N.M. GOVERNOR'S AIM: DEBATE ON DRUG WAR

SANTA FE, N.M. -- Here's how Gov. Gary Johnson plans to relax next weekend:
Fly to Hawaii. Swim for 2.4 miles off the Kona coast. Bike 112 miles over
lava fields. Then wrap up the rest of the Ironman Triathlon with a
26.2-mile marathon by nightfall.

For Johnson, baby-faced self-made millionaire, health nut and first
governor in state history to serve back-to-back terms, the Ironman will
seem like a luau after what he has been through this month. When Johnson
recently became the highest-ranking elected official to call for
legalization of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other drugs, he set a fire
under what basically has been a dormant debate about legalizing drugs as a
way to wrestle the problem to the ground.

The fact that he's a Republican gave him a big box of matches to play with.
The back draft has been a scorcher.

America's drug czar, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, flew to Albuquerque in a tizzy,
referring to the governor as "goofy" and "Puff Daddy Johnson," a reference
to the popular rap artist. Advocates pulled out the champagne, saying a
national discourse on legalization was finally at hand.

TV and radio reporters have been salivating, reducing much of Johnson's
proposals to sensational sound bites. And the governor's staff, long
accustomed to his speak-from-the-hip style, can't shut their boss up.

"I just wanted to get a discussion going on the biggest head-in-the-sand
issue in this country today," the governor said Friday in an interview with
the Mercury News. "It's like a stick of butter, and we've moved it from the
freezer to the fridge."

Then there are the Republicans of New Mexico, hardly happy to see one of
their own publicly trash the party's anti-legalization stand.

"Politics are like nature," said state Sen. Billy McKibben. "Every once in
a while, nature will throw out a freak, like a calf with two heads. As far
as New Mexico politics are concerned, Gov. Johnson is our two-headed calf."

Johnson, 46 and a married father of two, has taken to calling himself "Don
Quixote" and admits his proposal has people wondering what he's been smoking.

"Politically," he says, "this baby is zippo. No one anywhere wants to take
up this banner." But that hasn't slowed him down. Every chance he gets,
from the nightly news to a speech Friday before mortgage bankers in an
Albuquerque hotel ballroom, Johnson is slinging his pitch.

Drug Policy Proposal

One, the drug war is a waste of money, as America throws billions of
dollars at a problem that refuses to go away.

Two, drug use would actually go down if America followed Johnson's mantra:
"Control, regulate, tax, educate and prevent."

And, three, in a piece of his proposal sure to shock many Americans who may
be inclined to decriminalize pot, Johnson maintains that if legalization
works for marijuana, it should also work for heroin.

Some, of course, think the governor is off his rocker.

"There's always going to be a black market for drugs, whether they're legal
or not," said Bob Weiner, an aide to McCaffrey. "Drug use under Johnson's
plan would go up. Kids who don't use drugs now because they don't want to
end up with it on their records would start using them. You'd quintuple the
car crashes, the deaths, the problems in the workplace. Johnson's ideas
make for great cocktail-party talk but very poor policy."

That view, of course, is debatable. And a debate is precisely what Johnson
hopes will come out of his recent high-pitched and almost whiny gospel
message.

"Legalize heroin?" he said Friday on a call-in radio talk show, where
supporters outnumbered critics 3 to 1. "I'm not talking about Snicker bars,
heroin and Payday lined up in the 7-Eleven. I'm talking about a whole new
set of laws to regulate its sale, maybe giving it by prescription at a
clinic, maybe making the user take it right there on the spot."

Astute Johnson watchers shouldn't have been too surprised when the
notoriously outspoken governor spoke out. Johnson had acknowledged during
his first gubernatorial campaign in 1994 that he used marijuana and cocaine
while at the University of New Mexico. However, he said he stopped using
drugs after college and quit drinking alcohol 12 years ago.

Today he prides himself on being the most physically fit governor in the
nation, running 10 miles a day at the crack of dawn, entering triathlons
and climbing mountains. And he says that legal or not, drugs are bad and
people should refrain from using them.

Scaling Mount Everest, which Johnson plans to do when he retires from
public office in 2002, may seem a cinch compared with getting a real debate
over drugs going at a national level, the arena in which Johnson feels the
discourse belongs.

Lack Of Debate

There may be plenty of room for debate between the extremes, effectively
marked off last week by the Johnson-McCaffrey cat fight on the nation's
airwaves, but not a lot of people, especially elected officeholders, care
to stray into the battle.

"There really isn't any debate in this country," said Peter Reuter, a
University of Maryland economist who has written extensively on drug
markets and the legalization issue. "There's a large in-the-closet
sentiment for legalization, but that doesn't make a debate. It's really
just fringe elements talking about it now."

Johnson's call for a re-examination of the drug war got lost in the
fireworks over Albuquerque this month, said Attorney General Darren White,
a friend of Johnson's, a member of his Cabinet and the highest-ranking law
enforcement officer in New Mexico.

White said that while he's "vehemently opposed" to legalization, "I support
the governor's call for a national discourse. But the issue's been clouded
because his message is being played out in eight-second sound bites."

As Drug Policy Foundation analyst Rob Stewart observed, "The drug issue in
America is so charged that real debate just gets locked up by the opposing
rhetoric. But perhaps with Johnson being perceived by some as so far out,
this'll open up a middle ground for others to start talking about drugs
reasonably."

In the meantime, the stats fly back and forth. Johnson said more damage
than good is done by locking up 700,000 people on marijuana-related crimes,
which he said the nation did in 1997. McCaffrey fired back with fresh
reports from the front lines, pointing out that drug use in the United
States actually has dropped 50 percent since 1979.

To which the self-described "reality-driven" bottom-line Republican
replies: "So if we've reduced use by 50 percent, shouldn't we be spending
50 percent less on the war?"

Former San Jose Police Chief Joseph McNamara, a research fellow at the
Hoover Institution at Stanford University, agreed.

"This drug war is stupid. We probably ruined a lot of lives with those
arrests, and very few of those people who smoke marijuana commit other
crimes."

Support For Legalization

Some polls have shown that close to 40 percent of Americans would favor
legalizing marijuana. And in several Western states, including California,
voters recently have come out in favor of distributing marijuana for
medical reasons.

But pushing to legitimize heroin and cocaine probably strikes most
Americans as somewhere between irresponsible and completely nuts. And
Johnson knows it.

"Realistically speaking, if you can start with (legalizing) marijuana, I
would suggest that's huge," he said. "And realistically speaking, that may
be 15 years off. But it would be better to have it 15 years off than 80
years off. And talking about it now, in my opinion, is going to get that
closer."