A GOVERNOR ATTACKS THE WAR ON DRUGS

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- Long before he became governor of New Mexico,
Gary Johnson was an athlete. Almost every morning at 5, he takes off
on a long run, a swim or a bicycle ride, training for a marathon or a
triathlon. As governor, he has ridden his bike five times across the
state, run 25 miles in Army gear and jumped off a 10,000-foot-high
mountain on a hang glider.

Those activities alone might make him unique among the 50
governors.

But Johnson, 46, a second-term Republican, is also unusual in another
respect.

He unflinchingly admits he used marijuana and cocaine in college and
now wants the nation to consider alternatives to the so-called war on
drugs, which he contends is failing through an overemphasis on
prosecution and incarceration. He goes so far as to suggest that the
federal government should consider the decriminalization of drugs, or
perhaps even legalization, which would mean they could be sold for
profit.

And he contends that the costly campaign against drugs has left courts
and prisons overwhelmed with people arrested for possessing only small
amounts of drugs. Drugs, he says, could be regulated like alcohol, and
people could be held accountable for what they did under their influence.

These ideas make him the highest-ranking elected official in the
United States to offer what are considered wildly unpopular
alternatives to current drug policies. But they come at a time when
questions of past drug use have become commonplace for
politicians.

Believes in 'fessing up

Johnson, a former businessman who considers himself as much a
libertarian as a Republican, said he regarded politicians as
"disingenuous" if they tried to hide what the public had a right to
know.

"I smoked marijuana in college; that was something I did," he said
last week in an interview at the Capitol in Santa Fe. "I used cocaine
on a couple of occasions. It was not something that anybody would have
ever known. But I knew if I was going to run for office, I should
'fess up. And if I didn't win, so be it."

Residents of New Mexico have long accepted their governor's past,
which he revealed in his first campaign. He won reelection in 1998
with 55 percent of the vote, compared with 50 percent four years
before, when a candidate from the Green Party siphoned votes from Gov.
Bruce King, a Democrat. In winning last year, Johnson became the first
governor of New Mexico to win a second consecutive four-year term.

But his crusade for alternatives to drug prohibition, which he began
several weeks ago, has drawn wide criticism, even from leading state
Republicans, like Sen. Pete Domenici and Rep. Heather Wilson.

They generally disagree with Johnson's contention that the drug war
has failed and cost the nation hundreds of billions of dollars
annually that could otherwise be spent on education and other
necessities.

On the stump

It is an argument Johnson makes often, traveling in New Mexico and
beyond, emboldened by his promise to seek no other political office
once his term ends in 2002.

"We are spending incredible amounts of our resources on incarceration,
law enforcement and courts," he said. "As an extension of everything
I've done in office, I made a cost-benefit analysis, and this one
really stinks."

Just how the country might bring drug sales under federal control or
what penalties should apply to drug charges are things Johnson has not
sorted out, he said. Nor would he want anyone to assume he is
advocating drug use.

"I would like to see a discussion on this, A to Z," he said. "The
reality of what might evolve is that we get our feet wet, so that we
could learn how to legalize or decriminalize. Politically, I can't
ascertain if there has been a positive or negative reaction. But
publicly, I've found that people overwhelmingly want to talk about
it."