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Ronald Reagan's Secretary of State George Schultz, Reagan's former U.N. Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick, conservative economist Milton Friedman, and columnist and editor of the National Review, William F. Buckley, Jr., all sharply departed from the administration's anti-drug cant by arguing the brief for decriminalization of drugs. At the height of the war on drugs rhetoric, these orthodox conservatives apparently intentionally diverted the course of the drug war rhetoric by proposing the opposite extreme of what the Bush administration was promoting. What could prompt a handful of GOP party loyalists to not only depart from lip-syncing the party line. but also to voice an opinion 180 degrees opposite of the Bush administration's declared policies? Was there something about the war on drugs that bothered them, that would lead them to propose something radically different?