On this occasion, the Drug Lobby had apparently counted on the dubious celebrity of Dr. Olievenstein to add weight to their defense. If President Mitterrand is, as he is sometimes called, the "French Jimmy Carter," then Olievenstein is his Dr. Peter Bourne. Last year, Olievenstein, a leading member of Mitterrand's election committee and chief of the Centre Marmottan "experimental" drug rehabilitation center, had publicly called for the decriminalization of all "recreational drugs" in an Esprit magazine article. The POE and its General Secretary Jacques Cheminade, who has worked actively on behalf of the French Anti-Drug Coalition, waged a vigorous campaign against Olievenstein and his sponsorship of "recreational" drug abuse.