NOT BETTER THAN NOTHING, BUT . . .

President Obama is reported to have settled on Seattle Police Chief
Gil Kerlikowske to head the Office of National Drug Control Policy,
taking the position commonly referred to as "drug czar." It would
have been preferable to abolish the position and transfer the 100 or
so employees the "czar" supervises to other departments or to the
private sector and apply the $421 million the office costs to paying
off a tiny sliver of the national debt. But there is at least some
reason to hope that Chief Kerlikowske will not be as awful as most of
the recent holders of that position.

The wording of the title could well imply that the director of the
office would be charged with doing impartial and intellectually
respectable studies of various methods of trying to control the
problems various drugs pose to individuals and society at large and
offering informed advice as to what policies would be helpful, or at
least minimally destructive. Instead, of course, the office has
typically been held by ardent prohibitionists who have misused it to
campaign against state medical marijuana initiatives and to rail
against suggestions of even slight deviations from strict
prohibitionism in ways that fly in the face of scientific evidence
and common sense.

It is both troubling and reassuring that Chief Kerlikowske has almost
no public record on the various controversies surrounding drug
policies. It is troubling in that it suggests that he has little
background to equip him with solid knowledge. It may be mildly
reassuring in that he has been police chief in Seattle since 2000,
during which time that city has been in the forefront of the search
for alternatives to strict prohibitionism.

Like California, Washington state has a medical marijuana law put in
place by the voters. Seattle has a needle exchange program for
addicts who use injectable drugs and has more extensive treatment
programs available as alternatives to incarceration than most cities.

In 2003, again by ballot initiative, the people of Seattle approved a
policy of making marijuana-law enforcement the police department's
very lowest priority. The city has an annual Hempfest at which
speakers call for decriminalization, audience members openly smoke
marijuana -- and the police stand by to make sure no violence occurs
but otherwise leave people alone.

Norm Stamper, who was Seattle's police chief before Kerlikowske and
became an unapologetic critic of the drug war as an active member of
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, notes that the current chief was
not active on either side of the 2003 initiative on marijuana
enforcement or any other drug-law-related issue, but that at his
instruction his department has complied with the directive. Stamper
believes -- hopes? -- that Kerlikowske is "more inclined to support
research-drive and evidence-based conclusions about public policy."

We certainly hope that is true. If it is, we should expect to see
marijuana taken off Schedule I under the Controlled Substances Act so
that doctors nationwide can prescribe it when appropriate, and a
renewed emphasis on treatment and accurate information rather than
"reefer madness" style propaganda. Perhaps it is too much to hope for
a top-level appointee to recommend ending the "war on drugs," but an
evidence-based assessment would surely conclude that it has done far
more harm than good.