It was a golden opportunity for two extremely influential characters on opposite sides of the drug debate to appear on the same stage, but neither was big enough to initiate a face-to-face meeting with his challenger. So it became an opportunity missed.

(Marijuananews note: The fact is that the Czar simply will not debate.)

Gov. Gary Johnson in his signature, shoot-from-the-hip style has given the "we've lost the war on drugs" message exposure that's resonated across the country. We're used to Johnson advocating quick solutions to complex problems here in New Mexico, but little could anyone have guessed that a "Johnsonism" would play so well to America. But that's history and the Pandora's Box of the drug legalization debate has been opened.

The visit to New Mexico this week by U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey was arranged specifically to counter Johnson's call for a national debate on drug policy -- which escalated to his advocating legalization of drugs like marijuana, cocaine and heroin. McCaffrey's damage-control mission is testament to just how seriously the effect of Johnson's views are being taken in the Capitol.

In the beginning, our triathlete governor spoke only of the need for a renewed debate on drug policy and decriminalizing marijuana. That idea had merit -- though Johnson should have been aware that New Mexico decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana years ago.

That is not decriminalization.)

But his views got him some quick attention. He just returned from a whirlwind tour of Washington D.C. where he spoke to student groups and the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, with stops on radio talk shows, TV morning shows and the Internet. And here at home he's being recruited by the Libertarian Party to be its presidential candidate.

The problem is that with Johnson there's no meat to temper the hot sauce of his ideas. While he grabs air time with his assertion that money spent on criminal drug law enforcement should be shifted to prevention and treatment, his record in office takes the opposite line.

He consistently vetoed such programs when presented to him by the Legislature. In his second term as governor he has done or asked for absolutely nothing to reflect his view that prevention and rehabilitation are a better investment than incarceration.

To the contrary, he's been a build-them-and-we'll-fill-them private prisons kind of guy. And those troubled institutions are filled to the rafters with nonviolent drug users -- the very "criminals" that national drug policy celebrity Johnson claims would be better served in rehabilitation programs.

If he's so sure about this on national television, why hasn't he used his resources, his powers of persuasion and position as governor to do something to implement it -- anything -- during his administration, at the level he does control?

Consumption in the United States remains high, prisons across the country are filled with non-violent, drug-addicted criminals. Illegal, drug-producing third-world nations continue to battle the tragic consequences of the greed and corruption that drug exporting cartels inflict.

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy has a budget that has only increased since 1996 when it was a bit over $13 billion. McCaffrey's claim of great inroads are not credible.

In addition, there's a growing suspicion among many that there exists an influential underground industry dependent upon the criminality of drugs that has made many people very rich, and consequently has little interest in genuine rehabilitation.

New Mexico has twice as much reason to be concerned about this, as we have two times the national average heroin death rate and Rio Arriba County leads the nation in drug overdose deaths.

But McCaffrey and Johnson both brought only big-picture sound bite rhetoric to the intensely complex problem of drug abuse in New Mexico.

It will take much more than that to get past the emotion and rhetoric that surrounds the issue of illegal drugs in American society, but neither man offered it while they had the eyes of the nation on them and on the issue.