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Swan Song And Fearless Prediction
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In January, 1998, when MAP's Drug News Archive was less than a year old and the weekly even younger, I agreed to pinch hit as News editor until one could be found. The synergy was exciting; for the first time, a steady feed of drug policy items was being received, edited and filed in a searchable data base available free to the general public, and I had the weekly challenge of deciding which items were the most significant and the privilege of saying just why I thought so.
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The original trickle of submissions to the archive has since become a flood, well beyond the ability of one person to keep track of, necessitating two volunteer associates to handle the Cannabis and International sections for the past few months. It's now time for me to step aside; this issue (215) will be my last. After the first of September, the Weekly will be created by a whole new staff led by Steve Young, who will also select items and make comments on Policy and Prison issues.
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I've received an invaluable education along the way; my first major conclusion was that Joe McNamara's observation," the drug war can't stand much scrutiny," has proved even more true than I first imagined.
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Another conclusion: the American press cuts our drug policy an enormous amount of slack; is generally true, but not nearly to the degree it was a few years ago. Since Buckley's fateful February '96 editorial in National Review, the drug war has been receiving a steadily mounting volume of accurate and well informed criticism; although still nowhere near what it should be getting.
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My final conclusion is more in the nature of a prediction: although the Bush Administration has been able to keep a lid on drug policy news for the past eight months, that may be about to change quickly. The reason for both the lid and the potential for sudden change is the same and can be summed up in two words: John Walters.
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John Ashcroft and Asa Hutchinson, the first Bush nominees for posts relating to drug policy had their own harsh critics, but they also had powerful forces working for their confirmation. Of those, perhaps the most powerful was their status as former Members of Congress. Walters has no such protection, and so many observers saw his well documented hawkish approach to incarceration as so notoriously inappropriate that his nomination has already been trashed to an unprecedented degree. It's thus obvious why the administration hasn't pushed for confirmation hearings before a Judiciary Committee now under Democratic control. However dissatisfaction with our drug policy has also been bubbling away behind the scenes and there have also been some well publicized moves away from the doctrinaire U.S. position by Mexico, Canada, Great Britain, Portugal and Australia.
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It just might be that John Walters' long delayed confirmation hearings could finally provoke the kind of free wheeling debate the drug war has avoided so successfully for so long.
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by Tom O'Connell
| | August 31, 2001 #202 |
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About the author
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