SEATTLE COULD LEARN FROM A CITY UP NORTH

Hyperbole is addictive when you direct the Office of National Drug
Control Policy, where John Walters has ratcheted up claims that
marijuana smoking is a gateway to hard drug use and criminal behavior.

Crusading against the weed is, for Walters, a cross-country and even
cross-border cause.

Two cities, however, have heard him out but headed off in a new
direction. One is a somewhat laid-back Seattle. The other, Vancouver,
B.C., has a hard-core drug problem as serious as any place in North America.

On the weekend of Aug. 20-21, 75,000 people will gather each day at
the waterfront for Seattle Hempfest -- annually the country's
largest, best-organized marijuana event.

In September 2003, Seattle voters adopted Initiative 75, making
marijuana possession our city's lowest law enforcement priority.

Walters made a pre-election appearance here, visiting a detox center
with Seattle City Attorney Tom Carr.

A year earlier, Walters had traveled to the Great White North,
delivering his message to the Vancouver Board of Trade just before a
municipal election in which voters endorsed a radical redirection of
drug policy.

In Seattle, the public voice for I-75 and marijuana legalization has
been a media-savvy young man named Dominic Holden, longtime Seattle
Hempfest organizer -- he's taking a break this year -- and board
member of the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws.

"Our law enforcement saves money from I-75," Holden said. "Our jails
save money. Our kids are not using marijuana more. We have tested,
and succeeded in, a more humane policy."

Just 144 miles north, at Vancouver City Hall, a guy of very different
background is an even more emphatic voice for change.

"Drug czars are the most ill-informed people in government,"
Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell said in an interview. "John Walters is
pushing against good science. He's pushing an agenda that doesn't fit
in the real world. He's in denial."

Campbell is a former Royal Canadian Mounted Police constable, and
veteran of the Drug Squad, who became the first Vancouver district
coroner. He was named B.C. chief coroner in 1996 at a time when drug
overdose deaths were skyrocketing to as many as 400 a year.

The mayor decries the timidity of Canada's federal government, which
has aroused Walters' wrath by proposing to decriminalize possession
of small amounts of marijuana.

Campbell would go a long step further. "I'd legalize marijuana," he
said. "I'd control it, tax the hell out of it and put the money into
health care.

"The growing of marijuana in this province is a $3 billion to $7
billion business. Who is making money off it? Organized crime, that's
who. No taxes are being paid. No social benefits are realized."

The mayor even gets personal. Campbell noted that his sister is
undergoing chemotherapy.

"I've told her -- she is a non-smoker -- 'If you get nauseous, I'll
get you some B.C. Bud,' " said Campbell, referring to the informal
name of British Columbia's leading agricultural export.

"Why? To relieve her pain," Campbell added. "Is that not what we are
about as humans?"

During ratings-driven "sweeps months," Seattle TV stations often make
a beeline for Vancouver's drug-riddled Downtown Eastside
neighborhood. They've filmed addicts shooting up and breaking into
cars to support their habit, and they've trekked to the
much-publicized Cannabis Cafe -- until the police shut it down.

The TV cameras just show the surface of suffering. Recently, I went
to Alliance Francaise, a local cultural center, to see a harrowing
exhibit by French photographer Marc Josse.

Josse spent a year in the neighborhood. "We have drug problems, but
nothing like this," he told Daniel Girard of The Toronto Star. The
exhibit, Eastside Stories, details the lives of people, in Josse's
words, "suffering and dying of indifference."

The Downtown Eastside proved to be an epiphany for Campbell.

What changed the RCMP drug squad veteran? "I became a coroner," said
Campbell. "My goal was not enforcement. It became saving peoples' lives."

Vancouver has moved to remedy its indifference.

Campbell champions what is called the Four Pillars approach to
Vancouver's drug crisis -- harm reduction, treatment, prevention and
enforcement.

A centerpiece is the city's supervised injection center, where
addicts can shoot up -- "We have almost 600 injections a day," said
Campbell -- while also receiving health care and counseling on how to
kick their habit.

In Campbell's opinion, the radical measure has broken up the street
drug trade, and saved lives by providing emergency response to drug
overdoses and curbing needle-spread HIV-AIDS and Hepatitis C.

With ineffectual interdiction and focus on enforcement, official U.S.
drug policy seems caught in a time warp.

"They're still in 'Reefer Madness,' " said Campbell, referring to a
laughable anti-drug movie of the 1930s.

Seattle and Vancouver have chosen a different path.

In the Emerald City, it involved a modest use of common sense. Up
north, it has required a major leap of intelligence.