Gingrich Urges National Vote on Legalizing Drugs

PHILADELPHIA — The nation ought to “quit playing games” on illegal drugs and either vote to legalize them or adopt penalties severe enough to get rid of them, House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Friday.

“I’m sick of being told we don’t know how to do it,” Gingrich told a meeting of the Republican National Committee.

Gingrich spoke at the GOP summer meeting along with Republicans contending for the party’s presidential nomination.

To force the question on illegal drugs, he said he “would be prepared to put it on the ballot in November, either legalize it or get rid of it, but quit playing the games that enrich the evil, strengthen the violent, addict our children and make us look pathetic and helpless.”

Lee P. Brown, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, issued a statement calling Gingrich’s proposal “a simplistic silver bullet.”

Gingrich is guilty of “political hypocrisy,” Brown said, for “suggesting the defeatist alternative of legalization” while congressional Republicans try to cut funds for treatment and prevention programs.

Gingrich also used his talk to criticize President Clinton as leader of “the least competent, least adult, least structured, least disciplined and least responsible Administration . . . probably in our country’s history.”

But Gingrich and many others at the Republican gathering underscored a need not to underestimate Clinton, whom they characterize as a savvy politician willing to change positions for votes.

Would-be challengers to Clinton used the party forum to portray themselves as the best situated to take him on.

Launching one of the most personal attacks of the campaign so far, commentator Patrick J. Buchanan tried to set a battle between himself and Texas Sen. Phil Gramm over who is the “authentic conservative” in the field.