* GETTING TOUGHER VS. GETTING SMARTER

The Question Won't Go Away: Did Gov. George W. Bush Ever Use Illegal Drugs?

It's a fair question for one who would be president, particularly because
Texas has, during Bush's gubernatorial tenure, substantially toughened its
drug laws.

Welfare recipients, teen drivers and students seeking public grants all
lose those privileges if convicted of drug violations. And stiffer criminal
penalties now apply for drug violations in school zones and state prisons.

Our governor is tough. Would that he were smarter. I'd like to see him
advocate more sensible policies. I say this realizing that too much common
sense would cost him electoral support. Right-thinking Texans should
support his election.

Howard Wooldridge was a police officer for 15 years. In a recent speech on
the drug war, he bemoaned the fact that Texas has built 77 prisons during
the last 10 years -- and one four-year college.

He told the story of a barber who was on his way to deposit his week's cash
receipts at his bank. During a routine traffic stop, a police officer
confiscated his car and the entire $2,200 as suspected "drug money." The
officer found no drugs or related paraphernalia. Still, the barber spent
$1,000 in a legal battle to persuade the district attorney to return his
property.

Such Fourth Amendment abuses by law enforcement personnel are merely part
of the exorbitant costs of our counterproductive war on drugs.

Syndicated writer Susan Estrich says that "there were more than 1.8 million
men and women behind bars in the United States last year, representing an
incarceration rate of 672 inmates per 100,000 U.S. residents, a rate higher
than that of any other country except Russia."

Moreover, thanks largely to our drug laws, wrote Estrich, "40 percent of
all black men in this country between the ages of 18 and 25 are in prison,
on parole or on probation."

In last week's `Newsweek,' Ellis Cose observed that "the number of people
sentenced for federal drug offenses multiplied more than 11 times" in the
last two decades. Tougher every year, we watch the body count in the drug
war mount unabated.

`Star-Telegram columnist Mark Davis, an ardent foe of decriminalization,
made a fine point last month: "Only one thing will solve our drug problem:
reducing demand."

But treating drug abuse as a criminal rather than public health issue is
not reducing demand. Can anything?

`Newsweek' 's Jonathan Alter provided some pertinent data. Arizona has
become the first state to offer treatment instead of incarceration for
nonviolent drug offenders. So far, more than 70 percent of those on
probation have tested clean.

Alter quoted a 1997 Rand Corp. study, which noted that "treatment reduces
about 10 times more serious crime than conventional enforcement and 15
times more than mandatory minimums."

Similarly, a Bureau of Prisons study determined that prisoners who received
drug treatment are re-arrested 73 percent less often in their first six
months of freedom than are untreated inmates.

Our neighbor to the west, New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, has recently come
out in favor of limited drug decriminalization. He says that more than
700,000 Americans were arrested for marijuana-related crimes in 1997 -- a
huge waste of energetic human lives and scarce public funds.

I do not expect the leading presidential contender to emulate such daring
leadership. But we can all hope that the question that won't go away will
lead our prudent governor to reconsider his tougher-than-thou approach to
drug control.

He survived his own bout with alcohol excess. And he didn't need prison to
do it. Perhaps as president he'll advocate more effective and less
expensive drug treatment as a sober alternative to increasingly
self-defeating criminal penalties.