If you're a governor running for president of the United States, going out of your way to sign a medical-marijuana bill as one of your last acts before hitting the campaign trail certainly isn't a move out of Presidential Politics 101 -- even if you are a Democrat like New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. But when it comes to alcohol and drug policy, Richardson is no ordinary governor, and New Mexico is no ordinary state.

In March, a medical-marijuana bill in the New Mexico House of Representatives seemed headed for defeat when Richardson interjected himself into the debate, helping to force a revote that saw the bill pass by a slim 36-31 margin. After the vote, Richardson said the measure would "provide much-needed relief for New Mexicans suffering from debilitating diseases while including the proper safeguards to prevent abuse."

Richardson wasn't the first governor to endorse a medical-marijuana bill, but he has presided over a state that has passed a number of progressive addiction-related laws during the past decade. The latest of these was the "911 Good Samaritan" bill, approved in April, which provides limited protection from prosecution for friends and family members who call 911 when an individual is overdosing on illicit drugs. The bill was the first of its kind in the U.S.

"New Mexico has led the nation in innovative programs that educate addicts about how to reduce harm and prevent overdoses," said Richardson at the time. "If we can encourage people to save themselves or others from a drug-related death or trauma then we should do that. This bill will encourage families and friends of addicts to seek medical care and prevent their loved one from dying."

Responding to Richardson's medical-marijuana vote, Bush administration drug czar John Walters charged that Richardson approved the measure "to curry the favor of wealthy donors who are marijuana legalization advocates," apparently referring to George Soros and the Soros-funded Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), which has an office in New Mexico. But Richardson is hardly the first New Mexico governor to run afoul of the drug czar's office; indeed, by comparison to his predecessor the current leader of the Land of Enchantment is practically a conservative.

Gary Johnson, a Republican who served as New Mexico's governor from 1995 to 2003, famously became the first state chief executive in modern times to call for drug legalization. "For the amount of money that we're putting into the war on drugs, I want to suggest that it is an absolute failure," said Johnson in 1999. "Under a legalized scenario, we would see the level of drug use remain the same or decline. And the same would happen with respect to drug abuse."

Of course, drug legalization has not been adopted in New Mexico or anywhere else in the U.S. in the intervening years. And so far, the New Mexico legislature has failed to pass a bill introduced for the past several years that would create a Proposition 36-style treatment-over-incarceration system for the state.

But during Johnson's watch, state lawmakers did approve the New Mexico Harm Reduction Act, which since 1997 has allowed the state Department of Health to provide clean needles to injection-drug users in exchange for dirty ones. Beyond its effectiveness in reducing transmission of HIV/AIDS, the measure has been symbolically important: the notion of "harm reduction" has been integrated into the state bureaucracy for a decade, providing a framework for discussion of other alternative drug policies, observers say.

Drug Policy Alliance: A Broad Agenda

Another part of Johnson's lingering legacy has been the activism of the DPA's New Mexico office, headed by former state health department official Reena Szczepanski. Opened at the height of drug-policy reformers' fervor for Johnson's proposals, the local DPA office faced a cloudy future when Richardson took the governor's chair. But the DPA office has continued to be deeply involved in a number of legislative victories, including a campaign to increase funding for addiction treatment, the recent medical-marijuana and 911 bills, and efforts to revise asset-forfeiture laws.

In what may be a first for a drug-policy reform group, the New Mexico DPA office also recently received a $500,000 federal grant to do methamphetamine-prevention programming in New Mexico high schools. The federal funding came courtesy of an earmark appropriation by Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.); competitive federal addiction-related grants generally exclude any organization that advocates for drug decriminalization or legalization.

DPA (and other drug-reform groups) certainly have had their share of legislative successes in other states, notably California, where national and grassroots advocates created and won approval for Proposition 36 in 2000. California also is one of 13 states with medical-marijuana laws on the books, testament to the effectiveness of well-funded drug-policy reform efforts.

From Pariahs to Partners

Even in many of these states, however, groups like DPA are often viewed as outsiders at best, pariahs at worst, by the mainstream addiction community and state governments. In New Mexico, however, the DPA office has built a reputation of credibility and collaboration with both communities.

Ethan Nadelmann, head of the DPA national office, says the group's effectiveness is partly due to the makeup of New Mexico's government and partly a credit to Szczepanski, who continued her close relationships with the New Mexico governor's office, health department, and legislative staff when she moved from her government job to head the DPA office. "We found remarkably good people, especially in the state health department," said Nadelmann. "New Mexico really stands out as a positive environment to work with."

New Mexico has a similarly progressive reputation within the broader addiction community: the state was one of the first to embrace brief interventions and screenings for addiction in healthcare facilities, has a unique managed-care program to manage its federal addiction block-grant funding, and is considered a national model for the strategic prevention framework process, which seeks to improve prevention effectiveness and accountability. "New Mexico probably has the most progressive prevention system in the country," says Joe Wiese, director of the Southwest Center for the Advancement of Prevention Technology (CAPT). "They've done things others have only talked about."

Underlying the state's open-mindedness is New Mexico's long and troubled history with alcohol and other drug problems, DPA's Szczepanski tells Join Together. "There's such a huge need and demand for results and change that people and policymakers are more open to new solutions," she said. In such a small and close-knit state, she added, "everyone knows someone with a substance-abuse problem. They don't want their family members to go to prison. They want them to get help."

Szczepanski was as stunned as anyone when Richardson rode to the rescue of the medical-marijuana bill at the 11th hour. "To have the governor step in like that was incredible," she said. "We never expected him to do it." However, from a local perspective, at least, "It actually wasn't a very risky thing for him to do," said Szczepanski. "I think Richardson realized that medical marijuana is an incredibly popular issue."

The 911 overdose bill had its origins in a 2001 law that allowed drug addicts and their families as well as police and emergency personnel to administer the drug Narcan to prevent accidental overdoses. Overdose deaths have been rampant in the district of state Sen. Richard Martinez, who worked for seven years to get the "911 Good Samaritan Bill" passed. Newspaper coverage of an incident where a pair of friends were arrested by police after driving an overdose victim to a hospital helped finally push the bill over the finish line, said Szczepanski.

"In voting for this bill [lawmakers] were saying that the life of a drug user is more important than jailing someone for possession of drugs," she said. "It's an incredible confirmation that yes, people do care -- that drug users do have value."

But if issues like medical marijuana and harm reduction are DPA's bread and butter, the group also has won points by working with local provider organizations to call for more funding of addiction treatment. The recovery community has been somewhat less accepting, said Szczepanski, in part because many still believe that prison is a necessary lever to get addicts to hit bottom, confront their problems and get help. "We think that that bottom is so low that no one should ever have to go there," she said. "It's an education process -- what would happen if we had treatment, instead?"

"We're invited to the table for so many things in the addiction and criminal-justice realm," said Szczepanski. "People respect us and our opinions. We're definitely part of the mainstream, and I love it.

"I don't think that what we're advocating for is that radical," she added. "It's common sense."