FORUM PANELIST PRAISE GOVERNOR'S DRUG STANCE

After giving a pep talk on drug policy, national proponents of
legalizing drugs urged New Mexicans to support Gov. Gary Johnson's
position on the controversial issue.

Johnson's gutsy endorsement of legalization has advanced the issue
nationally, said Ethan Nadelmann, director of the Lindesmith Center, a
New York-based drug-policy institute. "Stand up and give him the
support he needs for the next three years," Nadelmann told a mostly
pro-Johnson crowd at the first of two drug-policy forums Tuesday night.

Despite the praise from the four panelists at the forum, Johnson has
drawn widespread criticism across the country for advocating drug
legalization.

Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the government's anti-drug czar, traveled to New
Mexico recently to condemn Johnson's position on drugs. McCaffrey said
Johnson has set the nation's war on drugs back because of the
Republican governor's high-profile support for legalization.

But the forum panelists attacked the notion that the so-called drug
war has done anything during the past two decades to decrease drug use
among Americans.

"In my heart, I know the drug war is not making the world safer for my
daughter or our children," Nadelmann said.

Kevin Zeese, an advocate for changing drug policy, cited a number of
statistics that he said contradicts claims that the United States is
winning the drug war.

He said the "law-enforcement-dominated strategy" has led to prisons
filled with people convicted of drug-related offenses; emergency-room
physicians are treating more drug-related overdoses; and heroin use
has tripled during the 1990s as the supply of the drug has increased.

"That's not the kind of victory I think anyone in this room wants to
see," said Zeese, director of Washington, D.C.-based Common Sense for
Drug Policy.

Marsha Rosenbaum, also of the Lindesmith Center, urged a more
common-sense approach to educating people, especially kids, about
drugs. She said policy-makers cannot honestly preach abstaining from
drugs when kids see many of their friends around them using drugs.

"The majority of teen-agers don't believe what they hear in
drug-education classes," Rosenbaum said. "They're told about
abstinence, but they look around and see America as the drug culture
it is."

Johnson gave his standard pitch Tuesday for legalizing drugs by saying
his goal is to reduce drug use by giving government the ability to
control, tax and regulate it.

Johnson continues to draw attention to the fact that marijuana and
other drugs are outlawed, while the public accepts the use of alcohol
- -- a drug Johnson said may be more dangerous.

"I just have to believe that this is really hypocrisy," Johnson
said.

However, Johnson has said he has no plans to change any major laws in
New Mexico to allow for legal drug use.

He said the issue should be pursued at the national
level.

The next drug-policy forum is scheduled at 7 p.m. Nov. 16 at the
Radisson Inn, I-40 at Carlisle Boulevard Northeast.