This was just published by the UPI Newswire. Note that New Mexico Gov. Johnson is an admitted ex-drug user.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M., Oct. 13 (UPI) - New Mexico's top law enforcement officer said Gov. Gary Johnson's controversial support of drug legalization is hurting the morale and credibility of law officers in the state.

In Wednesday's Albuquerque Journal, Public Safety Secretary Darren White said: "It's a major morale killer. These guys feel he doesn't appreciate what we are doing."

White, who was appointed by the Republican governor in 1994, spoke to the Journal during a break in a meeting Tuesday of the governor's embattled Drug Enforcement Advisory Council in Albuquerque.

"This has been one of the most difficult times in my five years as secretary of the Department of Public Safety," White said.

Sandoval County Sheriff Ray Rivera, the council chairman, said police now "catch hell" from drug dealers who say the governor condones their operation.

"The criminal element is very supportive of legalization and we catch hell from them" during drug arrests, Rivera told the Journal.

Rivera and White said that drug enforcement in New Mexico will remain aggressive, despite the governor's views.

Three members of the governor's Drug Enforcement Advisory Council resigned in protest last week over Johnson's stand. The resigning members included representatives of the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The council manages about $4 million in federal drug enforcement money for New Mexico each year.

In the past few months, Johnson has gained more and more national media attention with his calls for legalization of drugs such as marijuana and heroin.

An admitted former drug user, Johnson says drug use is a bad choice but he contends the current anti-drug war is a flop. He says legalization would allow money used for law enforcement to be spent on drug education and treatment.

Johnson spokeswoman Diane Kinderwater said Johnson supports law enforcement and thinks legalizing drugs would make their jobs safer.

"The governor recognizes the dangers on the frontlines and he's looking for a future that takes the criminal element out of it," Kinderwater said.

-- Disgusted (sodom@gommorah.com), October 17, 1999

Answers

The fine state of New Mexico does not need this aggravation.

-- the Indigenous People of Bora Bora (bora@bora.boreme), October 17, 1999.

Disgusted, what does that have to do with Y2K? You're a total idiot to implicate that this has something to do with Ed Yourdon!!!!!!!!!!

In fact you're disgusting, just as your handle says you are!

-- bbb (bbb@bbb.com), October 17, 1999.

Yes indeed, can transvestites in New Mexico government be far behind (pardon the pun)? Why not stage a gay pride drug festival in Roswell. That will scare the aliens back to the planet Zorb for sure. Whats the big deal? After all, people are people, right Uncle Didem?

-- Don't (bend@over.now), October 17, 1999.

BBB, speaking of phucking idiots, you are doing a great imitation of one yourself.

#1- This forum is never always about Y2K. In fact it is rarely about Y2K.

#2- How do you find an association between this post and Mr. Yourdon? Because he happens to live in New Mexico?

Moron!!

-- Don't (bend@over.now), October 17, 1999.

BBB do you have a stuttering problem?

The connection to y2k is a simple question? Do we want a world where this type of lunacy prevails, to continue? If so, it will only get worse. It looks to me as though we are at the end of our reign as the world leader. Much like ancient Egypt, the Roman Empire, and every succeding society that came into prominance. Each started small, grew into a dominant position, fell into moral decline and corruption, then were either conquered or faded away. Y2k may be the only thing that will save us.

-- Disgusted (sodom@gommorah.com), October 17, 1999.

Everything has to do with y2k around here.

-- the Indigenous People of Bora Bora (bora@bora.boreme), October 17, 1999.

Governor Johnson makes some very valid points. As the law stands now, there is absolutely NO control over the buying and selling of illicit drugs.

Kids have an easier time getting illegal drugs than they do obtaining drugs such as alcohol and tobacco(yes, alcohol and nicotine are DRUGS). Ask any high school kid how easy it is to buy weed or anything else.

Add to that the number of innocent people killed in "no-knock" raids, which many times are based on erroneous information.

It's time that the War on (some) Drugs is ended, and we need to institute a system that will regulate and control them.

This war is NOT about drugs. It is an attack on ALL freedom-loving Americans!

-- ActionBill (actionbil@aol.com), October 17, 1999.

