August 31, 1999

by Peter J.M. Orvetti, Manager of Editorial Services

In today's Cato Daily Dispatch, Gary Johnson remembers high school drug lessons, Clinton goes to school, Lautenberg's last stand against guns, and 'juvenile justice' compromise on the way.

Broadcast News

Cato Institute Mencken research fellow P. J. O'Rourke, national correspondent for Rolling Stone and author of Parliament of Whores, All the Trouble in the World, and Eat the Rich, will appear on ABC's "Politically Incorrect" tonight.

More Headlines For Gary Johnson

The Albuquerque Journal was abuzz with more news on New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson's campaign against the war on drugs. On Sunday, the paper wrote that "Gov. Gary Johnson says he has questioned jailing people for drug use since he was a senior at Albuquerque's Sandia High School almost 30 years ago. The 46-year-old Republican remembers a police officer coming to his school to talk to students about drugs. The officer lit a marijuana cigarette, Johnson said, and told the class: 'This is what pot smells like. Smoke it, and we're going to put you in jail.' Johnson, who has been in the national spotlight recently for challenging national drug law policies, said he raised his hand and questioned the officer: 'Sir, are you going to put 25 million regular pot-smoking Americans in jail? It's not going to work.'... Now, in 1999, Johnson's call for a re-examination of the nation's drug policies has caught some New Mexicans by surprise and stirred criticism within his own party. 'Personally, I have a fundamental problem with putting people in jail for drug use,' Johnson said. 'What I've done since I've been in office is I have just done a cost-benefit analysis of everything that's come across my desk, whether that's prisons, whether that's highways, whether that's the Medicaid system,' he said. 'And right now, the glaring cost-benefit analysis that has incredible cost and no benefit is our war on drugs.'" But in the same edition, the paper noted that members of Johnson's own Republican Party are livid about Johnson's crusade. State Sen. Billy McKibben said Johnson's decriminalization support "is a black eye and an embarrassment to good solid Republicans" and added that many Republicans are "disgusted beyond belief." A state representative said, "It's extremely embarrassing to the party by virtue of the fact the national platform condemns illegal drugs," Godbey said. Johnson himself admits that he has chosen a lonely battle. "There is absolutely zero political support. None. It's nonexistent," Johnson said at a news conference last week. But the governor added, "Since Monday [Aug. 23], we have received approximately 500 e-mails. I want to say that 10 of those 500 e-mails are negative. That surprises me."

On October 5, Johnson will address the Cato Institute conference Beyond Prohibition: An Adult Approach to Drug Policies in the 21st Century in Washington, D.C. A Cato Policy Analysis adds weight to the argument that the war on drugs has made us "A Society of Suspects": "When the Founders rebelled against British tyranny, they grounded their cause in a belief in the natural rights of the individual and the Enlightenment ideas of progress through reason. Understanding the dangers of an excessive concentration of political power, they divided and limited the reach of that power through a federal structure with the states, the separation of powers among the three branches, and the guarantees of personal freedom in the Constitution itself and in the Bill of Rights. With the War on Drugs, however, the wisdom of the Founders has been cast aside. In their shortsighted zeal to create a 'Drug-Free America'… our political leaders--state and federal, elected and appointed--have acted as though the end justifies the means, repudiating our heritage of limited government and individual freedoms while endowing the bureaucratic state with unprecedented powers. That the danger to our freedom is real and not just a case of crying wolf is confirmed by the warnings of a few judges, liberals and conservatives alike, who, insulated from elective politics, have the independence to be critical. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, for example, denounced compulsory urinalysis of Customs Service employees 'in the front line' of the War on Drugs as an 'invasion of their privacy and an affront to their dignity.' In another case, Justice John Paul Stevens lamented that 'this Court has become a loyal foot soldier' in the War on Drugs. For his part, Justice Thurgood Marshall was moved to remind the Court that there is 'no drug exception' to the Constitution. But these have been futile dissents." Cato Institute Executive Vice President underlined these points in testimony before the House last month, saying, "Ours is a federal republic. The federal government has only the powers granted to it in the Constitution. And the United States has a tradition of individual liberty, vigorous civil society, and limited government: just because a problem is identified does not mean that the government ought to undertake to solve it, and just because a problem occurs in more than one state does not mean that it is a proper subject for federal policy. Perhaps no area more clearly demonstrates the bad consequences of not following such rules than drug prohibition. The long federal experiment in prohibition of marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and other drugs has given us unprecedented crime and corruption combined with a manifest failure to stop the use of drugs or reduce their availability to children." More on the topic can be found in the Cato-published book The Crisis in Drug Prohibition.

Charting A Course For Charters

Distribution of nearly $100 million in federal grants to charter schools is set to begin following a weekend announcement by President Clinton, Reuters reports. Supporters of voucher programs say that Clinton is reacting to the controversy over voucher programs, which are seen as an alternative to charter schools. Charter schools are privately run but publicly funded and must be nonsectarian, unlike schools in voucher programs.

