HORSEBACK ADVOCATE CROSSES U.S., SAYING LEGALIZE DRUGS

DELTA TWP. - Howard Wooldridge waved in gratitude to a driver who slowed
down as he rode Sam in the pedestrian walkway across Canal Road at Saginaw
Highway.

Wooldridge, a 54-year-old former DeWitt police officer, was nearing the
halfway point of his daily 28-mile horseback ride. He started around 7:30
a.m. in Sunfield Tuesday and expected to be at a long-time friend's home on
Peacock near Bath about 7 p.m.

It was another 12-hour leg of a journey that began in Los Angeles on March
4 and is projected to end Oct. 11 in New York City.

Wearing a sweat-stained cowboy hat, a red bandanna around his neck and a
white T-shirt that says, "Cops Say Legalize Drugs. Ask Me Why," Wooldridge
stops and talks to anyone who listen about his argument that the nation's
war on drugs is absurd.

"I have been advocating a change in our nation's policy for eight years,
and the last three years, I can say I have seen a real change in people's
thinking," Wooldridge said.

He is working as the media director for an organization known as LEAP, Law
Enforcement Against Prohibition.

His words are usually as unwelcomed as one of Sam's droppings.

"I am regarded as the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse. I am spreading a
message that will destroy this country and ruin our children," he says in
mock horror.

He frequently delivers speeches to local Rotary clubs, but his
controversial message has led to some last minute cancellations - one in
Eaton Rapids and another in St. Johns.

"One Rotarian told me I should be sent to Guantanamo Bay and kept with the
other terrorists," he said.

"I've had a couple of death threats ... some people believe I am a threat
to the nation," Wooldridge said.

He argues that the nation's drug war has been a colossal failure because
cocaine has never been cheaper or easier to obtain despite billions of
dollars being spent to build new prisons and to staff a huge law
enforcement bureaucracy.

"We should have some form of legalized drugs and take the profit out of it
for the drug dealers. We should focus our efforts on drunk drivers, child
molesters and the terrorists who are planning their next move," he said.

Priorities All Wrong?

He bemoaned the fact that 21 people were arrested recently for having
marijuana gardens for medical reasons in California, while North Korea and
Islamic fundamentalists are using huge profits from drug sales to fund
groups who threaten the U.S.

"It's (war on drugs) like a police officer -Eon his way to an emergency
where a robber is breaking into a house and threatening the homeowner's
life - stopping to write a ticket for a parking meter violation," he said.

Police officers he meets are angered by his message. One police officer
near the lakeshore stopped him and threatened to give him a ticket because
the officer claimed the words on the side of Wooldridge's recreation
vehicle violated the town's sign ordinance.

As Sam, a 6-year-old gelding, nibbles on grass, Wooldridge talks about how
his philosophy was received at an American Legion hall in Gary, Ind.

"The bartender said his solution was to put a bullet in the head of every
drug dealer, and another person said, 'I don't want to live another Nazi,
Germany where the answer to every question called for using a bullet ... by
the time we finished our talk, the people in an American Legion Hall in
Gary Ind. agreed something had to change," he said.

Wooldridge chuckled as he recalled a debate he had with host of a
conservative radio talk show in Wisconsin. "I asked the host, don't you
believe in personal responsibility and protections of privacy ... are you
one of those liberal nannies we hear Rush Limbaugh talk about?"

Much of his horseback travel is a wordless journey across hot pavements. He
keeps a weary eye on tractor trailers as they roar by and waves to
motorists who honk their support.

Long Journey

In recent weeks, Sam clip-clopped through dilapidated neighborhoods in
Chicago, where kids had never seen a horse, and trotted on the shoulder of
roads through vast farm fields.

Some days Wooldridge is bone tired. He walked alongside Sam for several
miles Tuesday. "It is just too hard on Sam's joints, and it loosens his
shoes for me to be riding for a long time on the pavement," he said.

Sam is 16-hands tall and poops twice a day. "In just a short time, there is
no smell to horse dung. After it dries out, it is just like dirt," Howard
says grinning.

Norma Sapp, a lady who farmed for 14 years in Oklahoma, joined Wooldridge
in Denver, Colo. She drives a 1984 Econoline Jamboree that has three beds
and pulls a horse trailer.

"I saw that kids were being locked up for a long time for little or
nothing, and that drugs were still rampant, and so I really believe that
things have to change ... and I have seen a lot of people change their
minds," she said.