GOV. PUSHES LEGALIZATION

Johnson Takes Drug Stance To National Governors' Forum

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- Gov. Gary Johnson discussed plans to push drug
legalization on a national level while speaking to the New Mexico
Chapter of the Humanist Society Saturday at the University of New
Mexico Law School.

Johnson said he presented his stance on drug legalization to the
Western Governors Association during one of its meetings and it was
met favorably. He said he presented it to the eight governors and
every governor in the room said they would reconsider their drug policies.

He said within a week after the governors met, Wyoming Gov. Jim
Geringer distributed a press release stating Wyoming needs to stop
getting tougher on drugs.

"It is my hope to get this on the National Governor's Association
agenda and make the proposal to the national governors," Johnson said.

Johnson said he has put together a drug policy task force, with a
federal appeals judge from Denver and health and law professionals to
come up with different suggestions for legalizing drugs. He said he
has purposely stayed as far away from the force so they will create
concrete proposals without his persuasion.

Johnson outlined why he is in favor of drug legalization during his
speech.

He said he supports the legalization of all drugs, including heroin
and cocaine.

Although Johnson had previously backed off his stance that cocaine and
heroin should be legalized, he pursued the subject during the meeting,
citing several statistics about cocaine- and heroin-related deaths
versus tobacco- and alcohol-related deaths to support his case.

He said last year, about 450,000 tobacco-related deaths, 150,000
alcohol-related deaths and 100,000 prescription drug-related deaths
were reported nationally. He compared those statistics, which were all
the result of using legal, controlled substances, with the 5,000
cocaine- and heroin-related deaths nationwide last year.

"Now clearly, tobacco is the boogey man in society, followed by
alcohol," Johnson said.

He said 1.6 million people are arrested annually for drug-related
crimes, and added that half of those arrests are marijuana-related. He
said half of the people arrested for marijuana-related offenses are
Hispanic, making the laws discriminatory.

"They're the worst when it comes to blacks, who are arrested and
actually end up in jail, relative to whites who are arrested and end
up in jail," he said.

Johnson said after legalizing marijuana, distinctions would be drawn
between smoking marijuana and doing harm to others, similar to alcohol
laws. He said it should always be against the law to smoke marijuana
and drive and for children to smoke or be sold marijuana.

"If you're just smoking marijuana and doing no harm arguably to
anybody but yourself, is that criminal?" he asked.

Johnson said people want to put drug pushers in jail but they don't
truly understand who the pushers are. He said the profile of the
average pusher is a single mother of three children, who is selling
cocaine to get extra money to support her own habit. He said when the
mother is caught after the second or third offense, she is sentenced
to 15 to 20 years in jail under federal law and the children are
placed in state care.

Johnson asked whether it is so farfetched to think that the government
could legalize drugs and actually reduce use. He used Holland, the
only country to decriminalize marijuana, as an example to support his
theory.

He said 60 percent of the people in Holland use drugs, and the country
has one-fourth the violent crime rate, one-fourth the homicide rate
and one-tenth the incarceration rate as that of the United States.

"Certainly we can argue that Holland is not the same country at the
United States and Europeans are different than we are," Johnson said.
"But that argument, based on their experience, does not suggest usage
will go up."