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One man is the U.S. Senate's No. 1 drug-pusher, an ambassador to Asian countries on behalf of duplicitous producers of an addictive product. The other man spent a key part of his adult life putting drug dealers behind bars. Yet, only in the warped world of Washington politics can the first man -- U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms -- use the epithet "soft on drugs" to thwart a presidential nomination to an ambassadorship for the second man -- Massachusetts (now former) Gov. William Weld.

Helms, tinpot dictator of the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee, continues to hold up Weld's confirmation as U.S. ambassador to Mexico by denying him the necessary committee hearing.

This contest between a crazed, small-minded right-wing ideologue and the moderate New Englander makes for interesting political theater. But it also highlights the dysfunctionality of our nation's discussion -- or lack of intelligent, productive discussion -- about the public health and criminal catastrophes associated with drug addiction.

Let's look for a minute at who the accuser really is. Through his decades in the Senate, Helms has been the foremost warrior for tobacco growers, protecting government subsidies for a drug everyone knew was killing millions of Americans.

That alone didn't make him unusual for a Southern senator addicted to tobacco industry political money; he was just better at fronting for those companies. But then he used his committee chairmanship -- in which he has shown himself willing to obstruct U.S. government functions in embassies throughout the world to pursue his narrow ideological crusades -- to become a pitch man for hooking Third World populations on American tobacco to make up for declining domestic sales. He became North Carolina Tobacco's ambassador.

The most revealing moment of this ambassadorship came in April 1996. Helms actually played host to a three-day visit to his home state (including a private two-hour tour of R.J. Reynolds' Winston-Salem tobacco factory) of ambassadors of all seven countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. They all came, of course, because they needed Helms' support on the Foreign Relations Committee.

At the time, Helms was holding up the opening of a U.S. embassy in Vietnam. That didn't stop him from personally escorting Vietnam's ambassador around Washington. Nor did it stop Vietnam from welcoming a $21 million joint venture for RJR-Nabisco in Da Nang.

Helms actually said the following in praise of the Vietnamese: "I was with some Vietnamese recently, and some of them were smoking two cigarettes at the same time. That's the kind of customers we need."

Now let's look at how William Weld has dealt with the drug issue, both here and abroad.

As a U.S. Attorney in Massachusetts in the '80s, he pushed for mandatory minimum sentences for drug dealers. He busted up one of the world's largest marijuana smuggling rings, as well as one of Boston's major cocaine rings. He came before the (pre-Helms-run) Senate Foreign Relations Committee to testify on behalf of a strict federal money laundering law that eventually passed in 1986.

Then he came to Washington to head the criminal division of President Reagan's Justice Department. That's right -- Ronald Reagan, the president who made "war on drugs" a national mantra. According to the head of the Drug Enforcement Agency at the time, John C. Lawn, Weld played a key role in boosting nationwide drug prosecutions 40 percent, and convictions 42 percent.

So what's Helms' gripe?

Weld flunks one of Helms' inane litmus tests. While Weld took a hard line against drug dealers, he also had the courage and intelligence to stand up for some of the lesser-noticed victims of a blindly prosecuted "drug war." Weld realized that marijuana has a role in relieving the pain and nausea of cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. He supported the idea of helping relieve that pain by allowing the limited, controlled legalization of marijuana for that purpose.

And, as Massachusetts' governor, Weld saw how some simple measures could help staunch the spread of the deadly AIDS/HIV epidemic. Weld supported the idea of free, clean needles for intravenous drug addicts -- a concept endorsed recently by the American Medical Association. A concept that has saved thousands of lives.

Helm's contribution to that debate has been to condemn all homosexuals for supposed promiscuity and to leave them and others to die from AIDS.

Helms' real gripe is that Weld is a Republican just like himself, but one who thinks for himself instead of signing up to the list of simplistic, far-right-wing slogans Helms champions.

Is this any way to conduct foreign policy?

I just wonder what will happen if marijuana becomes legal and regulated. Tobacco companies will probably "diversify" by carrying our their long-developed plans to cultivate marijuana. If so, don't be surprised if the Foreign Relations Committee embarrassment from North Carolina suddenly forgets his "soft on drugs" litmus test and goes off in search of yet another bogeyman.

Nick Pastore August 15, 1997