Pubdate: Thu, 19 Oct 2000
Source: Guardian Weekly, The (UK)
Copyright: Guardian Publications 2000
Contact:  75 Farringdon Road London U.K EC1M 3HQ
Fax: 44-171-242-0985
Website: http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/GWeekly/front/
Author: Duncan Campbell, in Los Angeles

HARDLINER QUITS US WAR ON DRUGS

The man with probably the most power in the world to wage the "war against
drugs" has announced that he is standing down from his post in January. The
news of the resignation of General Barry McCaffrey opens the way for a
change in United States and global drug policy.

Gen McCaffrey became the White House director of national drug control
policy in 1996 as the youngest four-star general in the US army and a former
commander-in-chief of the US armed forces' southern command, which made him
effectively the senior American military figure in Central and South
America. For four years he has had the ear of the Clinton administration in
a controversial assault on drugs.

He tried to translate his military training into what his critics saw as a
misguided and unwinnable "war" by a combination of force and propaganda. He
was fully behind the "three strikes and you're out" system of life
imprisonment for people who had committed three drugs offences.

That policy has led to a situation where there are now more than 400,000
people in jail for non-violent drug offences; in fact there are more people
serving time for drug offences in the US than the entire prison population
of Europe. More than 700,000 people were arrested last year in the US for
marijuana offences.

Gen McCaffrey took a tough propaganda stance on marijuana, saying that
claims that the drug had medicinal value were a "cruel hoax".

The general has used his position to demonise those who advocate drug law
reform. Last year he told the US government criminal justice and drug policy
sub-committee in Washington that the drug reformers were "a
carefully-camouflaged, well funded, tightly knit core of people whose goal
is to legalise drug use".

But in recent weeks Gen McCaffrey has come under increasing pressure. The
Bush campaign has attacked his war against drugs as having essentially
failed. In addition Plan Colombia, of which he has been a key supporter and
which involved sending US troops to assist the Colombian government combat
drug producers, has been criticised as ineffective.

The Common Sense for Drug Policies group has accused the general of
presiding over a situation whereby marijuana use among youths in the US has
declined, but heroin and crack cocaine use has increased.
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