SHADOWING THE SHADOW

I've spent the week at the Democratic National Convention and have
even ventured inside the Staples Center for a few hours here and there
of the official proceedings. It hasn't been quite as bland as the
Republican confab in Philadelphia, but unless Al Gore unexpectedly
delivers a spellbinding stem-winder of a speech before this is posted,
it hasn't been especially stimulating. The real action has been on the
streets and at the Shadow Convention.

The Shadow Convention, convened by columnist and celebrity Arianna
Huffington to address issues she and others say the major parties
would refuse to address during the conventions, shrewdly limited
itself to three major issues, so as to maintain some kind of focus.
Two of those, campaign finance reform and the wealth-poverty gap, have
received a good deal of attention both in the major parties and from
the "mainstream" media, although neither party was likely to feature
them during the conventions, which are pep rallies rather than issue
forums after all.

The third issue the Shadow Conventions highlighted really has been
virtually absent from mainstream discussion, closer to a "third rail"
of American politics than Social Security ever was -- the failed drug
war. Perhaps ironically or perhaps for that very reason, the day the
Shadows devoted to the topic drew the largest, most enthusiastic
crowds, people who sounded and seemed deeply committed to bringing
this issue out of the political shadows. And maybe, just maybe though
reformers have felt this way before the time has come for
reconsideration of this ill-considered policy.

Certainly the program put together by Ethan Nadelmann, head of the
Lindesmith Center/Drug Policy Foundation funded in large part by
billionaire speculator George Soros, was comprehensive and
authoritative. (Say what you like about George Soros -- and I disagree
with him on most issues and thought his book was pretty silly -- he
pushes causes that he actually believes in and puts his money where
his mouth is; would that more billionaires spent to push causes, right
or wrong, rather than to buy access, schmooze or get government to
beat up on their competitors.)

Most impressive to me was the number of elected officials from both
parties willing to "come out" with a conviction other officials share
but lack the political cover or intestinal fortitude to say: the drug
war has not only failed to keep drugs from "our kids" and can't
succeed, it has done immeasurable harm to the American social fabric
and to millions of peoples' lives.

I knew, for example, that Gary Johnson, the Republican governor of New
Mexico, had questioned the drug war. I was not prepared for him to be
so strong in his convictions, so well-informed, so willing to put
himself on the line for what he thinks is right.

Gov. Johnson is the kind of Republican any conservative would be proud
to embrace. He's a self-made businessman, building a one-man handyman
service in 1974 into a company that employed 1,000 people in 1994.
He's a fiscal conservative and a "can-do" type who actually has made
some modest common-sense reforms in the way New Mexico's government
operates and is the first New Mexico governor to be re-elected to a
second term.

He's an athlete who works out every day and has run the Ironman
Triathlon in Hawaii three times, a happily married father of two
daughters. He doesn't smoke, drink or do any kind of drugs. For
whatever reason, however, he has developed a capacity to make
intelligent distinctions. He urges everyone he knows not to use
alcohol or tobacco, but doesn't think they should be illegal.

He notes, however, that some 400,000 people die prematurely from using
tobacco, several hundred thousand die prematurely from using alcohol
- -- and 5,000 people a year die from all the drugs the government has
declared illegal. "We are willing to arrest 1.6 million people a year
- -- half for marijuana, half of those Hispanic and a disproportionate
percentage of the rest African-American -- to fail to prevent those
deaths," he says. "It doesn't make sense and it does a great deal of
harm. A business that clung to such failed policies with such would
have been bankrupt years ago."

One of the more egregious side effects of the war on drugs, Gov.
Johnson notes, is that it destroys the capacity to make distinctions.
"About 95 percent of the people who use marijuana do so the way other
Americans drink a cocktail, and everybody knows it," he says. "Yet law
enforcement is forced to treat every one of those people as somebody
with a serious problem who needs to be in forced rehabilitation. It's
just not so, and a policy based on a lie is bound to fail."

I have known Judge Jim Gray, the Orange County Superior Court judge
who introduced Gov. Johnson, is as sterling a straight-arrow
conservative as the governor and has a book on the drug war coming out
in January, for a number of years. But I didn't know Mayor Ross
"Rocky" Anderson of Salt Lake City not only ended city support for the
DARE program but is using his position to call for rethinking the drug
war.

Mayor Anderson knows that it won't be easy to turn things around.
"Politicians are much more terrified of a 30-second attack ad calling
them soft on crime than of supporting an ineffective, wasteful,
inhumane policy that destroys families," he says. The people will have
to lead the politicians, give them some cover, on this issue. To
expect leadership from political leaders is usually a fool's errand.

But maybe that's changing. Rep. Tom Campbell, the Republican candidate
for U.S. Senate in California spoke at both Shadow Conventions, and
after a cautious beginning he has developed into a forceful drug war
critic. On Tuesday he concentrated on two aspects of the drug war --
the disparate racial impact that results from the way the war is
carried out and the likelihood that drug war enthusiasms will get is
getting the United States involved in a Vietnam-like morass in Colombia.

As Campbell pointed out, while most authorities agree that blacks
constitute about 11 percent of drug users, 60 percent of those in
state prisons for felony drug offenses are black. "We're jailing an
entire young adult generation of black men, and by making them felons
we're depriving them of the right to vote," he said. "What Jim Crow
was not able to do to African-Americans the drug war may be doing." As
for Colombia, we're sending advisers and helicopters, and relocating
people into strategic hamlets where we're promising to teach them how
to grow different crops, inserting ourselves into a long-term civil
war in a jungle country. "The only thing missing is Robert McNamara's
signature on the plan," said Rep. Campbell.

The racial disparities that have surfaced in the way the drug war is
prosecuted might account for the fact that many of the Democrats
willing to be identified with drug law reform are black. Jesse
Jackson, who was something of a gung-ho drug warrior himself in the
1980s, has come to believe that the side effects of prohibition are
worse than the side effects of illegal drugs, and said so at the
Shadow Convention. (Of course Jesse was everywhere at the convention;
he spoke from the podium and at one of the street rallies the first
day too.) Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of California was on the
program. Rep. John Conyers, the veteran Michigan Democrat who is the
ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, wasn't, but came by
to lend support. Joanne Bowman, a state legislator in Oregon and a
Democratic convention delegate, gave a fiery speech, urging people who
don't like what their representatives do to "send them home."

But it wasn't only black Democrats who are willing to speak out on
this issue. California state Sen. Tom Hayden was there, sounding like
a moderate compared to others. Los Angeles City Council member Jackie
Goldberg welcomed the Shadow Convention and lent her vocal support to
the drug law reform cause. Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins were
unscheduled speakers. Comedians Bill Maher and Al Franken appeared.

The statements from politicians, by and large, were not the most
substantive speeches on the drug war. Ethan Nadelmann gave a masterly,
scholarly overview of the malign effects the war on drugs has -- not
only on those arrested but on law enforcement, the judicial system,
the penal system, the political system and the ability of Americans to
talk honestly with one another. Doctors and addiction specialists
explored ways to implement a paradigm of harm reduction rather than
punishment. Doctors and patients helped by the medicinal properties of
marijuana told their stories.

While those on the front lines had more substance, the fact that
elected politicians of both parties are increasingly willing to touch
this "third rail" was the most encouraging fact at this Shadow
session. Perhaps in four years, or maybe eight, both party conventions
will feature speeches about the ability of the political system to
identify failed policies and change them. One can hope.