Pubdate: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 Source: MetroWest Daily News (MA) Copyright: 1999, Community Newspaper Company Address: 33 New York Avenue, Framingham, MA 01701 Fax: (508) 626-3885 Feedback: http://www.townonline.com/metrowest/misc/forms/metrolet.html Website: http://www.townonline.com/metrowest/ Author: Rick Holmes, news opinion page editor PACIFISTS IN THE WAR ON DRUGS It was the largest crowd Senate candidate Carla Howell has addressed since launching her campaign against Ted Kennedy, and it had the most interesting hair and the most excessive tattoos. It's hard to tell how many of the 40,000 gathered on Boston Common Saturday are registered to vote, but there was no doubt about their enthusiam for Howell's pledge to end the war on drugs. Howell was followed on stage by Harry Browne, Libertarian candidate for president. "If, by some miracle, I am elected president in November," he said with a good-natured smile, "one of my first acts will be to pardon federal prisoners held on non-violent drug offenses." Howell and Browne are both longshot Libertarians, though Howell is at this point the more visible of Kennedy's two challengers and has a shot at beating Republican Jack E. Robinson. But the Libertarians and hemp- huggers on the Common aren't the only voices challenging drug laws. One by one, other politicians are beginning to speak what was long the politically unspeakable. New Mexico Gov. Gary E. Johnson, a Republican, Hawaii Gov. Benjamin J. Cayetano, a Democrat, and Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, famously independent, have joined a vocal minority of mayors and state legislators in calling for drug use to be tackled as a public health challenge, not a law enforcement priority. Mayor Ross Anderson of Salt Lake City, capital of the most conservative state in the country, has dared drop D.A.R.E. from the public school curriculum. He's catching political heat, but he's not backing down. " D.A.R.E. is a complete fraud on the American people, and has actually done a lot of harm by preventing the implementation of more effective programs," he says. Al Gore and George W. Bush aren't nearly so daring. They've said next to nothing about their thoughts on federal drug policy. But another presidential candidate, the Green Party's Ralph Nader, joined Gov. Johnson in New Mexico earlier this month to call for the decriminalization of marijuana. "Addiction should never be treated as a crime," Nader said in Sante Fe. "It has to be treated as a health problem. We do not send alcoholics to jail in this country." The people are well ahead of the politicians on this issue. Over the opposition or awkward silence of most politicians, voters in seven states and the District of Columbia have legalized the medical use of marijuana, though the Clinton Justice Department continues to ignore their will. This November, voters in Alaska and California's Mendocino County will consider decriminalizing marijuana. Massachusetts voters will take up drug law reform as well. Question 8 seeks to reduce sentences for low-level drug users, divert more resources into drug treatment and reform asset forfeiture laws used to seize the property of drug defendants. Framingham voters, at least those in the 6th Middlesex District, will also get to vote on a non-binding referendum asking legislators to make possession of up to an ounce of marijuana a civil, rather than criminal, offense. Is the tide turning against drug prohibition? Perhaps. "Since Jan. 1, we've had more victories for drug-prevention reform than the past 20 years," Ethan Nadelmann of the Lindesmith Center Drug Policy Foundation told The New York Times last week. For 30 years, the debate over drug policy has been frozen by the adolescent fears of baby boomer politicians that any challenge to "Just Say No" orthodoxy would brand them as soft on drugs. You may not be hearing much on the subject from the leading presidential candidates, but further down the ballot, you can hear the sound of ice cracking. - --- MAP posted-by: John Chase