Ethan Nadelmann, at DRCNet's 2003 conference in Mérida, Yucatan, Mexico

Ethan Nadelmann: Not really. In some respects, this is a continuation of something we've been doing for a long time. I had an article in the National Review ten years ago; William F. Buckley did that issue with Judge Robert Sweet and me; there was that cover story on marijuana legalization. When New Mexico's Republican Gov. Gary Johnson stepped out, we worked closely with him both on stimulating a national debate and in moving drug reform forward in New Mexico. Also, Republican senatorial candidate Tom Campbell, who ran against Diane Feinstein in California, was very much an ally. And of course, there are folks like Milton Friedman and a range of other conservatives who have spoken out on drug prohibition.

It is also part of our ethos at the Drug Policy Alliance that we are a nonpartisan organization. We work with people from across the political spectrum, with both parties, and with others. It looks now like there is a greater concentration of things happening with DPA and conservatives and Republicans. But is it systematic? No, it is more a combination of three things. First, we are pushing back a little harder on that front. Second, there are more opportunities emerging. Third, the Republicans dominate the nation's capital and are major players around the country.

If you break those out, if you look around the country, in three states -- Alabama, Connecticut, Wisconsin -- where we are working to get medical marijuana legislation, our lead Republican cosponsor is someone who has a personal or family experience with cancer or multiple sclerosis. In Alabama, we have Republicans working on sentencing reform, too. Often, Republicans control the legislature or one house, so we have no choice but to work with them as well as Democrats. With conservatives, we try to frame the issues in ways that appeal to them, whether it's cutting budgets or fending off creeping federal power.

As for the Republican national convention, you will recall that back in 2000 we tried to be a presence at both conventions, with the Shadow Conventions in Philadelphia and Los Angeles. That was partly because Arianna Huffington took the lead and we joined with her. Our commitment was to do both, to try to stir up debate in both parties. This time, there is no Arianna, our resources were limited, and, after all, our offices are in New York City, which is where the Republicans were meeting. If it had been the Democrats in New York and the Republicans in Boston, we might have done things differently. But it was the Republicans who were coming to New York, and the question for us was what was the best way to make an impression with the press and the delegates. Given that many organizations who are our allies on the progressive side were out demonstrating, we thought any DPA effort to demonstrate against Bush drug policy would have been lost in the crowd. So instead, we welcomed the Republicans, we talked about "the right response" to drugs, we ran our ad in the very conservative tabloid, the Sun, and it was a big success for us. The ad more than paid for itself in membership donations, and our second best ever fundraising pitch -- only the RAVE Act pitch did better. And we got a story in the New York Times business section all about the ad.

At the same time, I had become aware that Grover Norquist, head of the American Taxpayers Union and a leading conservative figure, had been quite critical of the war on drugs. I had some conversations with him, and he encouraged us to be present at CPAC -- the ACLU had a table there, too. We were able to get on the agenda and have a few minutes at the final plenary session to hammer out our message. We got a very favorable reception -- look for video on our web site soon. All of those things have come together, and we are also aided by the fact that our director of our Washington, DC, office, Bill Piper, had previously worked with conservative and libertarian groups on issues like term limits. He came to DPA with some connections in hand.

Chronicle: What was CPAC like?

Nadelmann: I was part of a CPAC panel where five topics about conservative principle and unresolved issues were debated. It was called "Differences within the Family," and in addition to drug policy, other panelists debated Cuba, US foreign policy, gays and the federal marriage amendment, and free trade and job loss. I never heard of the fellow I debated. His name was Richard Poe and maybe he wrote a book attacking liberals ["Hillary's Secret War: The Clinton Conspiracy to Muzzle Internet Journalists"-ed.]. I got up there and spoke for three minutes, mentioning why conservatives like William F. Buckley, Milton Friedman, and Gary Johnson supported this cause; it's all about not throwing taxpayer dollars down the drain, preserving freedom, fighting elements of socialist government within our own society, basically hitting the key points. I got a strong ovation. Then Poe came on, and he just mumbled for a bit, then told the audience they shouldn't listen to a guy sponsored by George Soros. That was followed by the Q&A, and a small-L libertarian from Montreal got up and challenged Poe, asking him how he could support the war on drugs. Poe said he didn't support it, just that they shouldn't listen to this Soros guy. Finally the moderator turned to me and I said, look, we have 25,000 members, and Soros is important, but he is only one among many, and I thought we could get past these ad hominem attacks and guilt by association.

Conservatives will support our agenda, if they will listen on the merits. Even the Republicans are seeing a real evolution among their young people on campus when it comes to issues like gays and drugs. The students are not following a William Bennett/John Walters model like a generation 15 or 20 years ago.

Drug War Chronicle: Can you tell us more specifically about the sorts of appeals you make to conservatives?

Nadelmann: I elaborated this argument in the National Review. After my summer cover story on legalizing marijuana, the Review ran a back-and-forth between drug czar John Walters and me, and what I said there is the core of my message to conservatives. I say that the principled conservative believes in restricting the reach of government into the lives and homes of its citizens. He respects the rights of states and communities to regulate their own affairs free from federal overreach. He rejects wasteful government expenditures. And he insists on intellectual rigor in refuting the arguments of his opponents and advancing his own views. Thus, it should come as no surprise that so many conservatives -- Friedman, Buckley, George Schultz, Norquist, Gov. Johnson, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, and dozens of others -- have criticized the drug war and supported alternative policies.

