GENERAL CONSTERNATION

New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson's "Astonishing" Position On Drugs Is Upsetting
All The Right People.

During an October speech in Washington, New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson
sounded a bit like the guidance counselor on South Park. "Drugs are
bad," he told his audience at the Cato Institute. "Don't do drugs."

A 46-year-old triathlete who abstains from alcohol, tobacco,
Coca-Cola, and candy bars as well as illegal intoxicants, Johnson
declared drugs "a handicap" so many times that I lost count. Yet the
conservative Republican insisted on posing a question that few
politicians are brave enough to ask: Are drugs so bad that people who
possess them should be arrested and locked up? Johnson's answer, as
heartfelt as any prohibitionist's determination to achieve a
"drug-free America,'' is an unequivocal no.

A few weeks before the Cato speech, that stand prompted a scolding
letter from federal drug czar Barry McCaffrey, who informed Johnson
that "your publicly stated positions are inconsistent with my national
drug control policy." When Johnson failed to fall in line, the
frustrated former general let loose a barrage of invective, calling
the governor's views "preposterous," "astonishing," "embarrassing,"
and "pro-drug." He said Johnson is "a terrible model" sending "a
terrible message." In short, "he should be ashamed."

McCaffrey's over-the-top reaction--which included a trip to
Albuquerque arranged especially so he could castigate Johnson on his
home turf--suggests how desperate drug warriors are to maintain the
illusion of monolithic support for their never-ending crusade. They
cannot tolerate even a peep of dissent from someone in a position of
authority. But neither McCaffrey's vituperation nor the anger of
Johnson's fellow Republicans in New Mexico (who reportedly have
screamed and cursed at him in private) has stopped the governor from
speaking out against an injustice that seems to have troubled him for
a long time.

When he first ran for governor in 1994, Johnson readily admitted that
he had smoked marijuana and snorted cocaine as a college student. In
his Cato speech, he recalled correcting reporters who described this
as "experimenting with drugs." He and his friends were not
experimenting, he said. They were having fun.

Johnson wants to make it clear that his experience with drugs did not
involve test tubes and Bunsen burners. Nevertheless, he says, such
"experimentation" does refute certain hypotheses about the
consequences of drug use. "You're brought up learning that drugs make
you crazy," he told Students for a Sensible Drug Policy during his
visit to Washington. "Then you do marijuana for the first time, and
it's not so bad. It's kind of cool. That's when kids find out it's
been a lie."

Though Johnson now advocates a drug-free lifestyle, he still does not
think drug users should be treated like criminals. "Did we belong in
jail?" Johnson asked his Cato audience, noting that a felony record
would have prevented him from running for governor. "Does anybody want
to press a button and retroactively punish the 80 million Americans
who have used drugs?" In 1997, Johnson noted, state and local
officials arrested 1.6 million people for drug offenses, and about
400,000 drug offenders are behind bars right now. "I don't think we
can continue to lock America up [for] bad choices," he said. "This has
got to end."

In terms of honesty and consistency on the subject of drugs, Johnson
compares favorably with George W. Bush, who as governor of Texas
signed legislation authorizing incarceration for first-time cocaine
possession but refuses to say whether he ever committed that offense
himself. Or A1 Gore, who admits that he used to smoke pot (and whose
teenaged son was caught smoking it a few years ago) yet supports a war
on drugs that results in 700,000 marijuana arrests a year.

Johnson, a successful entrepreneur who turned a part-time job as a
handyman into one of New Mexico's biggest construction businesses, is
neither a blue blood nor a professional politician. The governorship
is the first office he ever ran for, and it looks like it will be the
last, despite an attempt to draft him as a presidential candidate for
the Libertarian Party. Aside from that overture, Johnson's criticism
of the war on drugs has not exactly opened up doors for him. He
described his political prospects this way: "I'm in the ground, and
the dirt is being thrown on top of me."

Johnson's candor and courage won him a standing ovation at the Cato
Institute. But the crowd, which consisted largely of drug policy
activists and others sympathetic to the cause, was not completely
uncritical. Some had hoped for a more dynamic speaker. Others wished
he'd bone up a bit on drug policy: Murmurs could be heard, for
example, when he seemed to concede that some people die of marijuana
overdoses (there is no such case on record) and when he confessed that
he wasn't familiar with New York's Rockefeller drug laws, which set
the pattern for the harsh mandatory minimum sentences that have helped
fill U.S. prisons with drug offenders.

More fundamentally, Johnson's insistence that "drugs are a handicap"
comes across as needlessly puritanical. Few people, after all, are
prepared to follow his example by eschewing all psychoactive
substances. Declining to do so is not necessarily "a bad choice," as
Johnson has repeatedly asserted. For those of us who don't compete in
triathlons, it may be a perfectly reasonable choice. Johnson was on
firmer ground when he told the student group he addressed that "the
majority of people who use drugs use them responsibly.'' Morally and
practically, the important distinction is between use and abuse, not
between use and abstinence.

On the other hand, the nuances may not matter very much. It's not as
if Johnson is facing off against subtle thinkers. In an outraged
Washington Times op-ed piece, McCaffrey accused him and the Cato
Institute of creating "a smokescreen" to conceal their real goal. They
may call for the legalization of drugs, he wrote, but "it is clear the
real agenda is the legalization of drugs." Aha!

McCaffrey contrasted "people like Mr. Johnson," who "would put more
drugs into the hands of our children," with "Americans"--i.e., the
decent, right-thinking people for whom the drug czar speaks. "We don't
want the driver of the 18-wheeler next to our minivan high on
marijuana,'' he wrote, implying that "people like Mr. Johnson" relish
that prospect. "We want our children to grow up with bright futures,
not drug addictions," he added, suggesting that "people like Mr.
Johnson" hope their kids will be crack-heads and junkies.

Against this sort of mindless demagoguery, the significance of
Johnson's stand lies not in the details but in his breaking of a
taboo. He is the highest-ranking elected official to call for the
repeal of drug prohibition, and his boldness may inspire others. It
certainly has upset McCaffrey, who told CBS News that Johnson "has
done more damage in the last few months than has been done in the last
several years by drug legalization forces." We can only hope that
McCaffrey is right for a change.