Pubdate: Tue, 01 Aug 2000
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2000 The New York Times Company
Contact:  229 West 43rd Street, New York, NY 10036
Fax: (212) 556-3622
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Forum: http://www10.nytimes.com/comment/
Author: Jan Hoffman
Bookmark: MAP's link to shadow convention items:
http://www.mapinc.org/shadow.htm

A PACING FORCE BEHIND THE 'SHADOW CONVENTIONS'

Curious facts for curious folks:

Did you know a disproportionate number of people in the drug policy
movement are left-handed?

We didn't either, but Ethan Nadelmann says so. He happens to be Mr.
Drug Policy Movement -- and left-handed.

"Left-handed people learn from an early age what it's like to be
deviant, and that it's OK," enthused Nadelmann, 43, a gung-ho guy --
"do you mind if I pace?" -- who was holding forth in his book-lined
Manhattan office.

Nadelmann, who has degrees in law and political science from Harvard
and is a former Princeton professor, is the much-admired and
much-repudiated critic of recent administrations' wars on drugs. Over
the years, his left hand has been clasped by a small, powerful and
eclectic group of thinkers, including George Soros, the billionaire;
Walter Cronkite, the former anchor; and George P. Shultz, the former
secretary of state.

His latest best friend is Arianna Huffington, the writer and
saloniste, with whom he and others helped create this month's "shadow
conventions" in Philadelphia and Los Angeles, to discuss issues like
his, which, one may assume, will not be briskly considered at those
other conventions.

He had just been refereeing the in-fighting over the schedule of
events Tuesday in Philadelphia, which will largely reflect his agenda.

"About 150 people told me they want to speak," said Nadelmann, who
pops up on talk shows when the host needs a respectable flamethrower.
"I'm getting calls saying, 'How come you don't have the hemp issue or
the CIA drug-conspiracy issue?'

"We're a lightning rod for people who oppose us as well as for people
who don't feel heard. Yeah, we have our lunatic fringe, but we also
have a lot of remarkable people who are smart and menschy."

Nadelmann, who sees the drug wars as a pricey flop, argues that
drug-related crimes and prison overcrowding will be eased if offenders
are sent to treatment, marijuana is legalized for adults, and
so-called "harm reduction" programs, like heroin maintenance, are encouraged.

He has an affinity for startling comparisons, likening his "anti-war
movement," with its focus on how drug laws affect minorities, to the
early days of the civil or gay rights movements. A divorced father, he
tells his 11-year-old daughter that his job is "to change bad laws."

But Nadelmann does more than debate anyone who bumps into him. He
founded the Lindesmith Center, a project of Soros' Open Society
Institute, dedicated to changing drug policy. He advises Soros on the
allocation of about $7 million a year in grants, and he had a big hand
in initiatives allowing marijuana to be dispensed for medical
purposes, passed in a half-dozen states, including California and Maine.

"I don't think adults should be punished for what they put into their
bodies," he said.

He has the cocksure confidence of one who not only believes that, as
he put it, he is doing the Lord's work, but who is effective enough to
be cast as a major antagonist by critics including Gen. Barry R.
McCaffrey, the Clinton administration's drug czar, and Dr. Mitchell S.
Rosenthal, the president of Phoenix House Foundation, the drug
treatment program.

Like his father, a Westchester County rabbi from the American
Reconstructionist movement, Nadelmann has long been attracted to
novel, modern ideas. In his earlier graduate school years, he bounded
onto the relatively untrod discipline of international law
enforcement. Consulting with the State Department's narcotics bureau,
he studied how agents pursued money laundering that crossed borders.
For academic work, he interviewed drug enforcement agents in 19 countries.

His interests turned toward drug policy. Around 1987, as Nancy Reagan
was saying just say no, he wrote articles begging to differ.

Did you just say yes?

He grinned coyly. "What's the best way to answer this?" he replied,
and then described youthful experimentation with drugs.

And now?

"I won't go into more details because I'm damned if I do and damned if
I don't," he said. "People will say, 'You just advocate for this
because you use,' and if I say I don't, people will say, 'Then you
don't know what you're talking about.' "

He doesn't spend much time speaking with users on the street,
although, with a guide, he would take Princeton students on a field
trip to a shooting gallery. On a recent vacation in Europe, he said,
"I went to visit a little heroin prescription room in Amsterdam. I
biked over there and it was a nice day."

As good as he is at private persuasion -- Tuesday's roster includes
the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson as well as Gov. Gary E. Johnson of New
Mexico, a Republican -- Nadelmann enjoys the spotlight on himself.

"I have a huge admiration for a Dennis Ross" -- the American Middle
East envoy -- "but he's behind the scenes," he said. "I do a lot of
peacemaking and reconciliation, too, but there's a part of me that
loves public speaking.

"My dad was an emotional speaker. He'd cry on the pulpit and I
inherited a large share of that. I never know the first word that will
come out of my mouth. But I'm a very good speaker and I can move
people. I'm a good writer, too, but I don't quite have the discipline
to sit down."
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens