WHY NOT PUMP UP THE IDEA OF LEGALIZING MARIJUANA?

When The Associated Press released a story that reported Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger said marijuana is "not a drug," press secretary Aaron
McLear was quick to announce Schwarzenegger was joking.

During an interview with Piers Morgan, a judge of "America's Got
Talent," the governator had said he'd never taken drugs, even though
he has admitted to smoking marijuana and the 1977 documentary film,
"Pumping Iron," showed him inhaling.

So Schwarzenegger quipped, "That is not a drug. It's a leaf. My drug
was pumping iron. Trust me."

McLear told me that just as Schwarzenegger is more playful when
appearing on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno," with some TV
personalities, Schwarzenegger "says things that are a bit more
shocking because he's playing to the audience.

"The governor was not taking marijuana off the drug list. This was a
lighthearted interview."

Too bad.

I was hoping Schwarzenegger was signaling a more sane drug policy for
California - one that would direct state officials not to waste money
on marijuana enforcement, so police can concentrate on violent crime
or drugs that, unlike marijuana, kill people.

"The thing about Gov. Schwarzenegger is, we all know that he smoked
marijuana," noted Bruce Mirken of the Marijuana Policy Project. "He
is one of a great many accomplished people who smoked marijuana and
have gone on to lead a successful life."

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is the rare politician to take on
the war on drugs.

As CBS' Hank Plante reported this month, Newsom said, "If you want to
get serious, if you want to reduce crime by 70 percent in this
country overnight, end this war on drugs."

I called Police Officers Association President Gary Delagnes to
discuss Newsom's remarks - and figured Delagnes, who spent more than
a decade on the drug beat - would take me on when I told him I think
marijuana should be legal. Instead, Delagnes said, "So do I."

He added that unlike methamphetamine and heroin, "You can't really
die from marijuana. All it can do is fry your brain." (Be it noted:
Frying your brain is not a good thing.)

"Ask any cop if they'd rather arrest somebody who is drunk or
somebody who is stoned," Mirken had asked rhetorically.

For Delagnes, the answer was easy. Tell someone who's stoned to put
his hands against the wall, "he'll probably say, 'That's cool.' "

A drunk might just react violently.

Legalize all drugs? Newsom said he wasn't calling for that, but one
certainly could infer Newsom was toying with the idea.

After all, some drug war critics argue that if all drugs were legal,
drug crime wouldn't pay.

Delagnes said 80 percent of San Francisco drug arrests are for
serious drugs, such as heroin and crack cocaine - drugs that destroy
whole communities.

In San Francisco, marijuana arrests are rare - and almost always in
response to a complaint.

"I don't believe that users belong in prison. But I do believe that
police departments and cities do have to address the qualify-of-life
issues," Delagnes noted.

Law-abiding folk "have every right to go home and not have to walk
over two whacked-out homeless people" on the way to the front door.

In his professional opinion, marijuana isn't related to the city's
homeless problem.

Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper is a board member of Law
Enforcement Against Prohibition.

Former San Jose Police Chief Joe McNamara wrote a letter to The San
Francisco Chronicle in support of Newsom's drug remark. McNamara
called the drug war "a total failure."

Even an iconoclastic politician like Schwarzenegger is positively
timid when treading on drug war turf.

Newsom criticized fellow Democrats for being afraid to call for
policy reform, lest they seem weak on crime.

He lamented "a failure of the imagination." More than that, there is
a failure of political courage.