AMERICANS' ATTITUDE TO ILLEGAL DRUGS SOFTENING

WASHINGTON - In what some see as a signal that American attitudes toward
narcotics are softening, yet another American would-be political candidate
has admitted he used illegal drugs during a wilder youth.

This time it's macho movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger, who says he's
thinking about a run for governor on California in 2002. Asked about past
drug use, he responded, "I inhaled, exhaled, everything." Two weeks
earlier, Bill Bradley, the challenger for the Democratic presidential
nomination, said in a nationally televised interview: "I have used
marijuana several times in my life."

Neither revelation raised a murmur of interest.

"The politicians are starting to catch up to the people in some ways," said
Mark Mauer, head of the Sentencing Project, a Washington-based think tank
that studies the fight against drugs. "Enormous numbers of middle-age
Americans have used drugs at some point in their lives."

The same collective yawn was also accorded to Al Gore, the vice-president,
Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, and other national politicians who
admitted to taking the occasional puff on a joint.

Bill Clinton, the U.S. president, came under closer scrutiny when he was
questioned about drugs in his first presidential campaign. But that was
because he made the eye-rolling assertion that he had smoked a joint but
had never inhaled.

George W. Bush, the front-runner for the Republican presidential
nomination, was briefly under the gun last month for tip-toeing around the
issue of whether he had used marijuana and cocaine. He says he made
"mistakes" in his youth but has not used illegal drugs in the past 25 years.

The lack of public reaction to news that some of America's leading
politicians dabbled in drugs that could have landed less fortunate people
in jail comes amid reports of the toll caused by the two-decade campaign
against drugs.

Drug arrests have soared from about half a million in 1980 to triple that
number in 1997, according to a recent report by the Sentencing Project.

Backers of the anti-drug effort point to a 50% drop in the rates of drug
use from 1985 to today, but people on both sides of the debate lament the
human cost.

"Addicted Americans -- parents, siblings, and children -- are not the
enemy. They require treatment," said General Barry McCaffrey, head of the
White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy, in congressional
testimony.

In recent years, the appetite has waned for meting out ever-harsher terms
for drug offences.

Last year, Michigan substantially scaled back a law that mandated life
without parole for distribution of 650 grams of cocaine or heroin. The
penalty was the same as for first-degree murder. Now, prisoners can get
parole after 15 years.

Other states have brought in specialized drug courts that allow judges to
send drug offenders for treatment instead of to prison.

In the states, traditionally laboratories for political experimentation, a
couple of governors have suggested the United States should go the Dutch
route and partially legalize drug use.

Jesse Ventura, the flashy former wrestler who governs Minnesota, wants the
government to give up fighting drugs.

"Drugs and prostitution, those should not be imprisoning crimes," he told
Playboy magazine. "The government has much more important things to do."

But the people in charge of the war on drugs see things a little differently.

Gen. McCaffrey told Congress that, "Given the negative impact of drugs on
society, the overwhelming majority of Americans reject illegal drug use."