DRUG-LAW ISSUES SWITCH DIRECTIONS

Free Pot Failure Marks Reversal In Trend

Has Arizona's appetite for convention-bucking, drug-law reform finally ebbed?

State voters dramatically changed a six-year course Tuesday when they sided
with traditional law-enforcement views on two drug-law reform propositions.

Voters trounced Proposition 203, which largely would have decriminalized
the possession of marijuana.

There are, of course, plenty of apparent reasons for this measure's demise.
It would have required the state Department of Public Safety to distribute
the drug as a service to people with a note from their doctor. The
spectacle of state police officers opening pot apothecaries no doubt
appalled many voters.

Also, perhaps, voters may have grown weary of dilettante billionaires from
out of state funding Arizona drug-law initiatives. Voters twice have backed
measures financed almost entirely by University of Phoenix founder John
Sperling and his ilk. Perhaps this time they just finally had it with life
at the end of the pot barons' strings.

At the same time, voters passed by a 2-1 ratio a countermeasure promoted by
Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley. Proposition 302 toughened drug
enforcement by giving judges the option of jailing small-time drug
offenders who fail to complete court-mandated drug-treatment programs.

In one sense, Proposition 302 appears to constitute a reasonable stick to
complement the drug-treatment carrot. But its supporters clearly saw the
direction toward which drug-law ballot measures were heading - complete
decriminalization - and decided to fight back. And voters responded. Big time.

Those results follow six years of Arizona placing among national leaders in
easing penalties for marijuana possession. In 1996 and again in 1998,
voters here passed ballot measures that permitted marijuana to be sold
legally to seriously ill people, only to see the state Legislature and the
federal courts strike down those strong voter preferences.

Voters didn't like that. Outraged at how elected officials toyed with their
will, voters in 1998 passed Proposition 105, which forbade lawmakers from
overturning or changing initiatives they have passed.

But times change. Or seem to. It's entirely plausible that all of the pot
measures, past and present, can be filed under the heading of "voter
respect for the law."

The 1996 and 1998 measures spoke of voter frustration with unenforceable
laws that contributed to the corrosion of public respect for law in general.

Tuesday's results speak of citizens' respect for their law enforcers. They
could not countenance the image of cops passing out pot, or scofflaw pot
smokers laughing at judges.

In that view, the measures had less to do with marijuana or the whims of
eccentric, rich men, and much more to do with a citizenry's esteem for an
institution - its system of laws.