Note: Mike Gray is the author of "Drug Crazy" (Random House) (see:
http://www.drugsense.org/crazy.htm ). He wrote "Texas Heroin Massacre" in
RS http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n548/a09.html

Bookmark: MAP's archive of almost 200 items about Gov. Johnson is at:
http://www.mapinc.org/johnson.htm

Also: You can view photos of the ARO (Association of Reform Organizations)
meeting with Governor Johnson, Steve Bunch and many others at:
http://www.csdp.org/aro/

MUTINY IN NEW MEXICO

Gov. Gary E. Johnson Is The Highest-Ranking Elected Official To Blast The
War On Drugs. And The Most Unlikely: He's Not Just A Drug-Free,
Squeaky-Clean Triathlete, He's A REPUBLICAN

IN THIS AGE OF MACHINE-tooled politicians, Gov. Gary E. Johnson of New
Mexico is a throwback to the Jeffersonian ideal of the citizen-legislator.
He arrived in the governor's office five years ago out of the blue, a
self-made Republican multimillionaire whose money came from the
construction business, with no political experience whatsoever. And now
this novice politician is weathering the fiercest of attacks for denouncing
the government's War on Drugs. Arguing that drug prohibition impinges on
the rights of citizens and drains the treasury, Johnson has taken his
campaign national and is receiving -- along with the hostility -- quiet but
emphatic support from politicians and law-enforcement officials across the
country.

Johnson was first pushed into taking a public stand last June 22nd.
Reporter Tim Archuleta of the Albuquerque Tribune, acting on a tip, caught
Johnson at a Republican conference in Albuquerque. Archuleta asked him
whether he was going to recommend decriminalizing drug use in New Mexico.
The governor confessed that indeed he was. He told Archuleta: "Our present
course is not working. Our War on Drugs is a real failure." Archuleta's
story hit newsstands at noon the next day, and at the governor's next stop,
he was confronted by television cameras and shouting reporters, The Santa
Fe New Mexican headline read, JOHNSON SAYS POT-SMOKING IS NOT A CRIME.

Suddenly, the national spotlight was on the forty-seven-year-old governor,
While the chorus of anti-war activists has grown to include mayors, federal
judges, police chiefs, economists and former Reagan Secretary of State
George Shultz, the defection of this conservative Republican governor was a
major crack in the dike. Johnson was condemned on Capitol Hill, and White
House drug czar Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, clearly blindsided by this
unexpected break in the ranks, fired off a five-page letter defending the
drug war and accusing Johnson of false statements and of misleading the
American people.

From his fellow governors across the country there was resounding silence:
Nobody wanted to get near this political land mine. Even Gov. Jesse Ventura
of Minnesota, who suggested legalizing marijuana during his 1998 campaign,
has not addressed the subject since he took office. At the National
Governors' Association meeting in St. Louis in August, Johnson didn't even
bother to bring it up. "I'm not naive," he says, "But I was surprised at
some people's statements that we can't even talk about an alternative
because it's 'crazy and irresponsible' -- that's from McCaffrey."

Back in New Mexico, Johnson's Republican peers are frantically distancing
themselves from his heresy. "He's had some good ideas," said Senate
Minority Floor Leader Skip Vernon. "He's had some bad ideas. And this is
the worst." State Sen. Billy McKibben is livid, "I think he's an idiot,"
said McKibben. "I think he's still smokin' the stuff." State Rep. Andy
Kissner said Johnson's suggestions are "just outrageous." The state's
lawmen are equally appalled. Sheriff Ray Sisneros of Santa Fe said Johnson
should check himself into a mental hospital, and the secretary of public
safety accused him of damaging the morale of law-enforcement officers, then
resigned. But From Johnson's viewpoint, everything seems to be going pretty
much according to plan.

The governor disarmed his attackers by freely admitting that he'd used
marijuana in college while noting that today his body is his temple. A
competitive triathlete who hang-glides from mountain tops and rides around
the state on a bicycle, he doesn't even eat junk food. He gave up booze
thirteen years ago. He thinks drug use is a handicap. "I'm against drugs,"
he has said. "But should you go to jail for simply doing drugs? I say no.
People ask me, 'What do you tell kids?' Well, you tell them the truth. You
tell them that by legalizing drugs we can control them, regulate them and
tax them. But you tell them that drugs are a bad choice -- but if you do
drugs, we're not going to throw you in jail" When the governor talks about
this issue, it's clear his background isn't politics. Instead of
doublespeak, his language reflects the direct, unambiguous style of a
construction foreman.

John Dendahl, the state Republican Party chairman, was at the fateful
luncheon last June when Johnson announced that he was thinking about taking
on the drug war. The governor began listing the damage wrought by
prohibition: the violence, the corruption, the erosion of the Constitution
and the fact that kids now have ready access to cheap drugs everywhere.
Johnson said, I hat to go public with the discussion of alternatives to the
drug war, like decriminalization."

Surprisingly, agreed to back him. The pair set out to lay the groundwork.
Dendahl would massage the party stalwarts and try to soften the blow. The
governor would meet privately with key legislators and U.S. Sen. Pete V.
Domenici's people so they could brace for the shock wave. Then somebody
tipped off the Albuquerque Tribune, and the fat was in the fire.

While most politicians were publicly scrambling to get out of the way,
Johnson was privately getting encouragement from other quarters. Steve
Bunch, in Albuquerque attorney who heads the New Mexico Drug Policy
Foundation, a vocal reform group, was busily connecting the governor with
experts from all aver the country, and they were piling his desk with books
and articles. The deeper Johnson dug, the more convinced he became that the
drug war itself was the problem. By the time he arrived in Washington,
D.C., to deliver a speech to the libertarian Cato Institute in early
October, he was openly advocating the legalization of all drugs, including
cocaine and heroin.

