REEFER MAD MAN

James McDonough is fuming. McDonough, Florida's first drug czar, is
sitting on a makeshift dais in a ballroom of the Orlando Renaissance
Hotel March 14 as part of a three-member panel convened for a
town-hall meeting on substance-abuse policy. The panel was put
together by groups for and against relaxing drug laws. McDonough,
though, is clearly tired of answering questions from the former.

"I do enjoy the occasional joint or so," says Brian Cregger, a
University of Central Florida staff engineer and former vice president
of UCF's NORML chapter. "There are good people out there who [smoke
pot]."

To which McDonough gives his standard reply: "Marijuana is a gateway
drug. The more you liberalize drug laws, the more grief you will buy."

The next questioner accuses McDonough of massaging pot-use statistics
to make his policies look successful. You can almost see the steam
coming from his ears. "No kidding. [Marijuana use] is down. The
science is absolute. It's a bad drug."

Then McDonough abruptly announces that he has to leave, but agrees to
one more question so as not to appear to be ducking out. Up rolls a
woman in a wheelchair who says she has Lou Gehrig's Disease.
Marijuana, she says, has kept her alive for seven years. "Who are the
politicians to tell me I can't live?"

McDonough avers, saying pot isn't medicine, and that the therapeutic
effects of THC need more study.

When the moderator invites all three panelists -- McDonough,
California Superior Court Judge James Grey and Orange County homeland
security director Jerry Demings -- to make closing statements,
McDonough declines. Then he bolts.

In itself, the gathering wasn't particularly enlightening; those
familiar with the drug-war debate would recognize the predictable
rhetoric from all sides. But it was an interesting look into the
personality of the man leading Florida's war on drugs. In this forum,
McDonough was vulnerable. Grey, a decriminalization advocate planning
a run for president on the Libertarian ticket, was a far superior
debater. And the 40-person crowd was decidedly unfriendly, so
McDonough was a long way from the comforting embrace of Gov. Jeb Bush
and the GOP-controlled Legislature. He was out of his element, and he
didn't like it.

McDonough, now in his fourth year as director of the Florida Office of
Drug Control, is a textbook hard-liner. He pooh-poohs anything that
undermines his hard-and-fast doctrine of purging drugs from society.
Decriminalization, needle exchanges, medical marijuana (which he once
called a "stalking horse for the legalization of drugs"), all are
pathways to societal destruction. He's alarmed at marijuana's growing
acceptability -- a recent poll from Time Magazine indicated that 80
percent of Americans think medical marijuana is OK; and 72 percent say
minor pot possession should mean fines, not jail.

"As Florida is concerned, my state can and will do much to overcome
the bad experience it has suffered in recent years from illegal
drugs," he told a congressional subcommittee in 1999. "It does not
intend to meet the challenge by making drugs legal."

The November elections held vindication. As McDonough happily noted in
an op-ed to the Washington Times, Nevada voters rejected an amendment
to legalize small amounts of pot. Ohio voters rejected a "right to
drug treatment" amendment; Arizona voters turned back a
medical-marijuana initiative; and South Dakota voters rejected hemp
legalization.

"The net result was a broad-based rejection of the drug normalization
campaign begun in the mid-1990s," he opined.

He also finds encouragement in statistics showing a decline in
Florida's drug use. In 2000, McDonough and Bush crafted a five-year
plan to reduce substance abuse -- from 8 percent of the population in
2000 to 4 percent by 2005. The current number is 5.5 percent. Taken on
the whole, those numbers indicate Florida's drug use is on the decline.

Also, the 2002 Florida Youth Substance Abuse Survey showed that among
teens illicit drug use was dropping across the board, though 12
percent and 31 percent of students still report using pot and alcohol,
respectively, in the last 30 days.

"That [downward] trend has to do with people becoming aware of the
criminalization of their behavior and not reporting it," says Jodi
James, head of the Florida Cannabis Action Network. The
substance-abuse survey relies on students' admissions for its results.
"I don't think people tell [McDonough] the truth."

McDonough became a drug warrior in 1996 when he was named Director of
Strategy for the national Office of Drug Control Policy. Before that,
he boasted a long and storied career in the U.S. Army, serving in
Africa and the Balkans. He made waves in 1998, writing a scathing
op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal that called for President
Bill Clinton's impeachment.

A year later, he took the job as drug czar, a position created by Gov.
Jeb Bush, who campaigned on anti-drug and tough-on-crime promises.
McDonough's budget is about $500 million, $310 million of which comes
from the state and the rest coming from federal grants. He's in charge
of trying to minimize both the supply (through interdiction) and
demand (via prevention) of drugs. When Jeb's brother became president
in 2001, McDonough was on the list to become the nation's drug czar.

McDonough made his mark by torpedoing a Florida medical-marijuana
initiative. He traveled across the state lobbying elected officials
and other high-profile politicos to oppose the measure. The proposal
never reached the ballot.

Two years later, a "right to treatment" measure - which decriminalizes
possession of small amounts of narcotics for those who agree to
treatment - survived McDonough's initial attempt to run it out of
town, but eventually fell victim to the Florida Supreme Court, which
declined to rule on language issues until just six months before
election day, 2002. There was no time to mount a campaign, so backers
of the issue bailed and pledged to raise it again in 2004.

In 2000, McDonough was caught red-handed exaggerating data related to
"designer drug" deaths. Though his report listed 254 casualties, they
included a 4-year-old Orlando boy who died after a hospital gave him
ketamine (which is listed as a "designer drug"), a 58-year-old St.
Petersburg resident who died after heart surgery, and so on.

But his biggest misstep came in 1999, when he advocated using the
fungus fusarium oxysporum to eliminate Florida's marijuana crop. Even
the state's Department of Environmental Protection protested, since
toxins derived from it can be deadly to both humans and animals. It
could also mutate and kill agricultural crops. Amid widespread
protest, the plan died.

For legalization advocates, those types of things weren't entirely
unexpected.

"Initially, when [Bush] appointed a military strategist as head of
drug policy in Florida, we were pretty disgusted," Jodi James says.
"But because of [open-government laws], we've been able to take a look
at his strategy and help protect people. [The office has] given us a
target."

It's also opened up a line of communication between activists and the
governor. They're now invited to forums and the state's annual
drug-control summit -- which at least gets their voices heard, even if
later ignored. McDonough's willingness to trade barbs with
legalization advocates lends credence to a gathering that would
otherwise be inconsequential.

"He doesn't feel threatened by us," James says. Friday's forum, she
notes, was co-sponsored by Common Sense for Drug Policy, Florida
Foundation for Social Justice and Orange County Drug-Free Communities.
And it taught her something about his character.

"Director McDonough is far more compassionate to people than I am,"
she continues. McDonough's heart may be in the right place, but James
thinks he's fighting the wrong battle. He blames the drugs for
violence and crime, not irresponsible users or drug-war policies.

"My strategy toward director McDonough is going to change. He blames
the drugs; he doesn't blame the user, he doesn't blame the policies.
We need to show director McDonough that it is not the drug that's the
problem."