Pubdate: Mon, 11 Nov 2002
Source: Joplin Globe, The (MO)
Copyright: 2002 The Joplin Globe
Contact:  http://www.joplinglobe.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/859
Author: Joseph Perkins
Note: Joseph Perkins is a columnist for The San Diego Union-Tribune.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)
Bookmark: (Cannabis),http://www.mapinc.org/find?162 (Nevadans for 
Responsible Law Enforcement)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?163 (Question 9 (NV)

THE DRUG CZAR WINS THE POT

John Walters had a great day at the polls on Tuesday. Voters in Nevada, 
Arizona, Ohio and South Dakota heeded calls by the nation's drug czar to 
reject putative drug "reform" measures that appeared on their state ballots.

Nevada's Question 9 would have legalized the sale and use of marijuana. 
Walters visited the Sagebrush State twice this fall, warning voters that 
pot is an "addictive gateway drug" that can lead to use of cocaine and heroin.

Arizona's Proposition 203 would have decriminalized possession of up to 2 
ounces of marijuana. Penalties for getting caught with cannabis would have 
been reduced to mere fines, much like like traffic tickets.

Ohio's Issue 1 would have amended the state's constitution, mandating 
judges to send drug offenders to treatment instead of jail. During an 
appearance last month in Ohio, Walters cautioned the Buckeye State voters, 
"It will weaken the tools that the institutions have to help people get 
into treatment."

South Dakota's Constitutional Amendment A would have allowed drug offenders 
to argue to juries that drug laws are unfair and urge acquittals on that 
basis. The Coyote State would have been the first to sanction jury 
nullification, permitting juries to disregard established law.

Drug legalization advocates were chastened by the Election Day results, 
after passage in recent years of more than a dozen ballot initiatives 
around the country relaxing state drug laws. "We have seen tonight how hard 
the drug war ideologues are willing to fight and how dirty they're willing 
to fight," said Bruce Merken, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, 
one of the groups coordinating the multi-state campaign. Merken protests 
too much. For if there has been any dirty fighting by ideologues on either 
side of the drug war, it has been by those like Merken's group, like the 
National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws, that favor scrapping the 
nation's drug laws. Indeed, neither the Marijuana Policy Projector or NORML 
or other confederate organizations come right out and tell voters that they 
advocate drug legalization, that they would allow the sale and use not only 
of marijuana, but also cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines, LSD, ecstasy and 
every other imaginable controlled substance.

Instead, they suggest to voters that they are merely interested in 
"reforming" the nation's drug laws to help the sick or to relieve the 
taxpayers of the unnecessary burden of incarcerating harmless drug 
offenders. And it's because drug legalization advocates hide their ulterior 
motive that voters in nine states so far have been duped into approving 
ballot initiatives allowing the sale and use of marijuana for supposed 
"medical" purposes.

Marijuana has been held out during those initiative campaigns as a 
palliative for patients suffering from such diseases as cancer, AIDS and 
multiple sclerosis. Despite the fact that there is no hard scientific 
evidence proving the efficacy of medical marijuana.

And despite research showing that marijuana damages short-term memory, 
distorts perception, impairs judgment and complex motor skills, and alters 
the heart rate. And that marijuana use can lead to severe anxiety and can 
cause paranoia and lethargy. But, then, the sponsors of those "medical" 
marijuana propositions couldn't have cared less about the safety and 
effectiveness of the drug. They just wanted to get their stealth pro-drug 
measures enacted. They figured that if they could get voters to approve 
marijuana use for putative therapeutic purposes, they could eventually get 
those same voters to approve marijuana for non-therapeutic purposes -- as 
Nevada's Question 9 would have done. And so on, until they effectively 
legalized all drug use.

This insidious plan has the financial backing of three billionaires, George 
Soros, a New York financier, John Sperling, founder of the University of 
Phoenix nationwide chain, and Peter Lewis, former CEO of Progressive 
Insurance. Sperling, who has spent $13 million to legalize drugs, is 
perhaps the most strident of the troika.

"The government's drug-reform policy is driven by a fundamentalist 
Christian sense of morality that sees any of these illegal substances used 
as evil," he told Time magazine. But most Americans are not fundamentalist 
Christians, yet the vast majority oppose drug legalization. That's because 
they recognize the deadly scourge that illegal drugs represent. Now that 
Sperling and his fellow billionaires have been outed, now that their 
deceptive drug legalization crusade has been exposed, the public is wising 
up. That's why pro-drug ballot measures in Nevada, Arizona, Ohio and South 
Dakota failed on Election Day.

Joseph Perkins is a columnist for The San Diego Union-Tribune.
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