And when conservatives attack George Soros for supporting drug reform, they might as well be attacking all those people I just named. The attacks on Soros are partisan cheap shots aimed at a man who more than any other private individual had a great role in hastening the downfall of communism in Russia and Eastern Europe and turning those countries into democratic, capitalist countries. Soros saw in America's drug war many of the same political traits that made him hate fascism and communism: Political indoctrination masquerading as education, massive deployment of police and informers in ever more intrusive ways, millions of people arrested for engaging in personal vice via capitalist transactions that are prohibited by the state for reasons it no longer even recalls, and all this defended by bureaucratic apparatchiks who respond to reasoned dissent by impugning the character and motives of their critics. That's what I tell them.

Chronicle: There are conservatives and there are conservatives, from Libertarians to Catholic rightists to patriots to militarists. What seems to unite them -- aside, perhaps, from the Libertarians -- is a strict, tough moral code. Self-discipline and obedience to legitimate authority are highly valued, self-indulgence is not. It seems that conservatives view drug use as self-indulgent, if not downright immoral. How on earth do you get around that and get them to embrace drug reform?

Nadelmann: It can be done, and the evidence is what's happening now in the states. We are winning victories in the states, building coalitions with lots of Republicans. In New Mexico, our medical marijuana bill just won unanimous approval in the judiciary committee -- I heard on Sunday that the Republican National Committee was going to pressure New Mexico Republicans to oppose the bill, but over half of Republicans nationally support issues like medical marijuana and treatment over incarceration. On medical marijuana, we have Republican allies like Rep. Gregg Underheim in Wisconsin and Rep. Penny Bacchiochi in Connecticut. We are seeing progress in places like Alabama, California, Wisconsin. We see progress with conservatives on budget issues. In California, clean needle bills got powerful and interesting support from Republicans; in New York, the Republicans were not so good on Rockefeller law reform, but listen to Senate majority leader Joe Bruno's December speech -- it reads like a DPA press release!

Also, you can see what the Marijuana Policy Project has achieved working with Republicans in Maryland and Vermont -- Republican governors in both states came on board for medical marijuana. In New York, Gov. Pataki campaigned on Rockefeller law reform in the 2002 elections. In California, while Gov. Schwarzenegger did terrible things with the three-strikes campaign -- basically killing it with a last minute rush of dishonest Willie Horton-type ads -- he also signed the clean needle bill that Democratic Gov. Gray Davis twice vetoed. Although Schwarzenegger is a little too friendly with the prison guards, he's not in their pocket like Davis was.

And if you look at this year's federal drug war budget, there are some pleasant surprises. The Bush budget proposes eliminating DARE and the Byrne grants, which fund those drug task forces. Those are two major changes, and no Democrat proposed that. I don't know what calculations lie behind those budget decisions; maybe the administration is assuming Democrats and Republicans will unite to restore those programs, but it is interesting that the administration made those cuts. There is also the bizarre spectacle of drug czar John Walters recently bemoaning that we can't just lock up generation after generation of young black men on drug charges. That's certainly different from what he has said in the past. I don't know where it comes from, perhaps from more of an engagement between the conservative black churches and the Bush administration.

Chronicle: You're not trying to tell us we should look for reforms from the Bush administration, are you?

Nadelmann: No, there is still lots of terrible stuff going on. There's Rep. Mark Souder and his attack on harm reduction, something Walters is following up on in Vienna this week. The State Department's drug policy guy, Robert Charles, is a drug war fanatic, and his meeting with the head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime has had a negative impact on the UNODC's position on harm reduction. And then you have Walters saying things like marijuana is the most dangerous drug in America and that drug testing all kids and eventually everyone is a magic bullet. In Republican Washington, they are, overall, propagating a totalitarian approach to drug control. We do not give short shrift to the very harsh and bad things coming out of this administration. But things are not the same as they were 10 or 15 or even five or two years ago.

Chronicle: It's not like the Democrats have been exactly leading the charge for drug reform.

Nadelmann: That's true, although there are differences. You can see where the split is most pronounced -- just look at the votes on Hinchey-Rohrabacher, the bill that would block the feds from spending funds to raid medical marijuana patients and providers. Two-thirds of House Democrats and the Democratic leadership were on our side on this, but barely a dozen GOP representatives. There was a strong directive from the White House influencing Republicans on that. And you also have Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert making some really outrageous comments about George Soros, drug policy reform, and DPA. Hastert is not some fringe figure; he's the speaker of the house! Clearly there is a divide among legislators at both the state and federal levels, and in general we clearly do much better with Democrats than Republicans, but it is often Republicans in the governor's office and other executive positions who are able to do things. It's the "Nixon goes to China" syndrome at work.

But for us, the bottom line is that some of our members and supporters are conservatives and Republicans, and not just libertarians, but people who think the war on drugs is incredibly stupid. One thing we've learned in American politics is that a movement that thinks it is going to succeed simply by being 100% in the middle of the progressive agenda is mistaken. It is absolutely essential to cross over in order to win.