Every now and then, conservatives do catch on

By MOLLY IVINS
Copyright 1997 Creators Syndicate

Molly Ivins is on vacation. This column orginally appeared in February 1995.

AUSTIN Another liberal victory! Yup, proved right again. It took only a
little more than 20 years and God knows how many ruined lives.

Return with me now to the days of yesteryear, when things were very much as
they are now, and the conservatives kept claiming to be Tuff On Crime while
painting the squishy hearted liberals as Soft On Crime. If you are not old
enough to remember those longago days in the late '60s, early '70s, try
1994's governor's race to refresh your memory.

In those bygone times, children, the Great State of Texas had bizarrely
punitive drug laws; the sentence for first offense possession of any
amount of marijuana, no matter how small, was twoyearstolife. Right, you
got it. You could get life for firstoffense possession of the ganja that
dropped out of the end of a friend's joint as he smoked it in your car,
were it to be found there by the police months later.

Were such sentences actually given, and served? Well, yes, sort of. Lots of
people got 10 years for possession, and if the cops didn't like you for
some other reason, you could draw lots of hard time. Perhaps the most
famous victim of our thendrug laws was Lee Otis Johnson, a student at
Texas Southern University of the variety known as "militant." Lee Otis
Johnson had organized demonstrations (yes, actual, legal demonstrations!)
at TSU, protesting among other things police conduct.

The facts in Johnson's drug trial were uncontested: The young man had been
at a party where marijuana was smoked. He took a joint from the person
sitting next to him and, without taking a hit, passed it to the person on
his other side. Said person was an undercover narcotics officer who then
busted Johnson as a pusher; under thenTexas law, anyone who gave a
controlled substance to another, whether for profit or not, was a pusher.
Lee Otis Johnson got 30 years in prison for his transgression.

The idea, said our friends who were Tuff On Crime, was prison sentences so
long that no one would dare have anything to do with drugs. And did this
work? Not worth a byGod, thank you. This was the era when marijuana was on
every campus (yea, verily, even A&M). You couldn't go to a Willie Nelson
concert without noticing that cloud of funny blue smoke, and heaven knows
what the people at rock concerts were using. The fabled Armadillo World
Headquarters in Austin was fully of wacky tabaccy; dope and beer were more
common at social occasions than cheese and Ritz crackers; and generally
speaking, Texans got just as high just as often as folks with more
civilized drug laws. Given our proximity to Mexico, the source of much
marijuana in those days, probably more so. We just paid a heavier penalty.

Here's a true political story from those days: Lee Otis Johnson's
manifestly unjust 30year sentence became a rallying point for those who
wanted to change the drug laws. People drove around with bumper stickers on
their cars that said, "Free Lee Otis!" When Poor Ol' Preston Smith was
running for reelection in 1970, he made an appearance at the University of
Houston, where the students had organized a demonstration and began
chanting, "Free Lee Otis! Free Lee Otis!" in the midst of the governor's
speech. POP Smith was unable to finish his speech.

Great was the editorial dudgeon in every state newspaper the next day:
Governor unable to continue speech, why if these kids aren't at college to
learn, etc. Next day, reporters asked Poor Ol' Preston what he thought of
the FreeLeeOtis demonstration. "Free Lee Otis?" replied the guv. "Is that
whut they was sayin'? I thought they was yellin', 'Frijoles, frijoles.' I
couldn't understand whut they had against frijoles. I think that's some
kinda dried bean."

It was the time of the intergenerational failure to communicate.

In any case, so great was the moronity of these drug laws that the Texas
Legislature its very own tuffoncrime self changed the law. Firstoffense
possession eventually became a misdemeanor. But in an unhappy instance of
synchronicity, just as our legislature was moving to lessen drug penalties,
at least on marijuana, the New York Legislature was going in the other
direction.

Their thenGov. NotSoPoor Ol' Nelson Rockefeller got took hard with a fit
of tuffoncrime, including life sentences for users. Rockefeller actually
cited Texas as a model when he proposed this folly, saying our tuff drug
laws had worked so well no one down here dared to use illegal drugs. We all
waved away the billowing clouds of funny blue smoke and looked north,
whomperjawed.

It was not as though New York could communicate with Texas only by Pony
Express in 1973 the telegraph had been invented. This very episode first
caused me to propose that Texas be declared the National Bad Gummint
Laboratory. Any time that someone in another state came up with a Truly Bad
Idea, they could send an investigative commission to Texas where we had
already tried said bad idea, of course to study the results and act
accordingly. Sort of the reverse of Toronto.

But New York just couldn't wait to study our results, so it went right
ahead and passed those Rockefeller drug laws, and you know the rest of the
story. New York has been drugfree ever since, right?

Lo and behold, nearly a quarter of a century later, comes a new Republican
governor of New York, Poor Ol' George Pataki, and guess what? Yup, he wants
to scrap all those bad old Rockefeller drug laws with the long, fixed
sentences and give judges some flexibility to order drug treatment and
other alternatives. Especially for people who are a threat mostly to
themselves. My, my, my. Turns out that all those years of keeping all those
nonviolent people in prison was just ... a huge waste of money, says
Brother Pataki.

Every now and again, those conservatives do catch on, but they still
haven't given up calling liberals Soft On Crime.