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1996-05-06
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From: Jim Rosenfield <jnr@igc.apc.org>
Newsgroups: talk.politics.drugs
Subject: Postrel Opin in LATimes: Prohibition
Message-ID: <APC&1'0'58740e9e'8d3@igc.apc.org>
Date: Sun, 30 Apr 1995 09:35:19 -0700 (PDT)
From: Jim Rosenfield <jnr>
Subject: Postrel Opin in LATimes: Prohibition
From: Los Angeles Times 4/30/95 Opinion Page
for discussion purposes only, all rights reserved to the Times.
COLUMN RIGHT: Just talking about the merits of ending drug
prohibition earns a key Republican's censure.
By VIRGINIA I. POSTREL
The social issue that blows apart the Republican coalition
won't be abortion, as many Democrats hope. But it may be drugs.
If Rep. Susan Molinari (R-N.Y.) stood in the well of the
House and declared that the Christian Coalition must be
silenced because its opposition to abortion constitutes a
threat to constitutional order and an incitement to violence,
she would be stripped of her leadership position and cast out
of the Republicans' "big tent." Everyone understands that
anti-abortion religious conservatives are a vital part of the
Republican coalition, and even abortion-rights supporters in
the party have to treat their position with respect.
Why, then, don't the libertarians who provide the brain
power behind the Republicans' free-market tax, regulatory and
budget-cutting policies--as well as plenty of votes--get the
same respect?
Why can Molinari's colleague from New York, Gerald Solomon,
stand in the well of the House and call Majority Leader Dick
Armey's favorite think tank, the Cato Institute, a "sinister"
organization "engaged in immoral and unethical activity" and
demand that it be silenced because its opposition to drug
prohibition constitutes support of criminals and an incitement
to drug use? If the Republican Party is serious about its big
tent, why is Solomon still chairman of the powerful House Rules
Committee?
On the eve of the spring recess, Solomon introduced a bill
to deny tax-exempt status to any organization that advocates
the legalization of drugs, mentioning by name the respected
Cato Institute ("libertarian elites") and the Drug Policy
Foundation ("seedy"). (The bill also would affect my employer,
the Reason Foundation.)
Solomon tried to allege that such groups violate tax rules
by "lobbying," which is forbidden to tax-exempt
research-and-educational organizations.
But if championing drug legalization as an idea and
publishing research that supports it constitutes lobbying, so
would advocating tax cuts, welfare reform, an increased minimum
wage or protection of endangered species.
And every think tank in Washington would be out of business,
starting with the Heritage Foundation, whose policy papers
actually mention bill numbers (and contain a disclaimer
disavowing any effort to influence legislation).
The issue isn't lobbying, or even drugs. It's free speech.
Conservative drug warriors want to wipe out any talk of
ending prohibition. Apparently they fear that they will lose an
open debate.
And with supporters like Nobel laureate Milton Friedman,
conservative guru William F. Buckley, former Secretary of State
George Shultz and several Reagan-appointed federal judges, drug
legalization is hard to stigmatize as a wacky idea pushed by
dangerous radicals. Indeed, the arguments that prohibition
increases crime and erodes personal freedom are ones
conservatives find quite convincing when applied to gun
control--or even plain old business regulation.
But the very respectability of anti-prohibition arguments,
and of the people who make them, drives drug warriors crazy.
Hence Solomon's bill, which blatantly violates the First
Amendment by imposing punitive taxes on unpopular speech. In
his House diatribe, Solomon called for Cato to be "investigated
and their contributors . . . required to pay taxes on past
contributions." This is watered down McCarthyism and a direct,
vicious attack on supposed Republican allies. Thanks to his
committee chairmanship, Solomon can make sure his bill gets a
floor vote.
Republicans who care about their party's future should hope
he doesn't push the issue. As activist and friend-of-Newt
Grover Norquist likes to say, the Republican coalition is just
that: a coalition (a "leave us alone" coalition, in Norquist's
words).
And a coalition's members can bolt at any time, especially
if their allies start sicking the IRS on them.
Early in the Clinton Administration, Democrats began to
sneak through Congress a bill to revive the Fairness Doctrine
and, in the process, to put conservative talk radio and
especially Rush Limbaugh out of business.
It was a sharp-eyed libertarian journalist, Charles Oliver
of Investor's Business Daily, who broke the story out of the
trade magazines and into the political debate.
Two libertarians and a civil libertarian--John Fund of the
Wall Street Journal editorial page, myself and columnist Nat
Hentoff--brought the story to a larger audience. And, with the
airwaves buzzing with conservative paeans to free speech, the
measure died.
We were serious about free speech. Were they?
Virginia I. Postrel is the editor of Reason, a monthly
current-affairs magazine based in Los Angeles.