DRUG WARRIORS - Government Officials

GENERAL BARRY MCCAFFREY

...Let me start out with one of our main historical observations, and that
is during the Nixon Administration there was a ratio of two-to-one in terms
of the budget, in terms of treatment versus enforcement. That's been
reversed, basically, over the last thirty years. Why?

Well, it's mischief-using data. It's sort of a silly conclusion. The amount
of money we're putting in drug treatment today has gone up enormously. It's
3.6 billion dollars. Enormous amounts of funding have gone into prevention,
education, treatment. The situation that the Nixon Administration faced was
totally unlike today's five million chronic addicts...We have increased and
put our money where our mouth is in the national drug strategy.

But people say treatment is not available on demand.

Well, at the end of the day the five million chronic addicts will only
respond to effective drug treatment that's linked into the criminal justice
system, linked into welfare, linked into health care--no question. And
that's of course exactly what we're doing. There have been huge
increases--32% in the last five budget years--[in] the amount of money in
the federal program that goes into block treatment grants to the states. So
we're clearly moving in the right direction with significant resources.

But it is true that treatment is more generally available if you're in the
criminal justice system than if you're out? Your health insurance won't
cover it, for instance.

Well, I think clearly one of the biggest things lacking in America today is
that we don't have parity in health care for both substance abuse treatment
and mental health care. That's a shortcoming of our system. It's a lot
cheaper to do that than lock people up. But I would also tell you we
haven't done too well in the criminal justice system either. The general
number we use is about seven percent of the prisoners behind bars who need
drug treatment have it available. So clearly it's got to be a national
priority. And steadily we're building that capacity.

So drug treatment works?

Well, there's no question that effective drug treatment, with a sanction
and a reward applied over time, with a whole range of interventions--not
just methadone, not just therapeutic communities--if you do it all together
the payoff is enormous to the community.

In the community itself?

Yeah. Well, what you see is the costs that are associated with chronic drug
abuse--in terms of health care, criminal justice system, industrial
accidents--all of it starts going down and you get your taxpayer money back.

So it's more cost-effective to have treatment than incarceration?

Well, I don't think it's an either/or proposition...For example, in the
drug court system, in the space of five years we've gone from a dozen drug
courts to more than 750 this year online or coming online. What we see when
we have a coercive sanction as well as a reward--when we intervene with
treatment in a broad range of techniques--70% of the people respond. But
most chronic addicts simply won't respond unless there's a
reward/punishment aspect to that treatment.

...What some people say...is [treatment] should be available in the
community, not just in prison.

Oh, there's no question. Again, I think what one of the shortcomings in our
society is that ... I ought to have access to both mental health care and
drug treatment as part of my medical plan.

So why don't we have it? Why haven't the politicians bitten the bullet and
done it?

Well, I think a lot of this is state law. And part of it is just gradually
beginning to better understand the nature of chronic drug abuse--that it is
indeed treatable, that the techniques are more responsive in terms of
statistics than currently available cancer treatment.

...Some people have told us that when you first came into office you were,
in a sense, an enforcement guy... and that you were in a sense converted to
treatment. How did that happen and what did you learn about politicians not
wanting to be soft on crime?

Well, again let me sort of add my own background as being an Army officer
during the '70s and seeing the terrible, devastating impact of drug abuse
on our young people in uniform. So when I came into this job I started with
a fundamental commitment that prevention and education would have to be at
the heart and soul of our effort. And I also started with an understanding
that drug treatment does indeed work and that the magic of Narcotics
Anonymous [and] Alcoholics Anonymous has to be part of that program. So
steadily, in the last five budget years, we have put huge new resources
into treatment. Donna Shalala and I, for the first time in history now have
more than 3.5 billion dollars in drug treatment. We're moving in the right
direction.

...It's important to understand that Congress has supported us. We've had a
bi-partisan consensus. There have been massive increases in funding for
prevention education--it's up 52%. Drug treatment programs are up 32%. The
research budget is up 36%. The facts of the matter are the resources to do
just what we're talking about are steadily flowing into this system.

So you just won't buy the argument that your statistics--your
percentages--are related to where your starting point is? That you haven't
been able to flip it, let's say, to two-thirds prevention and treatment
versus one-third enforcement?

...The bottom line has gone from 13.5 billion dollars up to 19.2 billion
dollars. So we can talk percentages, we can talk raw dollars--either way
you come at it, drug treatment resources have increased enormously in the
last five years. Drug prevention education dollars have gone up enormously.
This is in absolute terms, not just in percentage of the total.

Would you take money from enforcement for treatment? Would that be your
preference?

Well, again--I think what you've got to have is a system approach...I think
what we've seen is significant enhancements of resources in the federal
effort that are structured to support our strategy. Prevention dollars are
up, treatment dollars are up, and they didn't come out of any other
program. They were absolute increases.

So you didn't have to deal with the law enforcement bureaucracy that
doesn't want to give up their funding?

We've got 1.8 million people behind bars. And the reason they're behind
bars, contrary to a lot of the stereotypes, isn't simple possession of
drugs. If you're in the federal prison system for simple possession of
marijuana, you were arrested with more than 200 kilograms on you. So by and
large what you find is if you look at those behind bars, 85% of them have a
chronic drug or alcohol abuse problem. The charge sheet reads burglary,
male street prostitution but the problem is the guy's a chronic drug and
alcohol abuser. That's the central challenge, not simple possession of drugs.

... Part of the problem is your fundamental hypothesis is dead wrong... You
can do percentages. You can do raw dollars. You can come at it from any way
you want. The facts of the matter are the drug treatment budget has gone up
enormously in the last five years. This is simply a nonsense hypothesis.

...The drug budget, FY'96-2000, is unarguable. The dollars are there to
support drug treatment, prevention, education, local law enforcement,
"Break the Cycle." The media campaign is a billion-dollar five-year effort
to talk to our nation's children and to the adults who mentor them. This is
new. It's science-based. It's working.

So these realities are crowding in on an old sort of stereotypical view of
"either we do law enforcement or we do drug treatment." In fact we've said
it's a payoff to us, given the huge cost of drug abuse in America, to do
all of it in a balanced science-based way.

But only five percent of the inmates in our prison system have treatment
available to them.

Well, of course we're changing that. Now, in the last three years we say
that ... probably all of the 42 federal prisons now have some nature of
drug abuse treatment available. And in the state system, we're making
remarkable progress. But there are about 900,000 people behind bars at the
state level. There is inadequate drug treatment. And even more importantly
than that, if you don't have a follow-[up] component to this, it simply
won't work.

...Why don't the politicians simply appropriate enough money...so that all
of these people have treatment available on demand?

Well, of course "treatment available on demand" is probably a misnomer but
I think the central concern is appropriate. If we're going to deal
effectively with five million chronic drug addicts when they are amenable
to treatment--when they're down, when they're under arrest, when they're
miserable and they ask for help--at that point, we have to be capable of
intervening. I think you're quite right. And that's the kind of capacity
that we are building. But this is state law, not federal law.

I understand. But why don't the politicians understand this logic and act
on it the way you're describing it? What's the resistance?

Well, it's sort of interesting because the people that do understand it are
experienced law enforcement officers, hospital emergency room physicians,
judges, people that work in the welfare system. By and large there's great
unanimity of view that effective drug treatment--if it also has a coercive
element--clearly can turn people's lives around in the criminal justice
system. . . .

Jack Lawn, former head of the DEA...commented on the creation of the drug
czar's office and said that the problem with it is that there's no real
power there. There's no real accountability and there's not budget control.
It's like being a General without an army.

Well, he was under a different law. We've got enormous authorities. The law
was rewritten two years ago. It's given me considerable power to influence
budgets. I can de-certify a department budget and order them to put more
money into it. I think there's a huge level of authority in terms of my
ability to coordinate the interagency process, to be the principle
spokesperson to Congress. I wouldn't agree.

Now, more importantly, the numbers are there to indicate that over the last
five budget years we have steadily increased in a massive way dollars going
to drug prevention education, treatment and research. So we think we are
getting a supportive response.

So you believe then that spending 80% of 1.6 billion dollars on Blackhawk
helicopters is going to make a difference in the availability of drugs on
the streets in the United States?

Well, of course when you look at the federal counter-drug budget, 3.6% of
it goes to any international program. Overwhelmingly, our dollars go into
domestic activities. Around 11% of that total budget goes into some form of
air, land or sea interdiction. So it's simply not the case that huge
percentages of this total flow into foreign cooperation.

At the same time, I will tell you the good news is in the last three years
we've actually reduced cocaine production in the Andean Ridge nations by
19%. It's working. Drug production in Peru is down by 66%, in Bolivia by
52%, and there's an overall net reduction. The problem is poor Colombia. 40
million people sliding toward the edge and 140% increase in coca production
in the last two years alone...They're now producing 520 metric tons of
cocaine last year alone, and some six metric tons of heroin. So as we look
at it from an American perspective, 90% of the cocaine in our country
originated in or transited through Colombia. Probably 70% of the heroin
seizures were out of Colombia.

...Is this military appropriation basically for Colombia for equipment
going to make any difference in your mind? How would you judge its
success--less cocaine on the streets of the United States?

...We're going to get this 1.6 billion dollars... And it's not just for
Colombia. It's for Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador. There's 270 million
dollars in there for alternative economic development, support for the
judicial system. It's a very balanced program. It was put together in
cooperation with regional government, so this is Plan Colombia, not Plan
America. And by the way, their plan is 7.5 billion dollars. It's 4 billion
dollars of their own money. 3.5 billion of foreign support--European Union,
United States. Our piece of it will go for a lot of things--including, for
example, 6 million dollars for human rights security monitors. So this is
coherent, long-range, and multi-national.

But 80% of the 1.6 billion is for hardware?

No. Absolutely not.

And support of that hardware?

No, I think you've got your numbers wrong. What we can say though is the
Colombia package itself--about half of it is mobility factor. So it boils
down 63 helicopters to support the police and the armed forces,
re-establishing law and order in their two southern provinces. That's about
half the program.

Some would say it's using the drug war as a fig leaf to cover a
counter-insurgency war in an attempt to stop Colombia from falling apart,
and we don't want to say that straight up-front, so we're using the drug
war to cover that.

Well, look. We've got to look out for our own self-interests. And our
self-interests are 52,000 dead a year from the drug problem, and 110
billion dollars in damages. And ...90% of those drugs that come into
America originate in [Colombia]. So it's worked in Peru. It's worked in
Bolivia. There's no question but that Colombian democracy is at stake. This
is standing behind an ally three hours' flight from Miami. There are a
million internal refugees. A half million have fled the country. In our
view, they deserve our support as part of a hemispheric operation.

But it is true then, as one CIA official said to us, that the drug war and
the counter-insurgency war here come together as one?

Well, I think more appropriately what you'd say is that in the year 2000
when you look at 26,000 armed narco-insurgents in Colombia from the FARC,
the ELN, the AUC--what they're really struggling over isn't ideology. It's
drug dollars, probably a half billion dollars a year, fueling this
corrosive, violent insurgency against their democratic institutions.

...We interviewed a lot of federal law enforcement people along the border
with Mexico. A universal complaint--the Brownsville Agreement. They say
that the Brownsville Agreement signed by Janet Reno with Mexico has
basically tied their hands and they cannot investigate, let's say, the
Arellano-Felix organization in Tijuana. It's too difficult...What do you
think of the Brownsville Agreement?

Well, the facts are we're doing pretty well now operating against the
Arellano-Felix organization in Tijuana. We locked up their operations
officer three weeks ago. We got one of their principle operatives last
week. We're without question moving in the right direction.

