DRUG DEBATE FIZZLED IN INANE SOUND-BITES

It was a golden opportunity for two extremely influential characters
on opposite sides of the drug debate to appear on the same stage, but
neither was big enough to initiate a face-to-face meeting with his
challenger. So it became an opportunity missed.

Gov. Gary Johnson in his signature, shoot-from-the-hip style has given
the "we've lost the war on drugs" message exposure that's resonated
across the country. We're used to Johnson advocating quick solutions
to complex problems here in New Mexico, but little could anyone have
guessed that a "Johnsonism" would play so well to America. But that's
history and the Pandora's Box of the drug legalization debate has been
opened.

The visit to New Mexico this week by U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey
was arranged specifically to counter Johnson's call for a national
debate on drug policy -- which escalated to his advocating
legalization of drugs like marijuana, cocaine and heroin. McCaffrey's
damage-control mission is testament to just how seriously the effect
of Johnson's views are being taken in the Capitol.

In the beginning, our triathlete governor spoke only of the need for a
renewed debate on drug policy and decriminalizing marijuana. That idea
had merit -- though Johnson should have been aware that New Mexico
decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana years ago. But
his views got him some quick attention. He just returned from a
whirlwind tour of Washington D.C. where he spoke to student groups and
the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, with stops on radio talk
shows, TV morning shows and the Internet. And here at home he's being
recruited by the Libertarian Party to be its presidential candidate.

The problem is that with Johnson there's no meat to temper the hot
sauce of his ideas. While he grabs air time with his assertion that
money spent on criminal drug law enforcement should be shifted to
prevention and treatment, his record in office takes the opposite line.

He consistently vetoed such programs when presented to him by the
Legislature. In his second term as governor he has done or asked for
absolutely nothing to reflect his view that prevention and
rehabilitation are a better investment than incarceration.

To the contrary, he's been a build-them-and-we'll-fill-them private
prisons kind of guy. And those troubled institutions are filled to the
rafters with nonviolent drug users -- the very "criminals" that
national drug policy celebrity Johnson claims would be better served
in rehabilitation programs.

If he's so sure about this on national television, why hasn't he used
his resources, his powers of persuasion and position as governor to do
something to implement it -- anything -- during his administration, at
the level he does control?

McCaffrey on the other hand shared a lot of numbers and graphs and a
healthy budget -- $17 billion to be exact -- but laid out little more
to show for his war on drugs campaign than Johnson did for his
armistice campaign.

Consumption in the United States remains high, prisons across the
country are filled with non-violent, drug-addicted criminals. Illegal,
drug-producing third-world nations continue to battle the tragic
consequences of the greed and corruption that drug exporting cartels
inflict.

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy has a budget
that has only increased since 1996 when it was a bit over $13 billion.
McCaffrey's claim of great inroads are not credible.

In addition, there's a growing suspicion among many that there exists
an influential underground industry dependent upon the criminality of
drugs that has made many people very rich, and consequently has little
interest in genuine rehabilitation.

New Mexico has twice as much reason to be concerned about this, as we
have two times the national average heroin death rate and Rio Arriba
County leads the nation in drug overdose deaths.

But McCaffrey and Johnson both brought only big-picture sound bite
rhetoric to the intensely complex problem of drug abuse in New Mexico.
It will take much more than that to get past the emotion and rhetoric
that surrounds the issue of illegal drugs in American society, but
neither man offered it while they had the eyes of the nation on them
and on the issue.