Joseph L. Bast and David Harmer wrote in a Cato Policy Analysis, "Anti-choice separationists criticize charter schools and private management of government schools as weak forms of privatization that do not move us very far toward complete separation of schools and the state. Vouchers would take us further and faster. Once in place, vouchers make complete separation more likely… Early voucher bills may move us only slowly toward separation. They may include provisions that temporarily prolong the power of unions, school boards, and other remnants of the socialist regime (that is the effect, if not the intent, of charter school legislation)." Douglas Dewey responds that "[a]ll reforms are imposed on the system from without, with great effort, over many years. Remember when merit pay was a dangerous idea? It was once said that magnet schools would destroy neighborhood schools; alternative certification threatened teacher quality; standards and testing were rigid, penal, and stigmatizing; charter schools could not be held accountable to the public interest; and 'public school choice' undermined the whole idea of the common school. Every one of those 'bold' reforms was met with siegelike resistance until relentless pressure made them inevitable, and sometimes even popular within the educational establishment… Today, now that most of the shining reforms of the last 20 years have been safely redefined and neutered by the establishment, we can look forward to the tremendous difference they will not make. Allyson Tucker, director of the conservative Individual Rights Foundation and a strong supporter of vouchers, recently noted that phenomenon with respect to charter schools. She complained that when the unions were unable to bury the charter school concept, they 'did an about-face… and now claim to support charter school legislation as long as it is "properly crafted."' But, she observes, what they support is 'in reality weak and ineffective.' Now 'the statement "I support charter schools" means virtually nothing.' During his first presidential debate against Bob Dole, President Clinton said, 'I support school choice.' He was probably referring to the 'properly crafted' kind." In a commentary published last month, Darcy Ann Olsen wrote that "a national grassroots education reform movement has swept through two-thirds of the states, offering vouchers, tax credits, charter schools and multi-million dollar private scholarship funds. Parents are working to loosen the government's grip on K-12 education… Given that most recent effective education reforms have involved decentralization and greater parental involvement -- whether through public charter schools, school choice or homeschooling -- it is hard to argue that the answer to poor school performance is putting kids into troubled public schools two years sooner." More on charter schools is available from Cato Institute Education Reform Studies.

On Monday, September 13, the Cato Institute will host a book forum with New York Times bestselling author Martin Gross, author of The Conspiracy of Ignorance: The Failure of American Public Schools. In this new book, he diagnoses the educational child abuse in our public schools. David Boaz will also offer comments.

Lautenberg's Loud Call For Gun Restrictions

Retiring Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) is drafting legislation that would require registration of all new handguns bought in the United States, AP reported. Lautenberg's bill may also require the registration of guns bought in the past. National Rifle Association spokesman Bill Powers said Lautenberg was actually adding to a proposal by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) for national gun registration. "Registration, licensing and confiscation: That is what Dianne Feinstein wants to bring to America, and now Frank Lautenberg is getting on board. You shouldn't have to get government permission and licensing to own a firearm in your home for the purposes of personal protection. It goes after law-abiding citizens who own firearms, and makes them paperwork criminals," Powers said. Feinstein, a potential vice presidential candidate next year, has made gun control a major part of her legislative agenda.

In the Cato Policy Analysis "Trust the People: Case Against Gun Control", former Manhattan assistant district attorney David B. Kopel writes, "Few public policy debates have been as dominated by emotion and misinformation as the one on gun control. Perhaps this debate is so highly charged because it involves such fundamental issues. The calls for more gun restrictions or for bans on some or all guns are calls for significant change in our social and constitutional systems. Gun control is based on the faulty notion that ordinary American citizens are too clumsy and ill-tempered to be trusted with weapons. Only through the blatant abrogation of explicit constitutional rights is gun control even possible. It must be enforced with such violations of individual rights as intrusive search and seizure. It most severely victimizes those who most need weapons for self-defense, such as blacks and women. The various gun control proposals on today's agenda--including licensing, waiting periods, and bans on so-called Saturday night specials--are of little, if any, value as crime-fighting measures. Banning guns to reduce crime makes as much sense as banning alcohol to reduce drunk driving. Indeed, persuasive evidence shows that civilian gun ownership can be a powerful deterrent to crime." In the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, Kopel testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the demonization of lawful gun owners.

Unwarranted "Justice" Legislation

Gun control is likely to play a part in a "juvenile justice bill" being hammered out on Capitol Hill, the Washington Times reported late last week. Republicans and Democrats expect to reach a consensus on legislation soon. "They are very productive discussions. They're not a waste of time at all," a senior Democratic staffer said. Throughout the August recess, staffers from both parties have worked to iron out differences between the House and Senate versions of the legislation. The Senate version includes new gun regulations such as background checks for all buyers at gun shows, sale of trigger locks or similar safety devices with all handguns and a ban on the import of large-capacity ammunition magazines and clips. The House version includes no new gun control but does add increasing penalties for various weapons offenses. In a June commentary, Dave Kopel wrote that the Senate version "is laden with provisions to expand forfeiture, increase wiretapping without warrant, promote drug testing and immunize police who commit violent crimes from criminal punishment. When senators are presented with a 648-page-long bill, few bother to read it. Thus, many senators who voted for S. 254 may have been unaware that the bill contains a sweeping new forfeiture provision that allows U.S. attorneys to base forfeiture on violations of state law -- even misdemeanors… S. 254 significantly expands that statute to include any felony, including state felonies, and any state misdemeanor involving physical harm. Instead of just applying to profits from the sale of a criminal's story, the statute as revised by S. 254 would allow forfeiture of any enhanced value, in any property owned by the criminal, that resulted from the crime. But the measure ignores the constitutional fact that forfeitures for state law violations ought to be determined by state legislatures and carried out by state and local prosecutors, not by the federal government. Also buried deep within S. 254 is language that for the first time allows the police to intercept the content of electronic communications -- the contents of pager messages -- without a warrant. Those messages can reveal information about a person's travel schedule, private life and current location. The bill's 'cloned pager' language is the latest expansion of wiretap authority to be buried in a large, complex bill where the public, which is generally skeptical about wiretapping, is not likely to notice. 'Public safety' seems to demand that the public be protected from any opportunity to debate whether the federal government needs more power to peek in on the public without a search warrant."