We Don't Want a Drug Legalizer
By A. M. Rosenthal
NEW YORK William Weld's decision to resign as governor of
Massachusetts and campaign for the job of ambassador to Mexico is a
strong step based on his selfinterest as he sees it. Now the U.S. Senate
should take a strong step based on the country's selfinterest, by
rejecting him for the job.

If conducted intelligently, Senate hearings will show Americans
that the issue is not the senatorial delays in confirming the president's
laggard nominations for ambassadorships. Nor is the issue Senator Jesse
Helms, who has been responsible for those delays that were not the
president's fault. It is drugs, and the survival of the national struggle
against them.

Mr. Weld supports legalization of marijuana for "medical
purposes." As marijuana is a gateway to the use of cocaine, heroin and
other "hard" narcotics, so legalizing it is the most likely gateway to
legalizing all narcotics.

President Bill Clinton decided, for political purposes, to
appoint Mr. Weld to an ambassadorship. The idea tickled the White
House. It would take an important Republican governor out of the way
for a Democratic candidate, possibly Representative Joseph P. Kennedy
2d. Fair enough.

But the administration must have thought long and hard to
come up with a job for Mr. Weld that would be so unsuited to the
interests of both the United States and the country where he would
serve.

Mexico is a literal gateway in itself, the trallsfeerl point of
billions of dollars. of illegal narcotics into the United States. Its
government machinery is being strangled by drug lords and their
purchased politicians, policemen and army officers.

The urgency of Mexico'sdrug crisis settled into the
administration's brain after the general who headed Mexico's antidrug
work received toplevel secret briefings in Washington and went home
to be arrested as an agent of drug lords.

The arrival of a U.S. ambassador who favors even partial
legalization of the most widely abused narcotic would be an insult to
those Mexican officials and voters who struggle for a decent
government. And it would be a stab in the back to the whole U.S.
antidrug effort and Americans who risk their lives carrying it out.

The one justification put forward publicly for "medical"
legalization of marijuana is that it would ease pain in severely suffering
patients. Some doctors support this point, others say legal medicines
for pain already exist. Washington, very late, promises scientific inquiry
and open debate.

But the drive for "medical" legalization has two other
motivatit)ns. Many advocates are candid enough tosay sobut not ttle
foundations and their benefactors who put up the taxfree money to run
the campaign. The money, and the propaganda expertise it bought,
gave them victory in legalization referendums in Calitornia and Arizona.
The same kind of money will back referendums in at least six more
states.

One goal is to move from medical legalization to de facto
legalization of all marijuana use. The even more important goal is to
destroy the antidrug war, which would mean backdoor legalization of
all drugs.

Mr. Weld is not entitled to be confirmed as U.S. ambassador
to Mexico or to any country fighting the drug plague.