WEST TAKES ON EAST IN THE DRUG WAR

East does not meet West when it comes to America's drug war.

California, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon and
Washington have legalized medical marijuana. But that doesn't stop federal
drug agents from raiding West Coast medical marijuana clubs.

Skirmishes are erupting on new fronts. Nevada's November ballot will rachet
up the fighting with an initiative to legalize possession of up to three
ounces of marijuana -- with or without a prescription.

Then last week, if only to add silliness to the equation, San Francisco
Supervisor Mark Leno proposed a ballot measure to have The Special City
grow medical marijuana.

The timing couldn't have been worse for U.S. Drug Czar John Walters to
visit the West, but that didn't stop him.

On Thursday, Walters told The Chronicle editorial board that he wasn't
happy that some San Franciscans frame his position on medical marijuana as
"bigoted" and without justification. Medical research, he said, simply
doesn't support marijuana as medicine. Besides, many medical-marijuana
advocates are more interested in using medicinal pot as a back door to
legalize drugs; they don't care about the afflicted.

So who are these people to call Walters cold-hearted?

And he's right. On the pro-medical marijuana side, there are some (sort of)
healthy potheads who shamelessly hide behind sick people.

And then there are Democrat anti-drug war partisans who charge that
Republicans are hypocrites for saying that they advocate states' rights --
unless drugs are involved. (Of course, Dems don't notice that makes them
hypocrites for boosting states' rights only for the drug war.)

What about a truce -- an admission that both sides do care? Most
medical-marijuana advocates care about cancer patients, who believe
marijuana reduces their pain and calms their nausea. Walters cares about
children, who are abused or neglected because their parents' wasted lives
revolve around drugs, not family.

Walters spoke expansively to establish his compassion bona fides, and it
worked. He's engaging. He's thoughtful. He's not the cartoonish militarist
detractors make him out to be.

That said, Walters will never be All That He Can Be until he takes on the
needless excesses in the war on drugs.

I asked Walters about the draconian sentences that taint the federal
criminal justice system.

His answer was to go after "people who believe we should in some cases
change laws, in some cases we should eliminate the laws on drug
trafficking" who have created "a widespread misperception about what the
criminal justice system is. I don't think we get good informed public
opinion about this by having distorted views about what the system does."

But while he believes the public is uninformed, Walters said he did not
inform himself about the specifics of the high-profile case of Louisiana's
Clarence Aaron, a first-time nonviolent drug offender who was sentenced to
life for hooking up two drug operations.

"I will confess to you that I don't know all the details," Walters said.

Then he added, obfuscating: "I think that the damage that drug trafficking
does to people is serious enough that I don't have a problem with that
sentence. If I knew all specifics and I had to be the judge, I might have
set something different."

That answer is unacceptable.

In February, Walters told me that his people were reviewing mandatory
minimum sentences. He expected a report in four to six weeks. Now, months
later, he's proposing no changes. Meanwhile, it's clear that he hasn't
gotten to the bottom of one of the system's most notorious cases.

And the Bush administration should indulge the states' views for a change.
Forget about the states' rights hypocrisy issue. Washington should instead ask:

Which approach works best? The answer is: People don't know, and different
states have different problems. Good Republicans should understand that
letting states experiment could provide needed answers.

Voters in eight western states, plus Maine, have told Washington they want
to do things their way. Washington should listen.