Which drugs need to be legalized? Why? Which drugs should not be Legalized? Why?

-- Jim Jim (JJ@driioc.com), October 17, 1999.

William F. Buckley, not exactly a bleeding-heart liberal degenerate, has long advocated drug legalization. I think it deserves serious consideration. It seems to work in Holland.

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), October 17, 1999.

The war on drugs does seem to be a smoke screen for an increasing amount of oppression on the average citizen. I am for legalizing drugs based on the decline of my own freedoms as a citizen who does not use or engage in drugs.

-- Paula (chowbabe@pacbell.net), October 17, 1999.

"The war on drugs does seem to be a smoke screen for an increasing amount of oppression on the average citizen. I am for legalizing drugs based on the decline of my own freedoms as a citizen who does not use or engage in drugs."

One does not have to be a drug user in order to advocate the end of this costly, innefective and dangerous war.

-- ActionBill (actionbil@aol.com), October 17, 1999.

Here in Arizona, The PEOPLE spoke in an Initiative to legalize Marijuana for medicinal purposes. I don't do drugs and therefore had no dog in that fight.

Then the Right Wing Legislature passed a law which had the effect of undoing the will of the PEOPLE. Next election, the pro medical use initiative was reaffirmed, but also was an amendment to the state constitution STRIPPING the legislature of authority to interfere with Initiatives by requiring an almost impossible 3/4 vote of BOTH Houses of the Legislature.

In Arizona, don't mess with The People!!

-- K. Stevens (kstevens@ It's ALL going away in January.com), October 17, 1999.

MMM,

Love the theme music! However, wouldn't the theme from "Dragnet" be more appropriate, than the Depeche Mode tune?

-- Bokonon (bok0non@my-Deja.com), October 17, 1999.

Old Git:

It's interesting that you should bring this up. Have you been to Amsterdam lately? Just to be fair, I won't suggest that the state of Amsterdam is due to the relaxed drug laws, but those relaxed drug laws are drawing folks from around the world that are basically laying around and feeding themselves from the welfare trough.

There's another place...I think the name is Christiania. It's near Copenhagen, Denmark. My oldest daughter had heard lots of raving revues of Christiania from fellow travelers we met on a trip to Europe in...1996? I'm not suggesting that the travelers SHE met were the same ones that I met. SHE met those HER age, and they'd catch her on her way to the bathroom at night in the hostels in which we stayed and take her out to all-night sidewalk cafes and such. Anyway, she'd heard about Christiania and wanted to check it out, so we did.

I believe it was a 30-minute busride from downtown Copenhagen. We didn't quite know where to get off the bus, but a woman told us to simply follow HER. We did and found the alternative community that indeed has a market wherein one can purchase any/all types of marijuana, hashish, paraphernalia, etc. We saw KILOS of stuff on tables.

Now Christiania may not be a good example of legalization of drugs, but it sure opened my daughter's eyes. We toured the community for a while and my daughter asked that we leave before we got mugged. We passed by the homes of those who live there, passed by the children's center, etc., and EVERYTHING was in need of repair. The lesson my daughter learned that day was: While it's ONE thing for SOME people to engage in recreational use of soft drugs, if EVERYONE does it, society collapses. Oh...I might add that the residents of Christiania make a monthly visit to Copenhagen for their welfare checks.

I don't know. I always thought that legalization would provide a more regulated soft-drug market. Folks wouldn't be buying Marijuana that was laced with angel dust, etc. Folks wouldn't be harming themselves by over-indulging in alcohol or other harmful substances. Ease of accessibility for those inclined to usage just seems to foster a lackadaisical approach to life.

-- Anita (notgiving@anymore.com), October 17, 1999.

As I see it, there are two distinct parts to the question of what to do about the use of drugs that are currently outlawed because of their addictive and pernicious nature:

1) There is the question of whether the use of such drugs harms the users of such drugs and the society they live in. I think it is pretty certain that, on the whole, they do much harm.

2) There is the question of whether what we do now (arrest, prosecute and incarcerate both users and dealers) results in the least harm to society.

