ADDICTED TO PRISON

DEA Director Hints At Future Of Drug Policy

"I would hope that we are judged by the lives that are touched and the hope
that we give America," declared Asa Hutchinson, President George W. Bush's
new Drug Enforcement Agency chief, during a news conference on his first
day in his new job.

Considering that the DEA seeks to maximize the number of people that it
sends to prison each year for drug offenses, such "touching" rhetoric
should be chilling. But Hutchinson is barreling forward with page after
page from Bill Clinton's rhetorical playbook.

At the same Aug. 20 news conference, Hutchinson announced, "I think part of
my mission is to give hope to America." A few weeks earlier, Hutchinson
made a stunning announcement: "I am excited to have the opportunity to
serve Arkansas and the country by beginning our great national crusade
against illegal drugs."

Perhaps Hutchinson has been too busy to tour any prisons recently. Prisons
are overflowing with hundreds of thousands of drug offenders. In the same
week in which he took over at the DEA, a federal report bragged that the
number of people convicted in federal drug courts had doubled since 1986.

Hutchinson's talk about "beginning" a "crusade" against illegal drugs
signals the Bush administration's intention to ratchet up the drug war. Yet
the evidence of the failure of the punitive approach is overwhelming.

Despite conservative caterwauling during recent years, President Clinton
actually greatly intensified the drug war. Four million Americans were
arrested for marijuana violations, the vast majority for simple possession,
during Clinton's reign. The number of people arrested for drug offenses
rose by 73 percent between 1992 and 1997, according to the American Bar
Association.

But Clinton's crackdown was a dismal failure. More Americans died of drug
overdoses and more Americans went to hospital emergency rooms for
drug-related problems in 1998 than ever before. More high-school students -
90 percent - reported that marijuana was "fairly easy" or "very easy" to
get than ever before. The prices of heroin and cocaine were near all-time
lows at the end of the 1990s - signaling the total failure of U.S.
interdiction policies.

Like a good Washingtonian, Hutchinson is responding to these debacles by
redefining the baseline: "I think you have to put this in perspective; that
whenever you look at national social problems, whether you look at child
abuse, whether you look at teen violence, whenever you impact people's
lives, it's a victory."

Thus, as long as the DEA continues sending tankerloads of people to prison
each year, the drug war is going just fine and dandy.

Hutchinson was asked by the Philadelphia Inquirer what action he would take
to stem the flow of fraudulent arrest statistics from the DEA - which, in
the past, has routinely seized credit for drug busts made by other police
agencies or other nations. He responded: "We have to have the correct moral
compass and the proper training to make sure we gather our statistics in a
correct and truthful fashion."

But Hutchinson seems far too infatuated by the righteousness of the law to
exert the effort to make the DEA go straight.

At his inaugural news conference as DEA chief, Hutchinson proclaimed, "I
believe that law enforcement sets the right tone for America."

During his time as a congressman, he was perennially hysterical about any
proposal to limit the power of law enforcement.

In 1998, when Congress was considering a law to require federal prosecutors
to cease violating the ethics code of state bar associations, Hutchinson
exploded:

"This would jeopardize our fight in the war against drugs. The winner would
be the drug cartels, fraudulent telemarketing operations and Internet
pornographers."

In 1999, when Congress was considering a law to restrict federal agents'
power to confiscate private property, Hutchinson proposed a substitute bill
that would have greatly increased government's power to grab. Hutchinson
whined on the House floor, "How does disarming law enforcement fit into the
war on drugs?"

Thus, decreasing a DEA agent's power to seize someone's car is the
equivalent of taking away his sidearm.

Apparently, the main "armament" in the war on drugs is the sweeping power
of law enforcement over nonviolent, private citizens.

In his new job, Hutchinson sounds like a bleeding-heart liberal, declaring
that the DEA must embark on "a compassionate crusade." Unfortunately,
people suffering from the side-effects of chemotherapy are outside the
bounds of Hutchinson's compassion.

The new DEA chief declared, "It is very important that we understand that
we don't want to do anything to take pain medication away from people. We
all have sympathy for folks that need medication, but we have to listen to
the scientific and medical community, and they're saying that marijuana has
no legitimate medical purpose."

According to Hutchinson's view, Americans should pretend that recent
studies in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the
American Journal of Psychiatry and the British medical journal Lancet on
marijuana's medical benefits and risk were never published.

Perhaps it is impossible to fight a "war on drugs" without
institutionalized dishonesty. Hutchinson's comments signal that drug policy
is likely to be the area where the Bush administration does the most harm
to civil liberties.

Regardless of how much the "great crusade" is ratcheted up, the government
will continue losing its war to control the daily lives and habits of every
citizen.