PACIFISTS IN THE WAR ON DRUGS

It was the largest crowd Senate candidate Carla Howell has addressed
since launching her campaign against Ted Kennedy, and it had the most
interesting hair and the most excessive tattoos. It's hard to tell how
many of the 40,000 gathered on Boston Common Saturday are registered to
vote, but there was no doubt about their enthusiam for Howell's pledge
to end the war on drugs. Howell was followed on stage by Harry Browne,
Libertarian candidate for president. "If, by some miracle, I am elected
president in November," he said with a good-natured smile, "one of my
first acts will be to pardon federal prisoners held on non-violent drug
offenses."

Howell and Browne are both longshot Libertarians, though Howell is at
this point the more visible of Kennedy's two challengers and has a shot
at beating Republican Jack E. Robinson. But the Libertarians and hemp-
huggers on the Common aren't the only voices challenging drug laws.

One by one, other politicians are beginning to speak what was long the
politically unspeakable. New Mexico Gov. Gary E. Johnson, a Republican,
Hawaii Gov. Benjamin J. Cayetano, a Democrat, and Minnesota Gov. Jesse
Ventura, famously independent, have joined a vocal minority of mayors
and state legislators in calling for drug use to be tackled as a public
health challenge, not a law enforcement priority.

Mayor Ross Anderson of Salt Lake City, capital of the most conservative
state in the country, has dared drop D.A.R.E. from the public school
curriculum. He's catching political heat, but he's not backing down. "
D.A.R.E. is a complete fraud on the American people, and has actually
done a lot of harm by preventing the implementation of more effective
programs," he says.

Al Gore and George W. Bush aren't nearly so daring. They've said next
to nothing about their thoughts on federal drug policy. But another
presidential candidate, the Green Party's Ralph Nader, joined Gov.
Johnson in New Mexico earlier this month to call for the
decriminalization of marijuana.

"Addiction should never be treated as a crime," Nader said in Sante Fe.
"It has to be treated as a health problem. We do not send alcoholics to
jail in this country."

The people are well ahead of the politicians on this issue. Over the
opposition or awkward silence of most politicians, voters in seven
states and the District of Columbia have legalized the medical use of
marijuana, though the Clinton Justice Department continues to ignore
their will. This November, voters in Alaska and California's Mendocino
County will consider decriminalizing marijuana.

Massachusetts voters will take up drug law reform as well. Question 8
seeks to reduce sentences for low-level drug users, divert more
resources into drug treatment and reform asset forfeiture laws used to
seize the property of drug defendants.

Framingham voters, at least those in the 6th Middlesex District, will
also get to vote on a non-binding referendum asking legislators to make
possession of up to an ounce of marijuana a civil, rather than
criminal, offense.

Is the tide turning against drug prohibition? Perhaps. "Since Jan. 1,
we've had more victories for drug-prevention reform than the past 20
years," Ethan Nadelmann of the Lindesmith Center Drug Policy Foundation
told The New York Times last week.

For 30 years, the debate over drug policy has been frozen by the
adolescent fears of baby boomer politicians that any challenge to "Just
Say No" orthodoxy would brand them as soft on drugs. You may not be
hearing much on the subject from the leading presidential candidates,
but further down the ballot, you can hear the sound of ice cracking.