Pubdate: Sun, 22 Aug 1999 Source: Albuquerque Journal (NM) Copyright: 1999 Albuquerque Journal Contact: P.O. Drawer J, Albuquerque, N.M. 87103 Website: http://www.abqjournal.com/ Author: Larry Calloway JOHNSON'S DRUG STAND GOES NATIONAL With a little help from the Cato Institute, Gov. Gary Johnson is cutting a new national image for New Mexico. Could our Land of Enchantment, our little Camelot of federal dependency, become recognized as a Xanadu of personal freedom? Cato, dedicated to the Jeffersonian principles of individual liberty, limited government and free markets (plus peace), has the intellectual horsepower to legitimize the business-formed governor's instinctive libertarian beliefs. School vouchering, which would force the public schools into free market competition, is one Johnson cause that Cato has argued for eloquently in its publications. Some of the think-tankers reason from the premise that education is too important in a free society to be under the control of government. Johnson, expressing faith that private entrepreneurs can do what unionized educators have failed to do, received international acclaim from conservative business publications for his hard-headed just-do-it stand on school vouchers. The Legislature did nothing -- he was trying to govern by ultimatum. Now he's receiving even greater publicity for his drug decriminalization rap. The governor has been interviewed by big city newspapers and cable TV news shows. He has accepted an invitation to be the keynoter for the Oct. 5 Cato forum, "An Adult Approach to Drug Policies in the 21st Century." Cato's approach is to equate drug policies with Prohibition, the failed attempt by the federal government under the influence of moral zealots to outlaw alcohol in the 1920s. Cato executive vice president David Boaz testified before Congress in June: "The long federal experiment in prohibition of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other drugs has given us unprecedented crime and corruption combined with the manifest failure to stop the use of drugs or reduce their availability." And his institute has done the research to back up that statement. The federal government is spending $17 billion a year on drug interdiction. Drug convictions account for 80 percent of the increase in the federal prison population. But there has been no resulting decrease in drug use or drug availability, says Boaz. "As long as Americans want to use drugs and are willing to defy the law and pay high prices to do so, drug busts are futile," he has said. (A column by Boaz praising Johnson's drug stand will appear on Monday's OpEd page.) Johnson says, more simply, that the war on drugs has failed, so let's put the money on "the problem side." When he first called for a national discussion on drug decriminalization, speaking both as a politician and as a youthful user, the Journal was deluged with letters of support from all over the nation. The fine distinction between advocating decriminalization and just discussing it was lost on this group. Suddenly, in the fast-moving national eye, the voucher governor had become the pot governor. And the publicity affects the reputation of the state, all of us. It's a matter of image association, to use the Madison Avenue concept. Yes, New Mexico is associated with a novel, athletic, governor who does not play politics as usual. Think: youth, creativity, personal freedom. The downside -- at least for people under 50 looking for bright new tekkie frontiers in the 21st Century -- is the reassociation of New Mexico with the '60s. Think: grass, communes, bad trips, bad movies like "Easy Rider," student riots, brutal repression. Last weekend was the 30th anniversary of Woodstock, and the long National Public Radio reminiscence reminded the nation that the Hog Farm commune that did so much to feed the hungry and save the overdosed at the mother of all rock concerts was from New Mexico. Perhaps it's a liberal reputation many people in the state enjoy and deserve. We are one of the first to exempt peyote used in religious ceremonies from the controlled substance laws, one of the first to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana, which is a native plant that has been a remedio for centuries. We were the first, in 1978, to enact a medical marijuana law, a precursor to the California initiative. And we elected and re-elected Gary Johnson. He acknowledged early in his first campaign that he tried cocaine in college. That was the end of the issue. Nobody brought it up again. Johnson, however, does not come from the Sixties counterculture, the psychedelic marijuanos of the North. He comes from the straight, risk-taking, entrepreneurial culture of skiers and ski patrollers. It, too, is associated with pot. As recently as 1992, supported by federal war-on-drugs money, the Taos County Sheriff and the New Mexico National Guard, using drug-sniffing dogs on the ground and a helicopter in the air, set up a surprise roadblock on the road to Taos Ski Valley one Saturday morning -- to catch skiers with joints. Some 3,000, many of them out-of-state visitors, were questioned and detained in lines of cars for up to an hour. It was a public relations disaster that inspired at least one lawsuit and one publicized jailing of an Australian journalist for taking pictures. This bizarre exercise proved two things: First, New Mexico is not a drug haven where the laws are not enforced, at least for outsiders, and, second, the war on drugs is an expensive failure, just as Gary Johnson and the Cato Institute are telling us. - --- MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart