Pubdate: Sun, 13 May 2001
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PA)
Copyright: 2001 PG Publishing
Contact:  http://www.post-gazette.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/341
Author: Ann McFeatters
Note: Ann McFeatters is National Bureau chief for the Post-Gazette and The 
Blade of Toledo, Ohio

FOR DRUG WARRIORS, IT'S FLASHBACK TIME

Bush Takes A Hard-line, Old-Fashioned Approach To An Intractable Problem

WASHINGTON - The White House drug wars are heating up again. Woe is us.

Having scolded the previous administration for laxness in fighting the war 
on drugs - a tired cliche that means kids go to jail, missionaries' planes 
are shot out of the sky, politicians get quick-and-easy sound bites and 
Hollywood has more movie fodder - the Bush administration is going back to 
the future.

When in doubt about how to get a handle on the scourge of drugs by reducing 
demand, the ready solution seems to be to get tougher by building more 
prisons and filling them up with addicts and small-time dealers, although 
the pitiful case of actor Robert Downey Jr. shows that the threat of jail 
is not always the solution for addicts.

The truth is that presidents - Democrats and Republicans alike - are just 
like most people in that they don't really know how to confront the evil of 
drugs and are afraid to get too innovative. So they appoint "drug czars," 
use military lingo and give speeches to the effect that "this time we're 
really going to war against drugs." Sometimes their wives try - for a few 
years - to persuade children to "just say no."

Former President Clinton made the drug war a centerpiece of a couple of his 
stupendously long State of the Union speeches. That creativity and zest 
changed the illegal drug landscape - for about five minutes. One of 
Clinton's last acts in office was pardoning 48 drug offenders, including 
his brother. That was not a big deal because most were small-time users who 
got trapped in their addictions; but it didn't help that one pardonee was a 
kingpin in a multimillion-dollar cocaine ring.

This president cares so deeply about the scourge of drugs that he has 
appointed as head of the Drug Enforcement Administration Rep. Asa 
Hutchinson, R-Ark., the man who led the impeachment effort in the House 
against Clinton. This, coupled with Hutchinson's hard-line views on curbing 
illegal drug use, is not exactly a smart move to ensure broad bipartisan 
support of the DEA as a new round of anti-drug warfare starts.

At the same time President Bush has nominated John P. Walters to lead the 
Office of Drug Control Policy, the position known as "drug czar." Walters, 
a law-and-order conservative, is considered a bright star in the 
right-of-center firmament. His selection has prompted a rash of comments 
such as, "It generally looks like more of the same."

The problem is that "the same" hasn't worked. Walters was the main author 
of "Schools Without Drugs." Marijuana is now widely available in middle school.

The president's $1.95 trillion budget has $19 billion (up a whopping big 
$1.1 billion) earmarked for all forms of federal drug control. Some of it 
will expand waiting-room-only treatment facilities. But most of it will go, 
as usual, for interdiction - shooting down planes, paying mercenaries' 
salaries and burning crops in Latin America.

One of Bush's new initiatives, besides setting up a data base for all the 
church-based programs that deal with drug users, is spending $5 million a 
year for five years on something called a Parent Drug Corps. That military 
thing again. It is to be hoped the worried parents trying to thwart their 
teens won't be wearing the Chinese-made black berets rejected by the U.S. Army.

Bush wants to spend $11 million more on community efforts to educate 
children about how bad drugs are for them. A poster for every empty 
storefront? Yet the D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program is 
widely deemed to be flawed. Instead of being wiser about such drugs as 
marijuana, many adolescents regard it as innocuous - another parental 
control issue.

Americans get their views on the anti-drug effort not from Washington but 
from Hollywood. The public doesn't so much believe the Clinton's 
administration statistic that youth drug use declined 21 percent in its 
last two years as it believes the grim movie "Traffic" and "The West Wing" 
episode that portrayed the anti-drug war as a futile waste of money.

There are peaks and valleys in the never-ending effort to end the curse of 
drug addiction. The popularity of one drug ebbs, but inevitably another 
comes along. It seems to take a variety of costly tactics - from treatment 
to jail - to make a little progress. Putting society's stigma on drug use 
helps, too.

Bush has given Hutchinson and Walters a chance to try their back-to-basics, 
lock 'em-away approach. As commander in chief of the war on drugs, Bush is 
banking that the nation has time, even if addicts don't, to see if this 
time one-size-fits-all works.

If not, he'll talk about missile defense.
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