Pubdate: Thu, 01 Mar 2001
Source: Reason Magazine (US)
Copyright: 2001 The Reason Foundation
Contact:  3415 S. Sepulveda Blvd., Suite 400, Los Angeles, CA 90034-6064
Website: http://www.reason.com/
Author: Michael W. Lynch, Washington Editor, Reason Magazine

D.C. DOWNERS

In Which Our Man In Washington Listens To The Drug Czar Babble And 
Learns Why We Can't Afford Tax Cuts

Spent a morning last Tuesday at the Heritage Foundation, listening to 
the outgoing drug czar, Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey. Heritage billed the 
speech as, "Is Our Balanced Approach to the War on Drugs Working?" 
McCaffrey, who prefers assertions to questions, made the title 
declarative: "Our Balanced Strategy Against Drugs Is Working."

Let me admit a bias of my own: Long before I spent time in Santa Fe 
talking with New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson about how much fun, if 
arguably counterproductive, it is to get stoned, I felt the drug 
war's insistence on jailing people for sensory enhancement is a waste 
of human effort (see "America's Most Dangerous Politician," January). 
Still, I was surprised to find just what an idiot McCaffrey is in 
person.

Like drug dealers, McCaffrey targets America's youth. "The whole 
notion of prevention and education, aimed at getting American 
adolescents from the 6th grade through 12th grade, where they are 
reduced exposure to gateway drug taking behavior," he said in a 
moment of what passes for clarity. "That's the heart and soul of our 
national drug taking strategy."

As you can see, McCaffrey expresses his concern for youth via a 
strange bureaucratic speech pattern that exhibits a Bushian inability 
to form coherent sentences. Hence, 8th graders end up "encountering 
drugs in our society" and getting "wrapped up and end up in a 
statistically enhanced probability of being engaged in compulsive 
drug taking activities as young adults." Still, some of what he said 
reassured me. "You are statistically not going to get to age 30 and 
develop a cocaine habit, or start experimenting with heroin," said 
McCaffrey, which means I'm out of the most dangerous neck of the 
woods.

More worrisome was his larger world view, a perspective that is 
neither unique to McCaffrey nor likely to change with the new 
administration. The general's favorite refrain is "We're moving in 
the right direction," which I think he really believes. We're moving 
in that direction because after years of increases, drug consumption 
by youths appears to have leveled off. More important, to achieve 
this we are increasingly giving the state tremendous powers and 
resources. "We have billions of dollars flowing into these programs," 
McCaffrey said, adding without irony: "Some of them kind of creative."

It's not just insipid social programs that "vector you back to your 
community anti-drug coalition" that McCaffrey wants. When he became 
drug czar, the United States employed only 3,000 people as border 
guards. Today, he says we're up to 7,000. He thinks 20,000 would be a 
good number. He likes the increase in prisoners, too. "The Drug 
Enforcement Administration, backed by the CIA, the FBI, and the armed 
forces, are working vertical integrated crime organizations pretty 
effectively. That's why our federal prison population has gone up 
substantially, 120,000 people behind bars, two-thirds there for 
drug-related offenses, and there's room for more," said McCaffrey, 
emphasizing room for more.

"This isn't a problem to solve; it's a system to put in place," he 
explained. And what a system it is: On top of tens of thousands of 
border guards, hundreds of thousands of prisoners, and countless 
international anti-drug military excursions, children are 
propagandized in school on the dangers -- some real, some 
make-believe -- of drugs, prisoners are released under supervision 
for one to five years of regular drug testing, and insurance 
companies are forced to pay for extensive mental health and drug 
treatment services.

The system offers one more thing: a safe haven for politicians who, 
like other members of the power class, are likely to use drugs in 
their youth without fear of going to jail like common citizens. Asked 
about Bush's alleged and Clinton and Gore's acknowledged drug use, 
McCaffrey responded, "We went through an irresponsible period in the 
1970s and 1980s, and lots of Americans used marijuana in particular, 
and that includes some of our leading public figures. I want to stop 
asking them whether they smoked a joint in 1972. Unless they've got a 
medical, social, or legal problem, which they should share with us, I 
want to get the conversation on what do you think, Mr. or Ms. 
Politician, ought to be our policy -- and do you commit yourself by 
your example to supporting that policy?"

In other words, as long as politicians promise not to question 
whether drug use is a medical or social problem and pledge to keep it 
a legal problem, they're home free. Too bad that's not an offer 
available to the rest of us.
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