rick Steves is a certain
kind of innocent abroad - benignly suburban to the core, with a bit
of a paunch and the ever-quizzical look of someone who would try raw
squid for breakfast and not complain about it.

At 52, he has spent a third of his adult life living out of a
suitcase, ever in search of that bargain room with a view,
encouraging his fellow Americans to become "temporary locals." His
influence is vast and one of the reasons our citizens aren't more
hated abroad in President Bush's final days. Mr. Steves, who lives
just north of Seattle, is packing his wrinkle-free clothes for his
latest expedition to Europe. One can only hope customs will let him
back in, for Mr. Steves has become a most unlikely voice on behalf of
ending the tragedy of the drug war.

He looks at the 800,000 Americans arrested every year on marijuana
charges and wonders why the waste of time, money and lives. Year
after year, nothing changes, except the faces of those in jail. He
thinks that marijuana should be decriminalized and that drug use in
general should be treated primarily as a health issue - as the
Canadians, the British, the Swiss and others do.

His views are not novel. But it's been fascinating to watch the
reaction since Mr. Steves started speaking out on this. Sponsors of
his television shows have hardly blinked. Cops and conservatives have
told him how much they agree with him. And, less than a month ago,
the Luther Institute gave Mr. Steves its annual Wittenberg Award,
recognizing "outstanding service to church and society." Mr. Steves
is an active member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church.

If it takes a churchgoing guidebook writer who spent his college
years as a member of the marching band to call for an end to a tired
war, so be it. The cheerleaders and architects of harsh drug laws -
from Rush Limbaugh, who promised to take random drugs tests after
admitting his addiction to pain pills, to the former drug czar Bill
Bennett, who had a multimillion-dollar gambling habit - have been
exposed as moral frauds.

Two of the major presidential candidates are in a unique position to
pivot away from the status quo.

Cindy McCain, the wife of the presumptive Republican nominee, was
once so hooked on the opioid painkillers Percocet and Vicodin that
she resorted to stealing from a medical charity that she ran.

And Barack Obama, in his 1995 memoir, told of youthful alcohol and
pot use, "maybe even a little blow when I could afford it." He wrote
this cautionary note: "Junkie. Pothead. That's where I'd been headed:
the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man."

He is lucky, a man told him on the campaign trail not long ago, that
he didn't end up in jail - a ruined life, one of the 2.3 million
Americans locked up in the world's largest prison system.

Thus far, John McCain has said little about changing the approach to
possession-only drug crimes. Mr. Obama, asked about it in January,
said: "I'm not interested in legalizing drugs. What I am interested
in is putting more of an emphasis on the public health approach to
drugs and less on incarceration."

Every society has its drug addicts, dating to Babylon, if not
earlier. Every American knows someone, or has a family member, with a
problem. Mr. Bush used to drink too much and was cited for driving
under the influence. But instead of using his life experience for
change, he has done nothing but carry around the self-righteous
tedium of the reformed drunk.

We are left, then, with people like Rick Steves to renew the republic
with common sense brought home from other shores. He's taken to heart
these words: "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and
narrow-mindedness." They come from an earlier innocent abroad, Mark Twain.