WILSON'S NOT COPACETIC WITH EX-BOSS'S DRUG POLICY

U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson says the difference between her approach to drug
policy and that of her former boss, Gov. Gary Johnson, boils down to a
simple question.

Would legalization lead to more or less drug abuse?

"I think it would lead to more, and I don't see that as anything positive
for the state of New Mexico," Wilson said this week after reading of
Johnson's plan to change some of New Mexico's laws dealing with drugs.

Johnson is not proposing outright legalization of drugs in New Mexico,
although he'd like to see it happen.

Rather, among his package of reform measures to be pitched to the
Legislature is a plan to decriminalize the possession and use of 1 ounce or
less of marijuana.

As a Johnson aide described it, a pot user caught in a public area with
marijuana would be slapped with a citation and a fine, rather than being
whisked away to Albuquerque's crowded City-County Jail.

Johnson also favors a slew of other reform measures that generally favor
sentencing reform, so-called "harm reduction" efforts, treatment and
prevention.

Wilson, on the other hand, supports a three-pronged approach that focuses
on interdiction and reducing drug supplies in other countries; strong
enforcement, including tough sentences for drug traffickers; and prevention
and treatment programs to help reduce demand for drugs in the United States.

That strategy is more in line with the official national drug-fighting
agenda that Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the outgoing White House drug czar, has
championed.

Coincidentally, McCaffrey, who has been hostile to Johnson's suggestions to
change drug policies, held a news conference earlier this month on the same
day Johnson unveiled his legislative approach to reform.

McCaffrey made a passing reference during his speech to drug reformers,
like Johnson, who, he said, preach "nonsense." McCaffrey said claims that
millions of people are arrested and incarcerated for simple possession of
drugs are exaggerations.

McCaffrey said that during his tenure as director of the Office of National
Drug Control Policy, he fought for several new alternatives to incarceration.

Of course, McCaffrey has never argued strongly for the kind of alternatives
- -- expanding needle-exchange programs and ending enhanced sentencing for
drug-related crimes -- that Johnson is advocating.

Obviously, there is a gulf between Johnson's reform ideas and the national
drug strategy, espoused by McCaffrey and Wilson, that goes beyond the
legalization debate.

Another telltale sign of that gulf is the dueling conclusions about how
well, or how poorly, the nation's so-called "war on drugs" has fared.

McCaffrey said he thinks strides are being made, and he provided a new set
of statistics that he said shows a reversal of adolescent drug use.

Wilson said she tends to put stock in national data on drug use, although
it is usually dated.

Johnson believes the opposite. He is convinced the war on drugs is a
"miserable failure."

And according to the Governor's Drug Policy Advisory Group, which
recommended the reform package to Johnson, much of the information that
guides the federal government's drug policies is false.

That group's chairman, retired state District Judge Woody Smith, wrote in a
letter to Johnson: "We believe that it is our ethical imperative to reject
false data and misleading information no matter what the source, and to
increase the availability of accurate and meaningful information to all New
Mexicans and policy-makers."