Governor
Johnson
Comes
to
Washington
--
Meets
with
Students,
Drug
Policy
Reformers
--
Gets
Blasted
by
McCaffrey
10/8/99
New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson came to the nation's capital this week and proved once again that he will not shrink from criticism in his crusade to force a national dialogue on the legalization of drugs. Johnson, a Republican, shocked the political establishment, especially those within his own state party, when he began calling for an end to the drug war in July. Upon arriving in Washington, Governor Johnson met first with Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), a fast-growing national student organization dedicated to raising awareness of the social, moral and human costs of drug prohibition. Johnson, a triathlete, told the students that he was in no way advocating drug use. "I haven't even had a Coca-Cola in more than two years. Drug use is a handicap. I think that we need to tell people, young people especially, 'don't do drugs!'" Unlike other elected leaders, however, Johnson made no bones about the fact that his judgement about the relative wisdom of drug use comes from experience. "When I was in college, I did marijuana" he said. "I'm not saying that I experimented with marijuana... I used marijuana." Shawn Heller, President of the GWU chapter of SSDP, thanked the Governor for coming to speak with the group and let Johnson know that he wasn't out there alone. "Our experience in speaking with students both here at GWU and on other campuses around the country is that there is a growing awareness of the disastrous nature of the drug war. Students are concerned about issues like the spread of AIDS, the discriminatory impact of drug enforcement, escalating US military involvement in Latin America, the loss of civil liberties and many others. The college movement is growing very quickly, and students are calling into question the whole paradigm of drug prohibition." After the meeting, Heller told The Week Online that he was encouraged by the Governor's comments. "A lot of people who agree with this issue don't speak out because drug policy reform has been portrayed as a fringe movement by policy makers. Having a Governor, especially a Republican Governor, who isn't afraid to speak out is going to make a lot of people sit up and take notice." David Epstein, President of SSDP at American University, spoke about his group's success in creating a coalition of student groups to focus on drug policy. "Through our work on the Higher Education Act Reform Campaign, SSDP has build an ongoing coalition with a number of student groups who were not previously working toward drug policy reform. Once students begin to realize the extent of the damage being caused by this policy, they tend to get active pretty quickly." Governor Johnson told the students that he believes that a legal, regulated market for currently illicit drugs would reduce drug-related problems by "at least half" and that such a system would see substance abuse remain level or even decline. Kris Lotlikar, campus coordinator for DRCNet, which facilitated the meeting, and national organizer for SSDP, told Governor Johnson that students have an important perspective on drug policy. "Students who are in college today grew up during a time of increasing sentences and zero-tolerance policies. We are the generation of kids that the war was supposed to protect. And yet there are few if any of us who grew up in a drug free community or attended a drug free high school. Our generation knows that the policy is a failure. We are determined to get that message out." (Visit http://www.ssdp.org to find out more about SSDP and the First National Conference of Student Leaders in Drug Policy and Justice, November 5-6 in Washington, DC. Scholarship funding for students is still available. Visit http://www.u-net.org or http://www.raiseyourvoice.com to learn more about the Higher Education Act Reform Campaign.)
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