July 26, 2002

Rob Morse

sfgate.com

Moment worthy of Cheech and Chong: Thursday morning the Bush administration's drug czar, John Walters, pulled up in front of The Chronicle with a CHP and Secret Service escort. Two minutes after the drug czar went into the building, a homeless guy staggered by smoking a joint. The CHP and Secret Service guys didn't bat an eye.

In his meeting with The Chronicle editorial board, Walters avoided the issue of whether he'd scramble the helicopters and special forces if San Francisco becomes a marijuana-producing nation within a nation. Walters is no mindless brute or puritan, but a knowledgeable guy who can cite scary statistics on teenage marijuana use and the ill effects of weed as shown by brain scans -- something that might be given to some of our city officials.

Walters said he only knew what he'd read in the papers about Supervisor Mark Leno's proposal that San Francisco should grow its own pot, perhaps using poor people and homeless as cultivators.

"I've seen a lot of bad things done to poor people in my time," said Walters, "but to turn them into drug producers . . ."

Richard Lewin writes from British Columbia to brag about its highly potent "B.C. Bud" (Walters recently was in B.C. trying to figure out how to keep it from finding its way here.) Lewin says, "Maybe I can help. Hydroponics on every high-rise!"

Except that pointy one, of course. But there's already a garden planned for the roof of the Academy of Sciences' new building, and Yerba Buena Gardens means "Good herb gardens."

Enough jokes. The serious question for voters, as a headline writer at this paper once wrote, will be: "Doobie or not doobie."