You know there are 100 million Mexicans. The border is nearly open. 350
million people a year cross that frontier. The Mexicans correctly believe
the principal threat to their national security is the drug cartels that
they're trying to overcome. Violence, corruption is enormous on both sides
of that border. So we say an agreement between the two Attorney
Generals--[Jorge Madraso] of Mexico and Janet Reno--is a step toward
partnership. We can't operate unilaterally in any nation of the earth--not
Canada, not France, certainly not Mexico.

Yeah, but the procedures--we've never really operated unilaterally. The
procedures that have been put in place require, let's say, bureaucratic
steps that we never had to go through before in order to gather information
or even cooperate with someone on the other side of the border...And people
are saying their hands are tied. They can't get anything done. And they're
afraid to share some of the information because of the level of corruption
with the police.

Well, there's no question in my own mind. If you look back five years ago
and then look at the situation today, the level of cooperation's gone up
enormously. In fact, we are sharing intelligence. We do work in
partnership. We do have a significant U.S. FBI/DEA/Customs/Coast Guard
intermittent presence in Mexico with their authority and support. We do
work across that border with bi-national law enforcement agencies.

So I think in fact the two sides of the border are struggling to confront
this tremendously violent criminal threat we face.

Is there anything going wrong then? From everything you've just said,
everything seems to be getting better. Is there anything you're worried
about then?

Well, in fact, drug-related murders are down by 50%. Cocaine use is down by
70%. General drug use is down by 50%. Adolescent drug use last year went
down by 13%. In fact, things are moving steadily in the right direction.
Compared to 1979, we're doing pretty well.

6% of the country last month used an illegal drug. And it's polydrug abuse.
It's booze and pot and other things. And it causes us 100 billion dollars
in damages a year. It's outrageous and we're worried about our middle
school children. We've got more eighth graders using heroin than twelfth
graders. So if you want to understand the chronic drug abuse problem in
America ten years from now, look at your middle school children. That's why
we're working the Boys' and Girls' Clubs, YMCA sports programs. That's the
heart and soul of the national drug strategy.

Why should we care? If the crime rate is way down and the chronic drug
abuse population is basically stable, why should we care about that?

Well, the chronic drug abuse population is costing us a lot of money. It's
36 billion dollars a year to lock them up in a criminal justice system with
1.8 million prisoners. So it pays off for you and I as taxpayers if we get
effective drug treatment that's community based and we engage those in the
criminal justice process with not only prison-based treatment but
follow-[up] care. It's a taxpayer's initiative.

And doesn't that group also fund the international narcotics business,
basically?

Well, I think one of the problems is a lot of Americans think we are the
predominant drug users in the world. We're not. We probably use three
percent of the world's heroin. There's 980,000 Americans who are
chronically abusing heroin. That's a tiny fraction of the total population.
Our problem is we have too much money--so money out of Western Europe and
the United States in particular fuels this corrosive international drug
criminal operation. That's something we've got to confront.

You say 980,000 heroin users, but only 20% of them apparently have access
to treatment.

Well it's hard to say. The stigmatization of heroin abuse is so intense,
they hide cleverly. They're in denial themselves. So is their family and
their communities. We're trying to move steadily to increase the access to
methadone and [LAN] treatment, to try and get physician office-based
treatment available, to certify the health care community. I think in the
coming years we can bring a lot more of their chaotic, miserable lives
under control and get them back in their families and back to work.

_____________________________________________________________________

PBS Frontline Series Follow Up by Tom O'Connell, Kevin Zeese, Doug McVay,
and Eric Sterling:

http://www.drugsense.org/dsw/2000/ds00.n170.html#sec1

Campaign for the Restoration & Regulation of Hemp's HempTV website has the
full, two part, total of almost 4 hours of video of the PBS Frontline "Drug
Wars" available on the web for free video streaming using the Real Player 8.

To watch Part one of Drug Wars, go here:

http://www.crrh.org/hemptv/docs_drugwars1.html

To see part 2, go here:

http://www.crrh.org/hemptv/docs_drugwars2.html

Click this link for an index to this series:

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00.n1551.a01.html