THE WAR ON DRUGS MUST END: VOTE FOR CAMPBELL

Why does Sen. Dianne Feinstein want to keep 24,000 people caged like
animals behind bars for simple possession of a narcotic substance?

Why has she condemned Proposition 36, which would provide treatment to
"nonviolent drug possession offenders" instead of prison time, saving
taxpayers a quarter of a billion dollars annually, according to the
nonpartisan state legislative analyst?

Would she feel the same if one of her family members was caught in the drug
war's net?

That was the question she pointedly avoided answering in a debate with her
Republican opponent, Tom Campbell. In that debate, she treated the drug
problem with rote answers.

First she stated, "I will vote for Proposition 36." But after moderator
Bill Rosendahl stated the proposition's intent, she said, "Maybe I misspoke.

I will vote against Proposition 36," which she then condemned as "deeply
flawed." Either Feinstein is incredibly heartless or she hasn't bothered to
think seriously about the disastrous failure of the drug war. In either
case, it puts her on the wrong side of the most unjust and racist human
rights assault in this country, packing the jails with mostly minority
prisoners.

That's reason enough to vote her out of office.

Throughout her too-lengthy career, she has been a knee-jerk supporter of
anything the cops want, led by the state prison guards' union, which pumps
enormous money into the state Democratic Party to keep the prison boom going.

The drug war is necessary to provide the bodies to fill those prisons,
which sadly is California's leading "public works" program.

Fortunately, in this election, California voters have a fine alternative.
Tom Campbell, the moderate Republican nominee, has had the guts and
intelligence to fundamentally challenge the insanity that has wrecked so
many lives.

He has the sense to advocate treating addiction as a medical--not a
criminal--problem and the courage to take on the powerful vested interests
of the drug-industrial complex who live off the billions that have
exacerbated rather than solved the problem.

Campbell, a former Stanford law professor who supports abortion rights, the
Brady gun control bill, the environment and free speech, and who opposed
the anti-immigrant Proposition 187, has given up his seat in the House to
take on the quixotic challenge to the lavishly financed Feinstein.

Feinstein's public career has been distinguished by a finely honed
opportunism that embraces the status quo and the moneyed special interests
that benefit from it, which is particularly the case with the drug war. In
the debate, Campbell stressed medical treatment as the most effective
contribution to the drug problem, while Feinstein enthusiastically
celebrated the hopped-up crusade of drug czar Barry McCaffrey, the
ex-general who failed to learn the lessons of the Vietnam fiasco and
pursued a similarly futile drug war at home. Feinstein may not recognize
that it's time to get out of this war without end, but McCaffrey does,
having recently announced his resignation.

But never chastened by the facts, Feinstein follows the administration's
mad march in supporting its request for $1.7 billion to extend the drug war
to Colombia. Campbell, in contrast, rose on the floor of Congress to
condemn inserting the U.S. into the intractable 40-year civil war. He
pointed out that drug interdiction has proved an enormously costly failure,
citing the definitive Rand Corp. study showing drug treatment is far more
cost-effective than incarceration or interdiction.

Campbell noted that under Richard Nixon two-thirds of anti-drug funding
went for treatment and that drug arrests and drug-related crime rates fell
markedly.

Today, a mere 18% of the national drug budget is spent on treatment and the
rest on policing, which has turned drug addicts into criminals and left us
with one of the largest prison populations in the world.

If there's one issue on which the Democrats have been most clearly wrong,
it's their zealous pursuit of the failed drug war. Helping to lead us over
that cliff has been Feinstein, determined in her endorsement of this
harmful absurdity that has filled our jails with victims of a policy gone
mad. Proposition 36 would introduce a small measure of sanity to those
whose only crime is their use of illegal drugs. It is debatable whether
most of those drugs are more dangerous than alcohol, which is freely
imbibed at Feinstein's fund-raising events.

Vote for Proposition 36 and Campbell to send a message to politicians to
sober up before many more lives are sacrificed in an endless war against
our own.