DRUG-SMART AMERICA' SET AS GOAL

The recently named head of Gov. Gary Johnson's bipartisan advisory group studying a new drug policy told an Albuquerque audience Monday it's better to aim at a "drug-smart America" than one that is "drug-free."

"All drugs are dangerous if abused," said retired state District Judge W.C. "Woody" Smith, who was named in June as head of the privately funded nine-member panel seeking "harm-reduction" policies to deal with hard drugs.

If America were truly drug-free, "wouldn't there be an awful lot of illness?" Smith asked an audience of about 100 Kiwanis Club of Albuquerque members at a noon luncheon.

Even legal, prescription drugs can be abused, added Smith, who has said he agrees with the governor that the national war on drugs has failed.

What is needed, he said, is a "wiser, smarter" way to deal with the problem of abuse, rather than to focus on a relatively few stigmatized illegal drugs.

The one drug responsible for most of the violent cases he saw in 17 years on the bench, Smith said, was alcohol.

"And alcohol is a drug, isn't it?" he asked.

But Smith, who was an outspoken critic of drug laws even before he retired two years ago from the bench, barely began talking about his drug views before his time was up.

Most of Smith's talk dealt with his lifelong "journey through the justice system," beginning when he grew up in Carlsbad reading about America's most famous courtroom champion of unpopular causes, Clarence Darrow.

"I'm one of the few people I know who always wanted to be a lawyer," said Smith, who nevertheless took some detours into engineering studies and a hitch in the U.S. Navy that took him to Vietnam.

His first job as a lawyer was with the Public Defender's Office, where he took his "first step on the road to cynicism," Smith said.

"I found things like the presumption of innocence and the Constitution were not as important as other things" when a case came to trial, he said.

But Smith also said the most enjoyable years of his legal career were spent as a prosecutor, when he "took an oath to do justice" and got "paid for doing right."

Smith said the most difficult thing about being a judge -- both in Metro and in state District courts -- was "understanding that every case is different, that every person is different."

And it was as a judge, he said, that he developed his motto, "If it ain't fair, it ain't legal."

But he said that as a judge he took a few more steps "down the road to cynicism" while lobbying legislators, who he said were more interested in accumulating political debts than in justice.

Also distressing was "the change in people I saw serving on juries," who he said "had their own agenda but were willing to hide it" in order to serve and had made up their minds "before anybody heard any evidence."

Smith also decried those who "are willing to make such important decisions on so little information."

When the outcome of a trial seems to contradict information reported about a case, Smith said, "People don't say, 'Maybe I didn't have enough information.' They ask, 'What is wrong with our judicial system?' ''

Since retiring two years ago, Smith has worked at mediating civil disputes before they get to court.

Of 220 cases he has mediated, 210 have ended in settlements, he said.

"It's much nicer to have people shake hands and smile, instead of walking out of the courtroom and throwing me the finger," he said.