I think the entire approach of the drug war is doing at least as much damage to our society as legalization of the drugs would do. We are creating gangsters with enough money to corrupt not just our police, but the governments of entire third-world nations. We are jailing a larger percentage of our population than almost any other nation on earth (I think South Africa beats us out by a hair). And we are writing ever harsher and more questionable laws while failing to make any appreciable dent in the import and use of drugs. This looks like an abject failure to me. It is stupid to keep doing what doesn't work!

I suggest we could legalize druugs and control them better, while continuing to punish truly criminal behaviors among drug users (burglary, mugging, reckless driving, assault and so on). Drug users who keep on the good side of the law could continue to feed their habit, as they do now, without getting dragged to jail.

This is pretty much the approach we take with booze. The results aren't pretty. We still have drunks who destroy their own lives and the lives of those around them. But at least we can tax it and we aren't funding gangsters to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars a year.

There aren't any GOOD answers. But, folks, what we do now is ruining the country.

-- Brian McLaughlin (brianm@ims.com), October 17, 1999.

Just an interesting fact about my own expierence.

I have known or talked with about 300-350 people in my age group (aged 15 now to 34) over the last 6-7 years. here are some observations about the prevaliance of drug use.

Every one has used alcohol or tobacco (

I can count the number of people on my left hand (roughly 3-5) that have never used illeagle (sp) drugs of any kind.

Excluded from this survey is the 50 or so Mormon church members/ missionaries who I have spoken with about this.

I have never smoked, drank alcohol or coffee, or used illeagle drugs of any kind. I have also removed all forms of cane shugar (sp) from my diet. Hovever, this is a choice I have made based on my poor health.

The drug war is a "joke" amoung most of the people I have met. It only serves to create fear and distain for any form of police athority. That is not a healthy thing if we want to promote a peaceful and trusting community. People I have met use drugs much the same way I have seen people use alcohol- for recreation, to unwind, as an element to "have fun". They are people like you or I, covering the gammut of personality types and ways of life. I have a feeling that once this generation grows into the power structures of this country (i.e. baby boomers retire, die) we will see a partial leagalization of some forms of drugs. It will resemble the effect that the ending of 20's era prohibition had on this country. That is, of course, we make it that far (y2k).

All in all, drugs are cheap, plentiful, and easy for anyone to get. Just ask your teenager. I know it's sad in a way, I've seen some of my freinds really scew up thier lives with drugs. But most of their problems have been with low self-esteem and stress; the drugs make them feel better so they find excuses to feel better. Only after they get a better self-esteem, and/or remove the prevaling stresses in their life do they find that they don't want to do drugs/alcohol as much anymore.

Some just do it because their freinds do it "the party thing". others do it to "feel weird".

As this concerns y2k, I have tremendous fears regarding peoples reaction when (if) they find they cannot get sweets, tobacco products, alcohol (this one scares me the most) or drug addicts without a "fix". My own personal expierence with removing shurgar from my diet was an excrutiating trial of will. It took 3 days just to stop thinking about donuts every waking moment, and a total of a week to get the cravings out of my system. I can see why it's soo hard to quit smoking now.

Now think about this, little water, limited food and heat. And a good percentage of the population going though forced withdrawl of some kind of substance. Does not add up to rational people working dilligently to weather a crisis. Sounds more like stressed out people focusing on survival and means to remove the stresses from their life.

Don't aggravate people's stresses when things get bad, especially if they are armed....

Good luck to you all.

-- Lonelyroads (A@open.net), October 17, 1999.

Anita, I can take you to at least half a dozen neighborhoods in Durham worse than you describe. Given an hour or two, I could find neighborhoods like that in virtually every city in this country.

Britain's long-time heroin maintenance policy works, as does the new Swiss program:

http://ndsn.org/AUGUST97/SWISS.html

And here are some comparisons for the US and Holland:

http://www.csdp.org/ads/dutch.htm

The percentages for the US are followed by those for The Netherlands.

Use of marijuana by older teens (1994) - 38%, 30%

Use of marijuana by 15-year-old (in 1995) - 34%, 29%

Heroin addicts (in 1995) - 430 per 100,000, 160 per 100,000

Murder rate (in 1996) - 8.22 per 100,000, 1.8 per 100,000

Crime-related deaths - 8.2 per 100,000 (1995), 1.2 per 100,000 (1994)

Incarceration rate (1997) - 645 per 100,000, 73 per 100,000

Per capita spending on drug-related law enforcement - $81, $27

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), October 17, 1999.