McCaffrey was incredulous. Here was this governor from an empty Western
state, in Washington, on the general's home turf, attacking everything he
stood for. He immediately issued a statement calling Johnson's message
"pro-drug" and claiming that his actions 'serve as a terrible model for the
rest of the nation." Two days later, McCaffrey flew to Albuquerque for a
dawn assault, "I was at home getting ready for the day," says the
governor's legislative liaison, Dave Miller. "I knew he was coming on, so I
flipped on the 7 A.M. news, and he was on two channels with the same line:
'I hear kids in New Mexico are calling the governor "Puff Daddy" Johnson,'
" McCaffrey hammered the line again at a breakfast meeting with local
lawmen organized by John J. Kelly, the U.S. attorney for the district of
New Mexico. Then the general was off to a treatment center and a hastily
arranged Rotary Club luncheon. Backed by a phalanx of law-enforcement
officials, he called Johnson worse than irresponsible. "This is goofy
thinking that's harmful to New Mexico," McCaffrey said. "He ought to be
ashamed of himself."

At the Statehouse in Santa Fe, after listing to five hours of battering
from McCaffrey, Miller peeked into the pressroom and found it packed with
reporters waiting for Johnson's reaction. "I had rarely seen the pressroom
that hot," he says. He went to the governor's office and found Johnson
watching the noon report on his little TV. There was the general,
ridiculing Johnson as ignorant and uninformed, saying, "He's getting some
of these sound bites out of ROLLING STONE magazine."

It was Miller's turn to be shocked. "I had done a little research on
McCaffrey," he says. "So I thought, 'Well, he's a class act, a four-star
general -- he's gonna really know his stuff.' As a staffer, I always worry
that we're just gonna get creamed, that he's gonna really do us in with
facts and figures. And then he starts in with the 'Puff Daddy' stuff." But
Johnson told Miller, "When you get this kind of attention from somebody
who's supposed to be at the top of the heap, you're gonna advance your cause."

McCaffrey, with his vitriolic attack, was playing right into their hands.
"God," said Miller, "does it get any better than this?"

A few minutes later they entered the pressroom, where the reporters
clamored for a response. Johnson, polite and respectful, simply welcomed
the general to the debate, even though McCaffrey didn't bother to meet with
him in person. "What ROLLING STONE and a lot of others who really
understand this issue are presenting," Johnson said, "is the truth." Why,
asked Johnson, if drug use is falling, as the general claimed, are record
numbers being arrested? "In the late Seventies we spent $1 billion in
federal money fighting drug-related crime," said Johnson. "Today we're
spending $17.8 billion. The number of people arrested has jumped from
200,000 in the late Seventies to 1.6 million. When it comes to a
cost-benefit analysis, this really stinks."

The public reaction to this shootout seemed to surprise everyone but the
governor. The phone lines, e-mail and fax machines were overflowing, and
ninety percent of the voters were swinging with Johnson.

"This has been unbelievable," said Johnson in his Cato Institute speech.
"Two elderly ladies came up to my table at dinner the other night and said,
'We're teachers, and we think your school-voucher idea sucks. But your
position on the War on Drugs -- right on!' "

Johnson knows that these voters don't necessarily agree with his ideas
about legalization, but they do agree that the drug war is a failure and
that it's time to look at alternatives. "Every single day I am approached
by people on the street saying this is long overdue, oftentimes relating
personal experiences," he says. "I've had prominent New Mexicans tell me
about drug arrests." These privileged citizens usually had their charges
dismissed, says Johnson, "but it was dismissed by the grace of God -- and
who you happen to know."

Johnson has three years left in his term -- after which, he says, he will
leave politics to climb Mount Everest -- and he intends to maintain his
attack. At the Cato Institute meeting, he said: "I'm trying to communicate
what I believe in. I believe in this issue." And he finished his speech
with a telling insight: "I do understand my value in this. I'm trying to
make the most out of having been given the stage." Requests for speaking
engagements have been flooding in from all over the country, and 60 Minutes
is at work on a profile.

In November, Johnson scheduled several educational seminars featuring
drug-war critics like Ethan Nadelmann, a leading spokesman for the reform
movement, and they played to standing-room-only crowds. Perhaps audiences
are drawn to the governor's honesty. He has even discussed the pleasures of
cocaine: "You know why people do it. It's wonderful, Whoaaa! Whewwww!"

And while his candor has inflamed the drug warriors, most of them prefer to
engage him from a distance rather than one on one. A debate that was to
include the governor and one of his most vociferous critics, U.S. attorney
Kelly, was scheduled for late November at the University of New Mexico law
school, but Kelly bowed out at the last minute.

In the end, Johnson believes, history will vindicate him. How soon? He
laughs. "I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't think this was a Berlin
Wall-type situation," he says. "You're gonna get a critical mass here, and
all of a sudden it's just gonna topple."

Does he see anyone behind him ready to mount the wall? "I see all sorts of
people," he says. "Elected officials from across the spectrum, law
enforcement, people in the courts. They say, 'You're right, but I can't
[say so].' " It's a measure of the political fear surrounding this issue
that Johnson refuses to name names. He doesn't want to spook his potential
allies -- they're already skittish enough, The voters, he says, are well
ahead of the politicians, but the politicians are coming around. "There is
a more positive response among them behind closed doors," says Johnson.
"Time will tell if they support it down the road publicly. We believe that
public sentiment is going to change their position."

Johnson wants to make it safe for other public figures to say out loud what
they're whispering to him in private. "People are really fed up," he says.
"People absolutely, genuinely recognize it as crazy. And the taboo is that
you can't even talk about it." In the state of New Mexico, the taboo no
longer applies.