WASHINGTON, May 17 (UPI) -- "Jesus wasn't an anarchist!" cried an indignant young conservative near the end of an open discussion sponsored by the America's Future Foundation in Washington, D.C. The speaker was responding to a point made by Chuck Thomas, communications director of the Marijuana Policy Project, a Washington, D.C.-based organization advocating policies that would decriminalize marijuana.
Thomas had been calling on young conservatives and libertarians at the meeting Wednesday evening to follow Jesus Christ's recommendation that they concentrate on the beams in their own eyes rather than the specks in others.
Obviously, not everyone appreciated the advice.
However, Thomas, a registered Republican and an advocate of marijuana legalization, seemed to be among the majority at this meeting of the youth-oriented America's Future Foundation.
The monthly meeting focused on "the war on drugs." Speakers included Thomas; Sally Satel, a psychiatrist, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of the controversial recent book "PC MD"; and Jerry Brito, a public affairs officer at the libertarian Cato Institute.
A speaker from Empower America, the think tank that is intellectual home to drug warrior William Bennett, was advertised but was unable to make the event.
"We were supposed to have someone from Encounter America, but he was busy carrying Bill Bennett's bag," said meeting Chairman Michael Lynch, an outgoing Washington correspondent for Reason, a California-based libertarian monthly magazine.
The monthly meetings offer dinner, drinks and intellectual stimulation to young conservatives and libertarians, who are the target audience of the hosting America's Future Foundation.
Last night's meeting seemed to have a libertarian accent. Thomas said his Marijuana Policy Institute consisted of two registered Republicans, two registered Libertarians and one independent. He spoke fondly of his deceased grandfather, who as a GOP convention delegate in 1964 and 1968 voted for Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon.
Thomas struck a partisan note for his Republican audience, pointing out that Democrat Franklin Roosevelt had signed laws making marijuana illegal. "Big government policy sets the federal government into people's back yards," he said.
Thomas urged the crowd to support decriminalization of marijuana, which in practical terms means removing criminal penalties for marijuana use. Under decriminalization, those caught possessing or carrying the drug are given the equivalent of a traffic ticket, he said.
"Federal studies have found that marijuana use is not higher in decriminalized states," said Thomas.
Thomas noted that many people say casual drug use decreased in the 1980s. However, he said, in the 1990s, "Drug use increased under Clinton, although drug arrests also increased under Clinton."
He cited FBI figures, which showed 700,000 marijuana arrests, of which 85 percent were for possession.
Thomas urged the audience to support what he called a "Republican solution" to drug usage: Family members should be educating within the family in order to stop drug abuse, he said.
Brito, of Cato also said the war on drugs should be abandoned. He scorned former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., for having proposed that anyone caught bringing two ounces of marijuana into the United States be sentenced to life in prison.
However, the libertarian Brito approved of private efforts to discourage drug use. Businesses, he said, should be allowed to test employees and fire them on the spot for drug use, he said.
Satel, at 45, one of the oldest participants in the meeting, sounded a common-sense note. She pointed out that as a psychiatrist at a drug halfway house, she did not deal with most recreational users because they handle the effects better than the patrons of the halfway house.
"Thirty percent of them get there before 6 in the morning so they can drink the (methadone) and go to work, she said of the participants in the drug program she is involved in.
While not advocating prison for anyone, Satel took a far more nuanced view of legalization than many in the crowd.
"If drugs were made available, there would be more addiction," said Satel. She also pointed out that many criminals in prison on drug charges were sent there because it was the easiest charge to arrest them on.
"The drugs were incidental to their crime," said Satel. "They are deviants."
Satel warned against what she sees as a tendency to dismiss destructive behavior as "sickness."
"There is a risk to over-moralizing addiction, but on the other hand, it's right to hold them accountable," said Satel.
In the absence of the Encounter America speaker, the chair tapped journalist Tim Carney to voice an overt anti-drug sentiment. Carney described growing up in New York's Greenwich Village, and observing drug addicts indulging their pastime virtually at will in Washington Square Park.
In the era before Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, he said, such laxness in law enforcement led to a general decline in community standards. Drug legalization, added Carney, will lead to addicts becoming a protected class, with employers unable to "discriminate" because of drug addiction.
"Welcoming drugs in our society is breaking the windows again," said Carney, referring to the "Broken Windows" theory of law enforcement applied by Giuliani to decrease crime and raise the quality of daily life in New York. It involves aggressively attacking small quality-of-life elements and crimes -- broken windows in buildings, panhandlers, squeegee-men, graffiti -- to recreate an overall atmosphere of order and law-abiding civility that in fact does deter criminal activity.
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