I went to high school with Gov. Johnson and have been in competition with him in business for the last 20 years. The point some of you have missed is that Gary Johnson is a serious athlete, marathon runner and Iron man competetor. He is firmly against drug use, but is embracing the idea that legalizing drugs will take the criminal element out of the market. New Mexico (like the rest of the country)has seen a many-fold increase in drug-related murders and assaults in the last few years. His goal is not to increase drug use but to reduce the crime associated with it. Much of what the politicians are responding with is simply political posturing, the political "games" played in this state would be completely hillarious if the players weren't so pathetic.

-- Roger (pecosrog@earthlink.net), October 17, 1999.

As is so often the case, we are not addressing the core of this problem. It is the people that USE drugs that are ruining this country and themselves and those around them. Legal or not, the use of drugs will continue to ruin our society and to ignore this basic truth is to be ignorant. I can testify to my own drug usage during the wonderful sixties and seventies that nothing good came of it except some perception of good times. Guns, cars, and drugs have one thing in common: they are all harmless until misused by humans. Booze is legal but look at what it has done to humanity. I still believe that each person should have control over their own lives but history has proven that most of us cant handle the responsible usage of drugs and alcohol. Any of you that have been close to a drug or alcohol related tragedy know that I speak the truth. So therein lies the challengehow do we control abuse? It wont matter one bit to the addict that the drugs are legal or not. And to think that legalizing drugs will remove or reduce the criminal element is to be living in fantasy.

-- Truth (at@the.ready), October 17, 1999.

BTW Old Git, the comparison between the Netherlands and the US should have a footnote: The higher US percentages for heroin users, serious crime, and associated costs were there prior to the current Dutch system. They have built a wonderful society of stoned-out zombies, and the mainstream Dutch are tired of it all. Look for some major position reversals in the near future.

-- Truth (at@the.ready), October 17, 1999.

Drug USE is not the same as drug ABUSE. I stopped doing drugs years ago because I wanted to, not because it's illegal. I just didn't want them anymore. Of the hundreds of people I have known (and still know) that use drugs only TWO became addicted. They have both 'kicked' and are leading productive lives.

The folks I know who are current users are also leading productive lives and more than a few are even excelling in their chosen professions. They don't beat their children, they don't drive while stoned and they don't rob their neighbors to get drug money. They would be 100% law abiding citizens if it weren't for their drug use.

You tell me which is worse; a 15 year old inner city kid who feels he needs a machine gun to protect the corner he's dealing from or that same kid sitting in front of his TV stoned and playing Nintendo. I agree with the Governor, remove the profit (and thereby the criminal element) and we'd all be better off.

-TECH32-

-- TECH32 (TECH32@NOMAIL.COM), October 17, 1999.

The Dutch, encouraged by the success of the Swiss model, are testing their own heroin maintenance program:

http://www.frw.uva.nl/cedro/library/peter/heroin.html

(SNIPO) The following paragraphs describe some details of the plans of the CCBH as published in its July 1997 report. The inclusion criteria to participate in the experiment are 12 in total, of which the most important are that the person is at least 25 years old and still a daily or almost daily heroin user, has a five year career (or more) of heavy heroin use, and has been using methadone for at least 5 years as well. If those conditions are met, and the person is not in a good physical or mental condition and has a score of more than 5 on the ASI scale (Addiction Severity Index), the person will be allowed into the experiment. (END SNIP)

As opined in my original post, I think the proposal is worth serious consideration.

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), October 17, 1999.

Libertarians should be all over defending the RIGHTS of people in using drugs no matter what the status is illegal or legal. Where are you???

Disgusted,

Iowa is a great place to live and even the little snot nosed rightist like you are welcome... Let me guess you would probably think somewhere like TEXAS would be a great place to live. Been there.. Wall to wall cement cities is no way to live.

-- y2k dave (xsdaa111@hotmail.com), October 17, 1999.