ASHINGTON - GOP presidential candidate George W. Bush doesn't want to reveal any history he might have with cocaine, but as Texas governor he has not been reluctant to talk tough about hard drugs and stiffen the penalties for those who break drug laws.
Elected on a law-and-order platform in 1994, Bush has signed laws that make it more likely that people convicted of possessing small amounts of cocaine will go to jail, drug felons won't be paroled, and drug dealers who sell to children or can be linked to drug-related deaths will receive longer sentences.
''Incarceration is rehabilitation,'' Bush said during his first gubernatorial campaign, and some critics in the field of criminal justice believe the governor has taken his own words to an extreme.
''Governor Bush has taken a zero-tolerance approach to drugs in the state of Texas,'' said Danny Easterling, a Houston lawyer who heads the 400-member Harris County Criminal Defense Lawyers Association. ''He has a `lock 'em up' mentality, as opposed to a give-them-treatment mentality, that is very unfortunate. When you apply that to cocaine possession, it has a lot of people's blood boiling.''
Bush's overall approach to criminals, and particularly to first-time drug felons, causes Texans like Easterling to question Bush's much touted ''compassionate conservatism.'' Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz accuses Bush of ''rampant hypocrisy'' for contemplating cutting welfare benefits to poor people who have abused drugs if, as a presidential candidate, he won't flatly deny that he ever used hard drugs himself.
Bush has been dogged by the media to respond to unsubstantiated rumors that he has used cocaine, which is a felony in Texas. Initially, Bush cited his zone of privacy and refused to answer the question. Last week, when asked if he could pass an FBI background check for drugs, the governor indicated he had been drug-free for at least 25 years.
Each of the governor's eight rivals for the GOP nomination has denied ever using illegal drugs. Some of them have suggested that Bush's credibility on law enforcement issues hinges on giving a direct answer to the drug question.
Instead, Bush's campaign message is that young people should stay away from illegal drugs, and as governor Bush has put more resources into preventing drug use than in treating drug addiction. The candidate also has said that those who experiment with drugs should learn from their mistakes and be forgiven, an attitude that seems at odds with some of his punitive policies back home.
''The governor wants to make sure that when you commit a crime, there is going to be a punishment, and it will be swift and sure,'' said Mindy Tucker, a spokeswoman for the Bush campaign. ''It is his responsibility to enforce the law.''
A Texas law that Bush signed in 1997 mandates that judges sentence first-time felons convicted of possessing a gram or less of cocaine to a minimum of 180 days and a maximum of two years in a state jail. Under Bush's predecessor, Governor Ann Richards, such first-time offenders received automatic probation with drug counseling.
Tony Fabelo, director of the Texas Criminal Justice Policy Council, said that in 1998, some 4,000 of the felons in state jails were drug offenders, and approximately 2,800 of them had been incarcerated for possession of a gram or less of cocaine or heroin. Still, more than 80 percent of the drug felons who could have been sent to state jail had received probation instead, Fabelo said.
Easterling said that ''a lot of people are going to jail instead of receiving probation and rehabilitation'' for being found guilty of possessing cocaine in amounts that suggest personal use, not drug dealing. The majority of those being jailed, he said, are minorities and the poor, who can't afford private attorneys and don't get into treatment programs before their cases come to trial. ''They are under a lot of pressure to plead guilty and move on,'' Easterling said.
Fabelo confirmed that 58 percent of the drug felons in state jails are black, 17 percent are Hispanic, and 23 percent are white. State jails in Texas house only nonviolent felons.
The Texas prison population - as opposed its state jail population - has tripled during the Bush administration to 149,000, making Texas second only to Louisiana in having the highest ratio of inmates, with more than 700 per 100,000 people. A $2 billion prison-building program started by Richards created so many prison beds that Bush has been able to enhance his crime-fighter image by backing tougher criminal sentencing and cracking down on parole.
In 1991, the parole board appointed by Richards granted parole to 79 percent of the eligible inmates. This year, under a Bush-appointed parole board, the rate has fallen to an all-time low of 16 percent. The parole rate for drug offenders in prison is about 20 percent.
''The big old revolving door has shut,'' said Glen Castlebury, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. ''Our parole board has flat out quit paroling people.''
Bill Habern, a criminal defense lawyer in Riverside, Texas, who specializes in parole, says the parole rate proves that Bush is conservative, but not compassionate. ''There is no justification for such an extreme reduction in parole, or for the damage ... on those who aren't released,'' Habern said. ''Bush is not tough on crime, he is dictatorial on crime.''
Florence Shapiro, a Republican state senator from Plano, Texas, and a champion of antidrug legislation, says Bush is being unfairly branded as a zealot on drug laws when they have been just a small piece of a larger crime-control package he has put forward as governor.
''He believes in law and order, and he is committed to making the streets safe, but the governor did not isolate drugs as his issue, or stand up and say, `This is what I stand for,''' said Shapiro, noting that Bush's greatest influence has been on overhauling the state's juvenile justice system, which, she said, ''had been coddling bad boys for too long.''
Bush signed two drug bills that Shapiro wrote: One toughens the penalties on felons convicted of dealing drugs within 1,000 feet of a school. A second lengthens the prison term for dealers who sell drugs to someone who dies of an overdose.
Critics accuse Bush of slashing substance-abuse treatment programs in Texas prisons. But authorities in the state say the 14,000 treatment beds proposed by the Richards administration in 1991 never materialized because the corrections department could not demonstrate the need, not because Bush opposed rehabilitation. ''It has been proven that 5,800 beds was and is the correct number, and that Texas is doing the optimum with what we all want done,'' Fabelo said.
But Morgan Reynolds, director of criminal justice studies for the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis, a conservative think tank, says Bush faces a personal dilemma with his antidrug record and the cocaine rumors.
''Bush's message has been, `Be tough on crime, punishment works, and people need to take responsibility for their own actions,''' Reynolds said. ''I don't think it works when that man, who wants to be the chief law enforcement officer of the nation, looks like he is hiding a felony crime. What about equal justice for all?''
