WAR ON DRUGS - IS IT REALLY 'RIGHT'?

What's so conservative about the war on drugs?

Spending billions in taxpayer dollars with no clear progress?
Inserting government agents into Americans' private lives? Holding a
million men and women in prison for what are mostly nonviolent crimes?

Please, how does any of that promote the values that principled
conservatives hold dear?

None of it does, of course.

But now, seemingly all of a sudden, people on the left aren't the
only ones expressing doubts about America's war on (some) drugs. Some
of America's most energized conservatives - activists and
intellectuals on the right - are openly asking, "Isn't there a better
way to deal with drug abuse than the old lock-'em-up-forever approach?"

At week's end, thousands of conservative activists gathered in
Washington for the annual CPAC, the massive Conservative Police
Action Conference, half pep rally and half conservative family
reunion. The attendees were regaled with the usual conservative
litany - warnings about illegal immigration, attacks on the liberal
media, throaty calls for a muscular war on terrorism. Dick Cheney and
Karl Rove revved up the crowd.

"Conservatism is the dominant political creed in America," Rove
declared approvingly.

But this power group of fired-up conservatives also heard something
else, a message that seemed to come as a surprise to some in the
sprawling meeting room: pointed and serious questions about America's
35-year campaign to rid the nation of heroin, cocaine, marijuana and
other illegal drugs.

Who'd have expected this at a CPAC meeting? Extended comments from
the podium by Ethan Nadelman, executive director of the Drug Policy
Alliance, a man who has been called the invisible hand of drug reform
in America. A former Princeton University professor, Nadelman has
guided the national fight for medical marijuana and been a key player
in the battle to ease the draconian Rockefeller-era drug laws in New York.

Actually, Nadelman told the group, there is some real historical
precedent for conservative skepticism toward harsh drug laws. "Milton
Friedman and William F. Buckley are probably the two most
distinguished conservative thinkers of the second half of the
Twentieth Century," he said. "Both of them made clear that they
considered the drug laws absurd and antithetical to conservative values."

What do conservatives stand for, he asked rhetorically.

Individual freedom. Fiscal restraint. Holding adults responsible for
their own personal decisions. Not expecting government to become a
24-hour-a-day nanny. "Isn't that what conservatism is all about?"
Nadelman asked.

So why is government deciding what American adults snort, smoke and
swallow - and enforcing those laws with the threat of decades behind bars?

Some old-guard conservatives are aghast that this discussion has gone
so far. Some critics complained that Nadelman's group got some of its
funding from international financier George Soros, an ardent opponent
of George W. Bush.

And Nadelman's planned debate opponent refused at the last moment to
go on. Calvina Fay of the Drug Free America Foundation complained
that the debate moderator also supported drug-law reform.

The event, billed "A Conservative Drug Policy? A Mini Debate on the
War on Drugs," went on anyway, with drug-war defender Gary Cobb
substituting for Fay.

"There is a growing split," Nadelman said after he'd finished his
presentation to the conservatives.

As on many issues, social conservatives and libertarian conservatives
see the drug question quite differently. But Nadelman said he notices
more openness among younger conservatives who've started growing
weary of the just-say-no and lock-'em-up-forever approaches to drug
abuse. These younger conservatives are more open to drug treatment
instead of prison and to the "harm reduction" movement that seeks to
replace anti-drug preaching with practical steps that actually save lives.

"Just the fact that we're discussing this in such a setting,"
Nadelman said. "It's really exciting."