FOR BUSH, DRUG ISSUES STILL MATTER

For now, Texas Gov. George W. Bush seems to have navigated past the
questions of whether he used illegal drugs without raising deep
concerns or suspicion among the public. He offered narrowly crafted
answers to questions about cocaine use, leaving others to deduce from
those answers that he hasn't touched the stuff . . . for at least 25
years. Most of the public appears satisfied. Some of the public wants
to see news reporters get off his back.

But questions of drug use are likely to resurface, because questions
of drug policy must, and will, be part of the 2000 campaign for
president. It's entirely legitimate to ask: On drug policy, has Bush
been a hypocrite?

He has, as governor, been tough on drug abusers. At Bush's urging the
Texas legislature rescinded a law that gave automatic probation for
sale or possession of small quantities of drugs; the legislature gave
judges the option of imposing jail sentences. Bush scaled back
drug-treatment programs in the Texas prisons. Bush signed a law that
made possession of drugs in a school zone an automatic felony.

"Incarceration is rehabilitation," he said during his first campaign
for governor. By that definition, there's a lot of rehab going on.
Almost one in four Texas inmates is incarcerated for a drug offense,
according to the Dallas Morning News.

Bush's actions on drug law have been tough, but hardly draconian, and
hardly out of line with the trend in the United States to treat drug
offenses more severely. Indeed, Bush's legal remedies might even be
seen as mild by the standards of Texas, which is closing in on its
100th execution since Bush became governor.

So Bush has been neither a zealot nor a pussycat on the issue of how
Texas deals with drug offenders. The question is what he would propose
for the country.

It's time for the nation to have a debate on whether it is throwing
too many men and women into prison for too long on offenses involving
small-time possession and sale of drugs. It's time to debate whether
that's a beneficial use of prison resources. It's time to rethink
federal mandatory sentencing provisions that have created glaring
inconsistencies in punishment for drug offenses and stripped federal
judges of the ability to use discretion and common sense.

Will George Bush--or any other candidate for that matter--be willing
to take the risk of joining that debate from any perspective other
than "lock 'em up and throw away the key."

Or, to put it another way: Under President George W. Bush, might young
citizen George W. Bush have been hauled off to prison?