BUSH LACKS COMPASSION ON DRUGS AS I SEE IT

WHETHER or not he'd make a good president, George W. Bush seems a likable
guy. By all accounts, he is easygoing and affable, lacking the meanness and
moral hypocrisy that have characterized too many GOP leaders over the past
several years.

It is unlikely that his near-admission of past use of illegal narcotics will
damage his standing with the voters. The American public is mature enough to
accept something less than perfection in its politicians, understanding that
it would be hard to find enough people to run the country if they all had to
swear to a history untainted by adultery, illegal drug use, drunken
escapades or foul language.

But as the runaway front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination, Bush
needs to own up to the good fortune of his race and affluence, which have
combined to allow him to escape the harsh punishments doled out to black and
brown users of illegal drugs.

America's hard-core prisons count among their inmates men and women whose
only crimes have been to abuse their own bodies and betray their own
families. Bush needs to moderate his tough law-and-order stance enough to
admit that the so-called war on drugs is nothing but a race- and
class-conscious farce.

For months, Bush has attempted to dodge questions about whether his
party-boy past included using cocaine. While all the other presidential
contenders have issued broad denials of cocaine use, he has refused to do
so. And last Wednesday, he gave only limited denials, the first in response
to a question from the Dallas Morning News about background checks for
highranking presidential appointees.

"As I understand it, the current form asks the question, 'Did somebody use
drugs within the last seven years?' and I will be glad to answer that
question, and the answer is no," Bush said. Later, Bush said he had not used
illegal drugs for a period of at least 25 years.

Though that is unlikely to put the matter to rest (even Oklahoma Gov. Frank
Keating, a prominent Bush supporter, has urged him to stop dodging the
question), it is also unlikely that the voters would care if Bush were to
admit having used cocaine.

Nevertheless, there is something troubling here, more troubling than whether
a high-profile politician ever abused illegal narcotics. Bush seems never to
have com

pared his own experience to that of the thousands of men and women who have
been sentenced to Iong stretches in prison for anything more than possession
of small amounts of cocaine, usually in crack form. Might some of those men
and women have gone on to become productive citizens - public officials even
- - if they had not been ensnared by an unfair criminal justice system?

As the GOP front-runner, Bush has a prominent post from which to denounce
the inequities in federal drug laws. Under federal law, it takes 100 times
as much powdered cocaine as crack to land you in jail.

Here's another inequity: Though African Americans make up 13 percent of the
nation's regular drug users, they represent 35 percent of narcotics arrests,
55 percent of convictions and 74 percent of those receiving prison
sentences, according to the Sentencing Project, an advocacy group that
lobbies for alternatives to prison.

It doesn't matter whether Bush used cocaine seven years ago or 17. What does
matter is whether the ease with which he has rebounded from all his youthful
indiscretions left him with compassion or merely arrogance.

UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE

Cynthia Tucker is editorial page editor of the Atlanta Constitution.