ANNOUNCER: BRITAIN GOES SOFT ON POT. SHOULD U.S. LAWS CHANGE TOO?

[Segment Snipped]

CARLSON: Later, lighting up a joint in Britain will still get you a
ticket, but not a trip to jail. Does that mean a lightened attitude?
We'll ask the head of the DEA.

[Segment Snipped]

CARLSON: Still to come, if it's good enough for London, is it good
enough for Las Vegas? We'll look at the push to liberalize marijuana
laws.

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CARLSON: And then, pull out your roach clips and head to the voting
booth. You won't believe what's on Nevada's ballot.

[Segment Snipped]

CARLSON: But next, is it time to declare a defeat on the war on drugs?
England has, Nevada may. What about you? We'll find out. We'll be right back.

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CARVILLE: Welcome back to CROSSFIRE. We're coming to you live from the
George Washington University in beautiful Foggy Bottom in Washington,
D.C.

Put this in your pipe and smoke it, or maybe even inhale
it.

Dateline, London. English authorities are relaxing their country's
marijuana laws. In most cases police would simply confiscate the drug
and issue a warning. Dateline, Nevada. This November votes will see a
ballot proposal out on adults that possess up to three ounces of
marijuana. There's a war against drugs going to pot.

Joining us from Fresno, California is Asa Hutchinson, head of the
United States Drug Enforcement Administration.

(APPLAUSE)

CARLSON: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) thanks for joining us.

Part of the rationale, as I understand it, or as it was explained
yesterday by the British home secretary, is that look, England,
Britain has a significant drug problem, a lot of heroin addicts,
problems with cocaine, methamphetamine, ecstasy.

The idea is why waste our time going after pot smokers when we could
be using and should be using our resources to go after users and
abusers of hard drugs.

ASA HUTCHINSON, DEA ADMINISTRATOR: That's right. That is their way
they express it. But the fact is that they are still remaining a tough
policy on these other drugs, but the question is, whether you want to
increase marijuana use or not, even David Blunkett, the home
secretary, says we warned people these are harmful drugs, they're
dangerous, stay off of them.

Well, if that's the case, then why would you want to send the signal
that there's less risk in marijuana and it's OK? And so I think it's a
wrong step to minimize the punishments there, because as young people
see less risk in using marijuana, marijuana use will increase, and it
is still a harmful drug.

So I think the correct policy is let's don't move that direction,
because what we're doing is effective in reducing young people and
adults in using these harmful drugs.

CARVILLE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) you're leading now the war on drugs. How
goes it with the war? Are we winning this thing, or tying it, or
losing it? What's the score out there?

HUTCHINSON: Well, that's one of the great myths of this generation,
that there's not any success or antidrugs efforts. The fact is that
over the last 20 years we've reduced overall drug use by 50 percent.
That's 9 million fewer drug users today than there were 20 years ago.

Cocaine use down 75 percent. And whenever you look at the fact that 95
percent of Americans do not use illegal drugs, I would say that this
is a successful approach to a very difficult social problem, and that
we should not abandon this type of successful strategy.

CARLSON: But not all drug use, as you said, is the same. I mean,
shooting heroin is much different from smoking marijuana. One is much
worse than the other for you and for society. So in a world with
finite resources, law enforcement resources for one, why not focus
them all on the most damaging drugs?

HUTCHINSON: Well, I mean, that's a good point, Tucker, and we all are
subject to limited resources. I'm out here fighting methamphetamine.
We're concerned about cocaine and heroin. So we all set our priorities.

And we understand that if law enforcement has limited resources, they
can't go after and arrest everyone. That's fine. We set our
priorities. But to send a signal that, well, let's reduce the
penalties for marijuana, when we're already not arresting them and
putting them in jail, sends the signal that marijuana use is not risky.

Young people get confused. They say, hey, it must be all right. It's
going to go up. And so if you want to increase marijuana use, harmful
drug use, then that's the signal to do, by decreasing the penalties
for it.

CARVILLE: Well, look. Let's be honest. Our last two presidents have
used marijuana. I've used marijuana before. I don't want to speak for
Tucker, but I suspect he has and a lot of other people. How big a
mistake is that that we did something like that? How big of an error
did make? Should I feel guilty about this?

HUTCHINSON: Well, I don't think the job is making people feel guilty.
I think that we should discourage marijuana use, experimentation,
educate that it's wrong. In fact, more teens are in treatment for
marijuana use than any other drug, 225,000 Americans are in treatment
for marijuana use. So I think that we should discourage the use but
understand that people do make mistakes and they should not be
penalized forever.

And so, you know, Mayor Bloomberg acknowledged that but he still has a
tough drug policy, and I don't see that as inconsistent. We make
mistakes. We don't penalize everyone forever. We are a forgiving
society, we move on.

CARLSON: Well, you -- it almost, it sounds to me, maybe I'm mishearing
- -- making the case not for liberalization but for dramatically
lessening the penalties, as Nevada is considering, as England has
done. I mean, you just said that for marijuana smoking, generally
people don't get arrested. So why not just codify that? Why not just
make that the law, that you don't get arrested, and isn't that a
reflection of what happens anyway? That's what you're saying.

HUTCHINSON: Well, let me make it clear. I think it's a wrong step for
Britain to take. I think it's the wrong step for any state to move to
legalize or to decriminalize these harmful substances. The objective
is to illustrate the risk associated with it. It is illegal because it
is harmful, and that's what discourages use. What I'm saying is that
obviously it's another myth that we're locking up all the users and
they're filling up our prisons.

That's not the case. You still have to work pretty hard to get into
prison for drug use today. We're referring people to treatment
programs so they can get over their addiction problems whenever they
are an addict, but it's guided into crime problems, so we're targeting
our resources on the trafficker, on the violent offenders and on the
serious problems that we have, but let's send the signal it is illegal
conduct. We ought to discourage that behavior and usage.

CARLSON: OK. Former Congressman Asa Hutchinson, now director of the
Drug Enforcement Agency, thanks so much for joining us. We appreciate
it.

HUTCHINSON: Thank you.

CARLSON: One of our viewers has fired back a thought on pot
possession. We'll get to that in a bit.

But on deck, the game was a tie, the fans were fit to be tied as the
tide turned against our national pastime.

Pronounce it. Watch it. We'll be right back.

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