SHAKING UP DRUG POLICY?

Although the two major-party candidates make much of their differences, the
likelihood of major changes in policy from what the current administration
offers is fairly low. To be sure, Gush and Bore are saying rather different
things about tax policy, Social Security, Medicare and education policy.

But even if you are sincere on the stump, there's a big difference between
offering a program and getting it passed.

Either presidential candidate, once elected, will face a Congress with a
majority from the other party or a very slim majority of his own party.
That's not a formula for getting a dramatically different program through.
And the two candidates are virtually identical when it comes to foreign
policy, trade policy and a general approach to bureaucracy. Whichever
candidate is elected, we can expect to see government grow. It might grow a
bit more dramatically if Gore is elected, although even that isn't certain
if Republicans hold Congress. If Bush beats expectations, turns out to have
coattails and brings a decent Republican majority into Congress he might
have enough juice to change the Social Security system or institute a
tentative, modest educational voucher system, but that is far from a sure
thing.

The best likelihood of the beginning of a major change in settled national
policy arising from this year's election might come from initiatives at the
state level.

And the area where change just might come is in drug policy, an issue on
which the two doofuses, like most elected politicians, have been much too
timid to question the settled policy of prohibition.

But several drug-law reform initiatives are on state ballots with decent
chances of passage.

Ralph Nader has openly said what Harry Browne has said for years and what
I'm convinced most Americans now believe -- that the drug war is an abysmal
failure and it's time for a major reassessment. Sooner or later more than a
handful of elected officials will find themselves doing what politicians
always do -- finally figuring out what the people want and scrambling to
position themselves at the head of the parade.

Very few commentators have even noticed, let alone put a national picture
together (although "Nightline" did an interesting piece on ballot
initiatives in general Wednesday that featured Proposition 36 along with
voucher and health-care initiatives), but check out what voters in various
states are being asked to decide.

In California Prop. 36 would provide probation and drug treatment rather
than jail for first-time and second-time non-violent simple possession drug
offenders. Arizona voters passed a similar initiative in 1996, saw the
state legislature gut it, and passed it again in 1998. It's been in
operation two years now, and a report from the Arizona Supreme Court shows
that 75 percent of those receiving treatment are staying drug-free. That's
a lot better than the results from sending them to jail to receive a
graduate education in how to be a more efficient criminal.

New York has already decided, without the necessity of an initiative, to
establish a similar program.

In Massachusetts Question 8 would establish a state Drug Treatment Fund to
provide treatment for non-violent drug offenders instead of incarceration
and reform the state's asset forfeiture laws as well.

Colorado and Nevada will vote on initiatives that would allow the medical
use of marijuana under the supervision of a licensed physician.

Both states passed such initiatives in 1998. But the proposal in Nevada was
a constitutional amendment, which requires a second vote to become effective.

In Colorado the then-Secretary of State (now deceased) claimed there
weren't enough valid signatures to place the measure on the ballot, but
after inconclusive court battles it was voted on. It passed, which should
have made the question of enough signatures moot, since the purpose of
signature thresholds is to determine whether there is sufficient support to
warrant the cost and trouble of putting a proposal on the ballot.

But a court ruled that the question was vague enough to invalidate the
election, so it will be considered again this year.

In Oregon and Utah initiatives to reform the asset forfeiture systems,
which allow property to be taken from people accused but not even convicted
of a crime if prosecutors allege that the property is the ill-gotten fruits
of drug offenses, are on the ballot.

In Utah the burden of proof would shift to the government in asset seizure
cases and the money would go to education rather than to the police
departments that seized the assets.

In Oregon a conviction would be required before a seizure could be
completed and money seized would go to drug treatment.

In Alaska Prop. 5, placed on the ballot through citizen signatures, would
legalize marijuana use for adults in private places and also legalize
growing industrial hemp. It would be somewhat surprising if this one passed
- -- drug warriors are pulling out the stops against it, but it's a possibility.

Consider some background to this activity.

