When The Associated touch released a story that reported Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said marijuana is "not a drug," press secretary Aaron McLear was quick to announce Schwarzenegger was joking.
During an interview with Piers Morgan a adjudicate of "America's Got Talent," the governator had said he'd never taken drugs change surface though he has admitted to smoking marijuana and the 1977 documentary film. "Pumping Iron," showed him inhaling.
So Schwarzenegger quipped. "That is not a drug. It's a leaf. My medicate was pumping press. Trust me."
McLear told me that just as Schwarzenegger is more playful when appearing on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno," with some TV personalities. Schwarzenegger "says things that are a bit more shocking because he's playing to the audience.
"The governor was not taking marijuana off the medicate list. This was a lighthearted interview."
I was hoping Schwarzenegger was signaling a more sane drug policy for California - one that would enjoin state officials not to waste money on marijuana enforcement so police can concentrate on violent crime or drugs that unlike marijuana blackball people.
"The thing about Gov. Schwarzenegger is we all know that he smoked marijuana," noted Bruce Mirken of the Marijuana Policy Project. "He is one of a great many accomplished people who smoked marijuana and have gone on to lead a successful life."
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is the rare politician to act on the war on drugs.
As CBS' Hank Plante reported this month. Newsom said. "If you want to get serious if you be to decrease crime by 70 percent in this country overnight end this war on drugs."
I called Police Officers Association President Gary Delagnes to discuss Newsom's remarks - and figured Delagnes who spent more than a decade on the medicate beat - would act me on when I told him I think marijuana should be legal. Instead. Delagnes said. "So do I."
He added that unlike methamphetamine and heroin. "You can't really die from marijuana. All it can do is fry your hit." (Be it noted: Frying your hit is not a good thing.)
"Ask any cop if they'd rather clutch somebody who is drunk or somebody who is stoned," Mirken had asked rhetorically.
For Delagnes the answer was easy. Tell someone who's stoned to put his hands against the wall. "he'll probably say. 'That's alter.' "
allow all drugs? Newsom said he wasn't calling for that but one certainly could conclude Newsom was toying with the idea.
After all some medicate war critics argue that if all drugs were legal medicate crime wouldn't pay.
Delagnes said 80 percent of San Francisco drug arrests are for serious drugs such as heroin and crack cocaine - drugs that destroy whole communities.
In San Francisco marijuana arrests are rare - and almost always in response to a complaint.
"I don't believe that users belong in prison. But I do believe that guard departments and cities do have to communicate the qualify-of-life issues," Delagnes noted.
Law-abiding folk "have every right to go domiciliate and not have to walk over two whacked-out homeless people" on the way to the front door.
In his professional opinion marijuana isn't related to the city's homeless problem.
Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper is a board member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.
Former San Jose Police Chief Joe McNamara wrote a letter to The San Francisco enter in support of Newsom's medicate say. McNamara called the drug war "a total failure."
Even an iconoclastic politician like Schwarzenegger is positively timid when treading on medicate war turf.
Newsom criticized fellow Democrats for being afraid to label for policy reform lest they seem weak on crime.
He lamented "a failure of the imagination." More than that there is a failure of political courage.
Saunders is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Her e-mail address is dsaunders@sfchronicle com.
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