a decision with important implications for drug policy, President-elect
George W. Bush has nominated Senator John Ashcroft (R-M)) to be his Attorney
General. Ashcroft, who lost a November Senate race to the late Gov. Mel
Carnahan, is also a former Missouri governor and attorney general. He is also
a self-described Christian conservative who neither smokes, drinks, nor
dances, and has a long record as staunch drug warrior. An anti-abortion,
pro-death penalty ideologue, Ashcroft stands to be a polarizing figure. His !
ratings by various advocacy groups suggest a sharp divide: He scores 100%
with the conservative Christian Coalition and Phyllis Schafly's Eagle Forum,
but gets a big fat goose egg from liberal groups such as the National
Organization for Women and the League of Conservation voters. The Leadership
Conference for Civil Rights gave Ashcroft a 10% rating. Civil rights, civil
liberties, and women's groups are already gearing up to challenge the
nomination in the Senate, and drug policy activists are busily plotting
whether and how to help, though the conventional wisdom is that Ashcroft will
be seated as the next Attorney General. Ashcroft ! introduced the
Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act to increase penalties for
manufacturing or trafficking that drug, and some of his comments on that
occasion give insight into both Ashcroft's thinking and why drug reformers
are worried about it: "... But there is another factor that motivates my
opposition to meth: I want to fight meth because its use and production is
wrong. And too few people are willing to stand up these days and call drugs
wrong... much of our current predicament stems from the permissive attitudes
that emerged from the 1960s. The decay of enforcement that began in the 1960s
helped to cause the problems of the succeeding decades... Laws are what
protects society from anarchy. And when we choose not to enforce our laws,
our laws lose their effectiveness, an! d the bulwark against anarchy withers."
The Meth Act was just Ashcroft's main attraction this year. Outside the
spotlight, he was busy preparing legislation crafted to ensure that no one
escapes the drug war dragnet and to punish and punish again those who get
caught. For instance: S. 587: A bill to provide for the mandatory suspension
of federal benefits to convicted drug traffickers. S. 2008: A bill to require
the pre-release drug testing of federal prisoners. (This masterpiece of
vindict! iveness demands that prisoners be tested prior to release and, if
their tests are dirty, that the information be turned over to local
prosecutors for possible new charges of violating drug or prison contraband
laws.) S. 2517: A bill to amend the Individuals with Disabilities Education
Act and the Gun-Free Schools Act of 1994 to allow school personnel to apply
appropriate discipline measures to all students in cases involving weapons,
illegal drugs, and assaults upon teachers. (Just because a kid is crippled
doesn't mean we shouldn't be able to get him on drug charges.) Ashcroft has
been riding the meth menace for some time, and has bragged! on his campaign
web site and on the Senate floor about such victories as the "one strike and
you're out" policy for methamphetamine violators living in public housing,
securing the death penalty for some methamphetamine offenses, and securing
High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) status for his state. But his
concerns with drug policy extend far beyond the borders of the Show-Me state.
In 1998, he co-authored measures preventing Washington, DC's needle exchange
program from obtaining local funding. In fact, he went further than that. He
even attempted to block studies of the efficacy of needle exchange programs,
arguing that determining that the programs work "is an intolerable message
that it's time to accept drug use as a way of life," according to the
Washington Post. When faced with a contradiction between the bedrock
conservative principles of morality and free enterprise, Ashcroft has no
problem choosing morality when it comes to illicit drugs. But his moral
compass begins to gyrate when it comes to other addictive or abused
substances. He has taken $44,500 dollars from beer companies since 1993,
including $20,000 from St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch, and he lauded the beer
industry in a video tribute produced by the Beer Institute of America. When
Mother Jones magazine took him to task for the contradiction, Ashcroft feebly
replied, "It's a product that is in demand. And when it's used responsibly,
hasn't taken any tobacco money since accepting $8,000 for his 1994 Senate
race. Oddly, in arguing against the tobacco bill, he suggested that people
should be free to make bad choices. While drug policy reformers generally
fear and loathe the prospect of an Ashcroft Department of Justice, early
indications are that drug reform organizations will take a back seat to the
big liberal powerhouse groups, such as the NAACP and the National
Organization for Women, in any campaign to block Ashcroft's nomination.
"We're waiting to see what other groups take the lead," said Sanho Tree, drug
policy analyst at the Institute for Policy Studies. "I think it will be tough
to block this nomination," Tree told DRCNet, "but this is an opportunity for
the drug reform movement to strengthen alliances that are beginning to form
with civil rights and women's groups. A lot of these groups need to be
brought up to speed on the drug war, and Ashcroft provides us with a common
cause." Julie Stewart, founder of Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM),
told DRCNet that while ! Ashcroft "is not a friend of sentencing reform," her
organization will not be involved in any effort to block his nomination.
"That's not our focus," she said. "We will continue to work on sentencing
reform in the Congress, and I don't think he can be stopped anyway." Stewart
said she would urge the Bush administration to engage in "compassionate
conservative sentencing reform," as she searched for a silver lining. "I
can't just give up. And I can't stop thinking that, like Nixon going to
C! hina, sentencing reform will start with a Republican."
