CHAFEE QUESTIONS EFFECTIVENESS OF GLOBAL DRUG LAWS

PROVIDENCE - It might be time for America, and perhaps the rest of the
world, to assess its drug laws to see if they are working, former Sen.
Lincoln Chafee told a regional drug policy conference at Brown
University Friday.

With elected leaders of some South American nations talking about
legitimizing the sale of their countries' coca crops and the
cultivation of opium-producing poppies "exploding" in places like
Afghanistan, generating money that is funneled to terrorism and
prompting poppy growers to assemble their own private militias, Chafee
said at the end of his presentation it may be time for a United
Nations summit on the issue.

"I think it is that big," he remarked.

"We have to look at this creatively and it has to be done in unison
with a lot of other countries," he told a half-full auditorium on the
Brown campus, where he has been a visiting fellow at the Watson
Institute for International Studies since shortly after losing his
U.S. Senate seat to Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse last November. "We
can't have different countries having different laws on the demand and
supply side" of the narcotics trade. "It's got to be done in a global
way. It has to be done through an organization such as the United Nations."

As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee subcommittee
that dealt with international narcotics issues, Chafee made three
tours of Columbia and other parts of South America and also visited
the Middle East and Afghanistan, he told the Northeast Regional
Conference of Students for a Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) Friday.

Is his call for a reassessment of current drug policies an indication
that he thinks they are not working?

Narcotics "is a big part of destabilizing the situation in Afghanistan
and then in the Andean region and in Ecuador, with President (Rafael)
Correa trying to get the United States to abandon a base used for drug
interdiction, and I am sure there is evidence here. It could be
debatable, I wasn't definitive that it is a failure but from my
perspective, it's not working."

With huge drug profits to fund political campaign, Chafee told the
group, some coca growers are electing sympathetic leaders through the
democratic process. The former senator said he was "stunned" when,
during a meeting with then-President of Uruguay Jorge Batlle, Batlle
suggested that he favored drug legalization.

Nonetheless, Chafee said, "we can't go around saying we are in favor
of promoting democracy around the world" and then tell a
democratically-elected leader that the United States is not going to
deal with them or give them foreign aid if they disagree with us on
drug policy. "It's hypocritical."

Chafee used the same word to describe the federal government here
trumping the policies of states where voters or legislatures legalize
medical marijuana or assisted suicide.

"I always thought it was hypocritical for conservatives who railed for
states rights except on certain issues (medical marijuana) being one,"
he said. Taking a question from the audience about Rhode Island's
medical marijuana law and the governor's opposition to it, Chafee
said, "for people who are very, very sick, anything we can do for them
to ease their pain, we have to look positively on it. I disagree with
the governor on that."

On the domestic front, Chafee said in response to a reporter's
question, "You've got to be open minded about it. You just have to
step back and look at it clinically. Is it working, ultimately, is
this working? And what are our options. We tried pouring money into it
and putting the most onerous penalties possible. And now it is time
for conservatives, liberals, everybody to step back from it and say,
"Maybe we were wrong, we gave it our best effort, is it working."

On the other hand, he said, "we just can't write off a population to
drug abuse. We're not going to allow that to happen." Allowing
decriminalization, regulating and taxing what are now illegal drugs,
"makes it easier to use. That's not a good option, either."