Since 1996, voters in Arizona, Alaska, Oregon, Nevada, Washington, Maine,
the District of Columbia and California representing about 20 percent of
the U.S. population have passed medical marijuana initiatives. In none of
these states has the vote been close; the majorities for medical marijuana
have ranged from 56 percent in California to 69 percent in the District of
Columbia (where Congress, which runs the District, first refused to allow
the vote to be counted and then refused to implement the policy.

In April of this year the governor signed a bill passed by the state
legislature to allow medicinal use of marijuana.

As for industrial hemp, Hawaii has authorized experimental growing.

The Oglala Sioux reservation authorized an experimental planting of hemp
for industrial purposes (which was recently raided by the Drug Enforcement
Administration, an action that received almost no publicity and is being
contested in court). The Navajo or Dine people recently voted to authorize
the growing of low-THC hemp for industrial purposes and the first planting
is expected next Spring.

A small but growing hemp industry has become established in the United
States, using fabric produced overseas (mostly in China and Hungary) to
make clothes and other items.

Canada, Ireland and France have begun small-scale experiments in industrial
hemp. Green Party candidate Ralph Nader held a full-scale event shown on
C-SPAN in September with farmers and industrial hemp organizations and
advocates urging that U.S. policy be changed to permit industrial hemp to
be grown, both to bolster farm income and for environmental benefits (hemp
requires much less pesticides than cotton, for example). Later Nader
visited New Mexico, where he held a joint press conference with Republican
Gov. Gary Johnson, who has urged that U.S. drug policy be changed, at least
to the extent of legalizing marijuana and taking a second look at the way
other illicit drugs are handled.

Most of the press treated the Shadow Conventions, sponsored by sometime
conservative Arianna Huffington and billionaire speculator George Soros
alongside the major-party conventions, as something of a sideshow.

But each of those events featured enthusiastic support for ending the war
on drugs, including appearances from Reps. John Conyers (senior Democrat on
the House Judiciary Committee) Maxine Waters, Charles Rangel (who has been
a drug warrior for years but sees increasing opposition from
African-Americans) and other elected officials.

Republican Rep. Tom Campbell, facing an uphill battle he is still unlikely
to win in his effort to unseat California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein
(one of the more egregiously authoritarian drug warriors despite her
moderate image), has decided to do something politicians seeking elected
office seldom do -- go with his actual beliefs and make criticism of the
drug war the centerpiece of his campaign.

Ending the drug war or even throttling back significantly would be a
significant step toward recovering the Bill of Rights and the idea of
limited government. It is largely because of the drug war that we have
tripled prison capacity in the last two decades, then filled them to
over-capacity. Most of the mask-wearing, machine-gun-wielding home invaders
who terrorize Americans do so in the name of the drug war. The asset
forfeiture laws that have done so much to undermine the concept of private
property have been justified almost entirely by the drug war.

The laws against "money laundering" that have done so much to undermine
financial privacy have been put in place in the name of the holy war on
drugs. The drug war exception to the Fourth Amendment has done much to
eliminate the notion that a person's home is his castle.

The drug war was the pretext for the ban on importing "assault weapons"
during the first Bush administration. The indignity of being forced to pee
in a cup or turn over DNA samples to authorities on demand has come about
because of the drug war. In the name of the drug war, neo-Stalinist
programs like DARE encourage school children to inform on their friends and
parents.

The drug war also increases violence and the amount of real crime in
society, insofar as most crime usually called "drug-related crime" is
really "drug-law-related crime" that would not happen in the absence of
drug laws. And the drug war increases corruption among police and clogs the
courts.

Rethinking the drug war, then, would have beneficial effects in a host of
areas. And there's just an outside chance that if we can break the
psycho-political dynamic whereby either success or failure in fighting
drugs is always a justification for more spending, more programs and more
repression, perhaps that dynamic as applied to a host of other government
programs could be weakened as well.

The politicians, for any number of reasons, aren't going to do it. But
through ballot initiatives, the people are demonstrating a certain healthy
skepticism about the drug war and those running it. If most of the
initiatives mentioned passed (Alaska probably won't but the others have a
decent chance) it would be a significant step toward more thoroughgoing reform.