Pubdate: Tue, 01 May 2001
Source: St. Petersburg Times (FL)
Copyright: 2001 St. Petersburg Times
Contact:  http://www.sptimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/419

A DRUG WARRIOR

The man President Bush reportedly has chosen to head the Office of National 
Drug Control Policy takes such a hard-line, law-and-order approach to 
controlling illicit drugs that even former drug czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey 
is expressing concern. When it comes to punishing drug addicts, John 
Walters is no compassionate conservative.

Walters is a hawkish, supply-side drug warrior. As a former chief 
administrator to William Bennett, the nation's drug czar under the elder 
President Bush, Walters was known as a hard-nosed conservative who favored 
severe penalties for drug-related offenses over treatment for addicts. He 
was a vocal critic of what he called the Clinton administration's 
"commitment to a "therapeutic state.' " And his record of emphasizing 
source interdiction and eradication over reducing demand has even McCaffrey 
openly fretting. McCaffrey told the New York Times that Walters once 
complained "that there is too much treatment capacity in the United States, 
which I found shocking."

Nothing about Walters suggests he's a forward-thinker on drug strategies. 
He has supported policies to retain the disparity in sentencing between 
crack and powder cocaine, and he wants to increase American military 
involvement in fighting drug cultivation overseas. He is behind the shifts 
in American public opinion on the anti-drug war.

Americans are becoming more sophisticated in their understanding of our 
nation's drug problem. It used to be political suicide for a politician to 
embrace anything short of a punitive anti-drug policy. But Gov. Gary 
Johnson of New Mexico, a Republican, advocates a sensible approach to 
overall harm reduction, emphasizing treatment programs and public health 
over harsh penalties. The public's growing frustration with the 
law-and-order drug war has been in evidence at the ballot box. Since 1996, 
eight states have approved medical marijuana initiatives, and Californians 
recently passed Proposition 36 that requires treatment rather than prison 
for nonviolent drug offenders.

Walters, though, reflects none of these nuances. He is same old, same old, 
and likely to exacerbate the worst elements of our nation's current drug 
policies: stuffing prisons with nonviolent drug offenders serving mandatory 
minimum sentences, clogging the federal courts with drug cases, expanding 
the role of the military in domestic law enforcement and, correspondingly, 
militarizing local police.

The recent downing of a plane carrying an American missionary family by 
Peru exposes the danger of a policy that entangles the U.S. military and 
intelligence agencies in the harsh drug enforcement programs of foreign 
militaries. Yet Walters is a strong proponent of these relationships. He 
says fighting drugs at their source is cheap and effective. Funny, history 
teaches just the opposite: that battling cultivation at one source merely 
shifts it to another.

Before being inaugurated, Bush told CNN, "I think a lot of people are 
coming to the realization that maybe long minimum sentences for the 
first-time users may not be the best way to occupy jail space and/or heal 
people from their disease." Now he intends to choose a drug czar who is not 
one of those enlightened people.
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager