Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 16, 1994                   TAG: 9403180047
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WILL DRUG ISSUE BE THE GOP'S NAFTA?

NAFTA was opposed by organized labor, some business sectors, Jesse Jackson, Ralph Nader and a majority of Democrats in Congress. It was promoted, however, by a Democratic president and backed by other business interests, moderate environmentalists and enough Democrats in Congress to get it passed.

Republicans weren't of a single mind, either. But with oddball exceptions like nativist Pat Buchanan, differences within the GOP never took on the air of holy war. Free-trade principles and political realities made it easy for most congressional Republicans to support NAFTA.

For GOP Congressman Bob Goodlatte of Roanoke, for example, voting for NAFTA was not only right but also smart politics. The economy of his 6th District is the most export-oriented in the state, and the conservative Republican didn't win with union support anyway.

The Republicans' NAFTA, provided the issue ever moves from the periphery to center stage, could be drug legalization. Like Republicans on NAFTA, Democrats can and do disagree on drug policy. But for the Republicans (and conservatives generally), the fissure could go much deeper.

That's largely because one strain of contemporary conservatism believes firmly in the libertarian view that government should do less of almost everything. Another strain, however, holds to the authoritarian view that punishing crime and protecting "traditional values" are what government is, or at least should be, all about.

Among conservative proponents of drug legalization are the Cato Institute, economist Milton Friedman and writer William F. Buckley Jr. True, Buckley says he's not among those who say government has no business regulating dangerous (if only to oneself) behavior; his opposition is based on the simple fact that the war on drugs hasn't worked. But Buckley's ready willingness to sound retreat betrays a pessimism about government's efficacy that borders on libertarianism. He seems to dismiss, before it's even tried, a change in focus to drug-treatment and -rehab programs that could reduce the demand for illicit drugs.

The libertarians seem to underestimate the social danger of drugs even if legalized and to overestimate the completeness with which government has fought drugs. But the authoritarians - among whom can be counted the conservative politicos who awhile back took Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders to task for daring to suggest so much as a study of legalization - seem to favor the current failed course, only more so. More arrests, more trials, more prisoners, more prisons.

President Clinton quickly divorced himself from his own surgeon general's suggestion. But he defined the difference in pragmatic terms, saying he didn't think legalization would work well. That's a small difference compared to the great gulf in conservative world views - between libertarians whodrugs should be legalized on principle and authoritarian conservatives who think drug crimes should be prosecuted ever more vigorously and penalized ever more heavily.