Editorials concerning the War on Drugs
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Governor Bush's Cocaine Problem
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 Adam J. Smith, Associate Director, ajsmith@drcnet.org
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     First he refused to confirm or deny it. Later he would say only that  "when I was young and irresponsible,  I was young and irresponsible." Next he said that the issue wasn't relevant. Then he said that he wouldn't address rumors." Then he  said  that he could pass a standard  security check dating back seven years.
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       Finally,  he said that he could've passed the security  check in his father's White   House  --  fifteen years.    Though he had  to  think  before  specifying whether he  could've passed it then or now.  Now, no matter what he says, the issue seems destined to dog him until the day he comes clean.
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    Texas Governor and Republican presidential front-runner George W. Bush, Jr. has  a cocaine problem.
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     Under normal  circumstances,   an individual's past drug use,   especially if that  use  occurred  in  the  distant  past,      should  not  be  relevant  to  their qualifications for present employment.     But in the race for the United States Presidency, it is  relevant on two counts. In fact, in Governor Bush's case, it is relevant on three.
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      As governor of Texas, George W. Bush, Jr. supported and signed legislation increasing penalties for drug possession in that state. In one instance, Governor  Bush signed legislation mandating jail time for people caught with less than a single gram of cocaine.  As a candidate,  Bush's handling of the cocaine  question offers clues as to how he deals with embarrassing mistakes-- admit  them and move on, or obfuscate and ide-step.   As President, Governor  Bush would preside over a national drug policy that is increasingly punitive, the driving force behind the Nation's ascendancy to the title of World's most prolific incarcerator.
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   In 1992,  Republicans asked whether Democratic candidate Bill Clinton could  summon  the moral  authority to send young  people to war,  given the fact that he had successfully avoided military service during his youth. Today, overnor  Bush  must be asked whether he can summon  the  moral authority to send young people to prison, given the fact that he had avoided the DEA in his youth.
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     It is becoming increasingly clear that George Junior most likely did toot a line or two back in his halcyon days.    The relevant question, then, is whether or not he believes that five or ten years in prison would have been the appropriate  societal  response to  that use.    And if not,  why he believes that such  treatment  is  appropriate for the  children  of fathers who were not Ambassadors to China,  Directors of the CIA, Vice Presidents or Commanders-in-Chief.
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        The truth is that George Junior was never in much danger of being treatedlike less fortunate Americans who get sucked into our runaway criminal justice system.  As the rich son of a powerful man, it is unlikely that he would have been pulled over,  searched, or busted in a street  sweep.   Rich people don't buy  their  coke on the  street,   in quarter gram increments.    And if by some strange confluence of  events he had been caught and arrested  --  rather than sent on his way with a wave of his ID --  he would  have certainly had an expensive attorney, and a spot waiting for him at the Betty Ford  Clinic.   The judge would likely have wished him well in his recovery.  It would've taken an act  of  God  or  else  an  act  of  monumental  stupidity on his own part for George Junior to have ever seen the inside of an American prison for drug possession.
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        But now he's running for president.  And the questions keep coming.  And his answers  keep changing.    And try as he might to create a statute of limitations for questions about his personal life,   there is no such statute forhypocrisy. Sending people to prison, increasing their sentences by the stroke of his pen for the very  behavior that he now claims is irrelevant in his own history, does not speak well for the honor or the conscience of the man. George W. Bush Jr. has a cocaine problem.   But he's got a big lead in the polls, and more than thirty million dollars in the bank.  He'll suffer an awful long time before he hits bottom. Right now, pathetic as it is to watch, his evasive  machinations in the face of confrontation can only  mean one thing.  He's still in denial.
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