CALIFORNIA JUDGE JOINS A CALL BY N.M. GUV FOR DRUGS DEBATE

(Albuquerque, N.M.-(AP)) -- A Republican judge from California's
conservative Orange County added his voice to that of New Mexico's
governor calling for debate and reform of U.S. drug policy on Tuesday.

Superior Court Judge James Gray stopped short of saying he would
legalize drugs, but he agrees with Gov. Gary Johnson that the U.S.
drug war is a failure. Calling Johnson a traitor to the drug war, as
some have, pays the governor a compliment, he said.

"My view is that someone who is a traitor to a failed policy is a
patriot to common sense and the common good," Gray said at a drug
policy forum on Tuesday night.

"It is time that we as a society address the issue of drug policy,"
said Gray, who shook Johnson's hand after the discussion was over and
said he was proud to do so.

But is legalization the answer?

"No," he said.

He said he would endorse a combination of measures including drug
maintenance programs, drug substitution as seen in methadone programs,
legalization of hemp production and legalization of needles with
needle-exchange programs -- but would not legalize the drugs.

"The drugs themselves are dangerous," he said by phone Monday, "and we
want to do everything under the law we can to discourage people from
using them."

Gray would keep drugs under strict regulation but eliminate the profit
motive for illegal drugs, just as ending Prohibition cut the profit
motive from bootleg liquor.

"No one has a profit motive to get your son hooked on alcohol except
the legal purveyors," he said, "but lots of people have a profit
motive to get your children hooked on [drugs]."

And despite the war on drugs, he said, "It's easier for them to get
cocaine or marijuana than it is to get beer."

Each state -- not the federal government -- should decide drug laws,
he said.

There are many options between the extremes of legalization and of
imprisoning "anyone who comes into contact with these drugs," he said.

Options include regulation, treatment and decriminalization, which he
said differs from legalization. Under decriminalization, drugs remain
illegal. That's the case in Holland, where users who stay within
certain limits are not prosecuted, he said.

"If the founding fathers were here and could see this [drug policy],
there would be a second American revolution," Gray said.

He quoted former California Assemblyman Pat Nolan, R-Glendale, as
saying "We should reserve our prison space for people we are afraid of
- not people we are mad at."