THIS IS YOUR GOVERNMENT ON DRUGS

It sounds a bit like the answer to one of those old late night, "so
whatever happened to..." questions.

Tommy Chong, 65-year-old grandfather, the lesser-known half of the
goofy late-70s burnout comedy duo Cheech and Chong, was convicted of
the illegal sale of drug paraphernalia over the Internet (i.e. he
marketed a line of glass bongs). In a bit of priceless comedic irony,
the investigation was code-named Operation Pipe Dreams. Chong was
sentenced to 9 months in prison on the second anniversary of September
11.

Chong, with no prior arrests, is an unlikely figure to wind up in
prison for rarely enforced paraphernalia laws. However, much to his
misfortune, he does have one asset that the Bush administration's
Justice Department covets in spades. He's got a high profile.

Chong's takedown was meant to send a message to every stoner in
America. Dude, you cannot wink at The Man.

Even as issues like Iraq, gay marriage and the environment command
greater attention, the Bush administration has renewed the war on drugs.

In this faith-based administration, the drug war is the ur-"values"
war, the blueprint for the conservative kulturkampf. In fact, the drug
war is even more ancient than most people realize.

Temperance as a movement emerged in the early 1800's as drinking,
previously considered healthful and a basic component of life, was
identified with social disorder.

It quickly became an issue of hearth, home and morality.

Long before Bill Bennett gambled away his virtue book profits and
before Richard Nixon, the first President to proclaim a "war on
drugs," was born, the battle between the Wets and Drys was a defining
political issue in America. From the 1880s until the end of
prohibition, Americans endured fifty years of pitched battle over the
drug alcohol.

It's worth remembering that the drug war gave us not one but two
Constitutional amendments: one banning alcohol, then another
un-banning it. Despite alcohol's decisive win, or rather because of
it, the battle moved to other fronts.

In 2000, no sane person following drug policy would have suggested
that within three years Tommy Chong would be imprisoned for selling
paraphernalia. The trends of the 90s were decidedly favorable for
reform. Between 1996 and 2000, voters passed 17 reform-oriented ballot
initiatives on subjects as diverse as medical marijuana, limiting
asset forfeiture abuse and treatment instead of incarceration. New
Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, a Republican, called for legalization of
marijuana and ultimately passed a range of reform measures.

According to the Drug Policy Alliance (where I was formerly the
director of National Affairs), 46 states passed 150 notable drug
policy reforms between 1996 and 2002. Countries throughout the world,
including close allies such as Britain and Australia began to
experiment with reform, often going much farther than the U.S. without
appearing to suffer especially ill effects.

As a candidate for President, George W. Bush looked rather moderate on
drug issues. In October of 1999, he answered a question from CNN about
medical marijuana by stating that "I believe each state can choose
that decision as they so choose." Later, after his election, he said
"I think a lot of people are coming to the realization that maybe long
minimum sentences for first-time users may not be the best way to
occupy jail space and/or heal people from their disease." However, the
arc of the drug war under Bush veered towards emphasizing morality and
punitive policies within months of his inauguration.

Bush Gives Drugs to the Far Right

Drug Czar John Walters is perhaps the key element in this
equation.

In the 1980s, Walters served as an Assistant to then-Secretary of
Education Bill Bennett and then as Bennett's chief of staff at ONDCP
when Bennett became the first cabinet-level drug czar. Walters left
ONDCP in 1993 and became a bitter critic of President Clinton's drug
policies.

Prior to his return as ONDCP's director, he solidified his standing in
Republican circles as the President of the Philanthropy Roundtable, a
far right-wing non-profit funded by the Olin, Scaife and Bradley
Foundations and the New Citizenship Project, whose goal is to promote
religion in public life. Thus, he is not a neo-con but more of an
old-line Bill Bennett values maven.

Walters is in touch with his inner kulturkampfer.

Bennett and Walters had long sought platforms from which to force
national discussion about character and values.

Although the drug czar does not command any actual police forces, it
is a cabinet-level position that is not only tasked with creating the
national drug strategy but also has some ability to force other
cabinet officials to participate in the strategy. Walters was a
particularly hard critic of Clinton's drug policies, co-authoring
blistering articles for the Heritage Foundation and the Washington
Times accusing Clinton of "abandoning" the war on drugs.

The articles call for a renewed war on drugs by using the presidential
bully pulpit to get an anti-drug message out, stepped up use of the
military for interdiction efforts, highlighting the deterrent effects
of harsh mandatory minimum sentences, forcing source countries to
reduce export of drugs and use of drug testing in treatment.

As drug czar, Walters has enacted his calls for a renewed drug war by
emphasizing drug use as a moral issue and by "pushing back" against
perceived cultural permissiveness. He has used his bully pulpit to
force discussion of drugs into a black/white, us-against-them
paradigm, a paradigm to which the concept of war is already well suited.

As a result, the major drug initiatives of the Bush administration
have taken on a distinctly combative flavor.

For example, in the first year following September 11, Walters
repeatedly sought to link the drug war to the war on terrorism in
taxpayer funded advertising and elsewhere.

Indeed, the administration appears to view drug users as one element
of a fifth column, a component of the axis of evil inside the U.S.

As part of his efforts to push back against his perception of a
countercultural message favoring drugs, Walters has worked to
eliminate any visible manifestation of drug culture.

Thus, there can be no relaxation of any drug law for any purpose,
including use as medicine.

As a result, there is a renewed effort to root out physicians who
prescribe higher levels of opiates than some of their peers, despite
widespread acknowledgement that the American medical establishment
routinely undertreats pain. This may also explain the otherwise
puzzling use of precious space in Bush's State of the Union address in
January to discuss steroids.

It's a visible, highly talked-about manifestation of drug-related
culture.

Walters has also made good on his desire to invigorate interdiction
efforts overseas. In Colombia, the U.S. is now giving aid to help the
government shoot down airplanes suspected of smuggling drugs.

In 2001, this type of shoot first and ask questions later policy
resulted in the deaths of a missionary and her daughter in Peru. Last
year, the U.S. spent nearly $600 million in military aid in Colombia,
including tacit endorsement of paramilitary units, despite the
Columbian government's poor human rights record. Unfortunately,
reporting on Colombia is almost non-existent in the wake of the war in
Iraq.

Similarly, Walters is intent on ending drug policy experimentation in
the states, a decidedly non-conservative position.

He has sought to roll back popular medical marijuana laws in the nine
states that have passed them. He also directly opposed drug reform
ballot initiatives in 2002 by traveling to, and directing taxpayer
funded ads to, states where drug reform initiatives are on the ballot.

In a similar vein, the DEA conducted raids on most of the major
medical marijuana cooperatives in California, resulting in the arrests
of patients suffering from cystic fibrosis, cancer and other ailments.
Finally, this pushback really does seem to be about a fifth column in
the culture war. Thus Tommy Chong isn't merely a paraphernalia dealer,
he is a personification of the 70s - and think how gratifying it must
have been to imprison the 70s.

In the meantime, Democrats have found it hard to articulate their
interests in drug policy and at ONDCP. Why? The framework of the "drug
war" is a trap. If, instead of a "war" it was an "effort to minimize
dangers from pharmaceutical, alcohol, nicotine and other psychoactive
drugs" - if, say, we emphasized health outcomes instead of "fighting a
war" - it is very likely that rather than building jails and prisons
we would stress health and education.

The U.S. now has the highest incarceration rate of documented
prisoners in the world, outstripping even China and Russia. And nearly
half of all those in federal prisons are serving time for drug crimes.

In the meantime, it's been estimated that almost half of those who
need treatment for drugs can't get it.

How the Democrats Can Get a Handle on Drug Policy

Democrats need to find a way to begin to step out of the trap of the
"drug war." Although all too many Democrats are enthusiastic
practitioners of the drug war, some are beginning to reevaluate the
issue.

For instance, Congressman Charlie Rangel (D-NY) was a confirmed drug
warrior in the 80's, but after years of his Harlem constituents being
convicted and sentenced to hard time upstate, he has spoken out about
overreliance on incarceration, introducing a series of bills to reduce
sentencing disparities in crack cocaine.

Representative Rangel's turnaround on sentencing is a good example of
how the Democrats can begin to change the conversation. They need to
tell the real stories of the real people affected by our drug policies.

Kemba Smith is an African American woman who, stuck in a controlling
relationship with her college boyfriend, ended up playing a marginal
role in her abuser's drug crimes. Eventually, despite neither actually
using nor selling drugs, she was convicted under conspiracy laws of
all the crimes of his gang. Under mandatory minimum laws, she received
24 and a half years, a longer sentence than manslaughter in many
jurisdictions. She was eventually freed after 6 years when President
Clinton commuted her sentence in 2000. Women, especially African
American women, are now the fastest growing segment of the prison
population. Like Kemba, they often play a minimal role in a conspiracy
but have little information to bargain with authorities. African
Americans already know Kemba's story, but white America doesn't have a
clue. She's articulate and smart.

It would be interesting to see her onstage at the Democratic
convention.

When Americans talk about drugs in the context of pain management,
they express far more nuanced views than our current dialogue allows.

The baby boomers are getting ready to retire just as the DEA has
announced a war on oxycontin, vicodin and other drugs used with little
harm by millions to control pain. Certainly they will be ready for a
more subtle dialogue.

For the same reason, medical marijuana garners up to 80% approval in
some recent polls. Americans intrinsically understand its potential
benefits as a last resort in helping people to find relief from the
pain of cancer or other diseases.

In addition, people convicted of drug crimes face a set of invisible
punishments beyond prison.

They lose access to housing and needs assistance, they are often
forbidden from receiving licenses.

In one state, they cannot receive a license to be a hairdresser. A
particularly self-defeating law prevents people convicted of drug
crimes from receiving federal grants or even loans for higher education.

Education is the most likely indicator that an individual will not
recidivate.

In the meantime, parents are screaming for assistance at the community
level. There are parents who have lost their houses and their jobs in
the process of trying to get their kids into decent alcohol or drug
treatment. HIV is resurgent in America, and intravenous drug users,
their spouses and children are at particular risk. Study after study
has shown that syringe exchange coupled with education can slow the
transmission of HIV. Americans want to do the right thing on HIV. The
lack of health care and the lack of substance abuse treatment
(including the startling lack of most kinds of treatment other than
12-step treatment) is a national disaster.

A clear, consistent, highly prioritized message by Democrats on this
topic could work.

Democrats can also emphasize both the out of control costs of the
criminal justice system and the failure to prioritize more serious
crimes over drugs. They know that Tommy Chong is not a major threat to
their kids and they cannot be happy that it will ultimately cost the
government at least $18,000 to imprison him and many thousands more to
prosecute him. Ultimately it is up to Democrats to free themselves
from the straightjacket of John Walters' war for morality.

As for Tommy Chong? He'll get out of prison in July.