LESSONS LEARNED FROM AL GORE III

AL Gore III's mug shot appeared in newspapers across the country
Thursday thanks to his arrest Wednesday for possession of marijuana
and prescription pills.

An Orange County sheriff's deputy pulled over Al Gore III for driving
his Toyota Prius at 100 miles per hour. The officer said the car
smelled of marijuana. A search found marijuana and prescription pills
Vicodin, Valium, Xanax and Adderall.

Here are five observations following Gore's arrest.

Don't speed if you're holding weed.

If your car reeks of marijuana and you're holding a bunch of
different prescription pills, you probably don't want to be driving
100 miles per hourDon't get in the car if you are drunk or high.

Don't drink and drive. Don't drive if you are impaired. I don't know
if Gore was high when he was pulled over. He was not charged with
driving under the influence. But it should be clear to all that there
is never an excuse to drive while high. Not only are you putting your
own life at risk, you are risking the lives of innocent people.

Drug use doesn't discriminate, but our drug policies do.

Al Gore III, Noelle Bush and Patrick Kennedy remind us that drug use
does not discriminate. Unfortunately, our drug policies
do. Just one of numerous examples is in New York. Ninety-three
percent of the people incarcerated under New York's draconian
Rockefeller Drug Laws are black or Latino, which is grossly
disproportionate to their share of the population or involvement in
illegal drug use and sales. Too often treatment is reserved for the
privileged, jail for the poor.

Everyone facing a drug problem deserves treatment.

Al Gore III may not have a drug problem but if he does then, like all
people struggling with addiction, he should be offered treatment and
not a jail cell. If Gore III does not have a drug problem, he should
not be forced into treatment. There are too many people filling up
much needed treatment slots because they were only given two options:
treatment or jail time and a permanent record. If someone is busted
with marijuana or another drug, but they are not hurting anyone else
then they should not automatically be considered to have a drug
problem. Leaving them alone may be better than forcing them into
treatment and is clearly better than locking them up in a cage at
tax-payer expense.

Thanks to Prop. 36, Californians are offered treatment instead of
jail for the first two nonviolent drug offenses.

Gore III and all people who are busted in California on simple,
nonviolent drug offenses should thank California's voters. Thanks to
the voter-approved Proposition 36, passed in 2000, all first- and
second-time nonviolent drug offenders, rich and poor, black and white
receive treatment instead of jail. Thanks to this law, tens of
thousands of Californians have received treatment, put their lives
back together, and saved the state over a billion dollars by not
wasting $30,000 a year to lock someone up in jail.

Hopefully, one day, we will offer all families compassion and
treatment, not a jail cell and judgment when dealing with the problem of drugs.