Dole’s Golden Chance to End the Drug War

Finally, a reason to vote for Bob Dole: He will call off the war on drugs. Here at last is a leader with the insight to end a destructive drug policy that has accomplished nothing but the waste of tens of billions of dollars while leaving our nation with the highest percentage of its citizens in jail. Dole will set them free.

How do I know this? Because Dole has said it is up to the individual and not the federal government to decide whether a particular drug is good or bad. Just look at Dole’s continued insistence that we don’t need additional federal regulation of tobacco, even for teenagers.

First, he argued that the risks to kids from smoking were comparable to drinking milk. Then last week, ABC newsman Peter Jennings confronted Dole with a 1988 internal document in which a Phillip Morris lobbyist called the former Senate majority leader “a valuable friend and a good supporter of tobacco,” and Jennings asked Dole if tobacco was addictive. Dole replied: “Some people who’ve tried it can quit easily, others don’t quit. So I guess it’s addictive to some and not to others.”

Exactly the point made by those who want to legalize marijuana, which clearly is less addictive than tobacco. There are more than 60 million Americans who can attest that smoking marijuana did not prove addictive for them, and that includes the current president of the United States. That figure comes from the surveys of the Drug Enforcement Administration and represents the difference between those who have tried marijuana sometime in their lives and those who currently use it.

Legalizing marijuana will allow Dole to declare victory in the drug war, since potheads make up almost 90% of the regular drug-use population.

Some will argue that all illicit drugs are too dangerous to legalize. But as a matter of consistent health policy, if Dole can’t justify a war against tobacco, surely he will want to go easy on cocaine, heroin and marijuana, which together claim only one life to every 60 lost to nicotine.

Dole could confront the misplaced emphasis of the drug war because he is not one of those antidrug crusaders who is also a nicotine addict, a prime example being Bill Bennett, who, before he was reincarnated as Mr. Virtue, commanded the drug war in the Bush administration.

As former Wall Street Journal reporter Dan Baum recounts in his new book “Smoke and Mirrors, the War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure,” nicotine addicts are hardly in a position to make the case against illicit drugs: “The year chain-smoking Bennett became drug czar, tobacco killed some 395,000 Americans--more than died in both world wars. Alcohol directly killed 23,000 and another 24,400 on the highways. . . . Cocaine, on the other hand, killed 3,618 that year, heroin . . . 2,743. . . . And no death from marijuana has ever been recorded.”

Perhaps Dole will see through Bennett’s rationale that drugs are different because drug addicts commit crimes. If cigarettes were banned and cost a fortune, you can be certain nicotine addicts would commit crimes to pay for their fix, just as alcoholics did during Prohibition. Even with alcohol being legal, it is far more closely associated with the commission of crime than are drugs. Baum points out that alcohol is used by more than half of those who commit murder, while drugs alone accounted for less than 6% of that crime.

Baum’s is a provocative, well-documented book that Dole will want to incorporate in his campaign speeches. He wouldn’t want to miss this chance to introduce facts to the drug debate.

It won’t come from Clinton, who is so chicken on the drug issue as to be terminally opportunistic. Remember Clinton’s desertion of his surgeon general, Joycelyn Elders, for daring to suggest that “we need to do some studies” on the ramifications of legalization? Only last week, he said he wants to give $1,500 a year to college students as long as they maintain a B average and pass a drug test. What if the kid pulls straight A’s and fails a urine test? Do you yank his money, turn him in or congratulate him?

This is Dole’s opportunity to reach out to younger voters. End the war on the young, which is what the drug war has become, and treat all substance abuse the same, as a medical problem. Those who are addicted need help. Those who aren’t, don’t. Isn’t that the point Dole’s been trying to make about tobacco? Dole will want to be consistent on this if for no other reason than to prove that he was not swayed in his judgment on the benign effects of nicotine by the $477,000 he has received from the tobacco lobby that has long considered him such a “valuable friend.”