IF YOU CAN'T WIN YOUR ARGUMENT, JUST SILENCE YOUR OPPONENTS

For decades, supporters of the war on drugs have been losing the
debate about the policy, even as they continue to lock up hordes of
harmless offenders. But prohibitionists have a new tactic to help them
get the best of the argument: Don't let the other side speak.

One day last year, Ernest Istook noticed an ad on the Washington Metro
transit system with an unusual message: "Enjoy better sex! Legalize
and tax marijuana." Most people who ride the bus or the subway manage
to absorb all sorts of little surprises on their daily commute, but
not Istook. He wrote a letter to the local transit agency to say it
had "exercised the poorest possible judgment" in running the ad at "a
time when the nation and the Washington, D.C., area in particular
suffer from chronic substance abuse."

Normally a complaint like that would have no effect. Istook, however,
is not only a Republican member of the House of Representatives from
Oklahoma but chairman of the Transportation and Treasury
Appropriations Subcommittee.

He placed a provision in a funding bill reducing federal funds for
Metro by $92,500, as punishment for the ad, and denying money to any
transit system that accepts ads advocating "the legalization or
medical use" of marijuana or other illicit drugs. And it passed.
Transit agencies across the country now have to choose between
tolerating open debate and getting a total of $3.1 billion in federal
funds.

So your local bus or subway system is free to run all sorts of ads and
public service announcements. It is free to post lurid signs warning
of the evils of smoking pot or snorting cocaine. But if it gets a
nickel from the federal government, it may not allow any message
raising doubts about the wisdom of the drug war. This is the Bill
O'Reilly approach to policy disputes: Shut up!

Already the policy is having an effect. The group that ran the
original ad, which calls itself Change the Climate, recently tried to
buy space on Washington buses for an ad with the caption: "Marijuana
laws waste billions of taxpayer dollars to lock up non-violent
Americans." But even simple statements of fact run afoul of the
censor's decree. Metro refused, saying it couldn't afford to risk the
loss of $170 million in federal money.

Upon being rebuffed, Change the Climate filed a lawsuit, supported by
the American Civil Liberties Union, arguing that the ban violates the
1st Amendment guarantee of freedom of expression. Change the Climate
says it merely is trying to argue that it is unfair to imprison people
for using a largely benign drug that one in every three Americans has
tried.

The government insists that Congress had good reason to ban such ads
because they "might encourage the use of drugs, which is illegal at
this time." But the ad didn't say people should do something illegal.
In fact, by showing a picture of people behind bars while pointing out
that "hundreds of thousands of citizens have already been imprisoned"
for breaking marijuana laws, the ad might even deter violators.

The real point of the ad was to change the law. To Ernest Istook and
U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, though, any suggestion that a law be
changed amounts to incitement to violate it. In their addled version
of democracy, you can advocate the enactment of a ban but not its repeal.

To silence critics is an implicit concession by the government that
the drug war is impossible to defend. Alas, you can't win a debate by
silencing the other side, but you can lose one.