Pubdate: Fri, 11 May 2001 Source: Red Bluff Daily News (CA) Copyright: 2001 Red Bluff Daily News Contact: http://redbluffdailynews.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1079 NEW CZAR FAVORS FAILED POLICY 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. 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." Walters is either out of touch or unmoved by the shifts in American public opinion on the anti-drug war. It used to be political suicide for a politician to embrace anything short of a punitive anti-drug policy. But recent years have seen several speak out against that failed approach. Taking a high profile on the issue is Gov. Gary Johnson of New Mexico, a Republican, who advocates 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 those facts. He is same old, same old, and likely to amplify the worst elements of the nation's current drug strategies: stuffing prisons with nonviolent drug offenders serving mandatory minimum sentences, expanding the role of the military in domestic law enforcement and, correspondingly, militarizing community police. The recent downing of an aircraft carrying an American missionary family by Peru exposes the danger of a policy that entangles U.S. military and intelligence agencies in harsh drug enforcement philosophies that accept a few innocent casualties as if they were simply "collateral damage." Yet Walters is a strong proponent of those ideas. He says fighting drugs at their source is cheap and effective. Yet, history teaches just the opposite - - that attacking production at one source merely shifts it to another. - --- MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager