CUT DRUG USE IS THE ISSUE BUSH NEEDS

George Bush needs an issue.

He ran on the pledge to cut taxes and to step up the federal commitment to
quality education.

Now that one of these goals has passed and the other is speeding through
Congress, he has no issue left with which to control the national political
dialogue.

The result is that he spends all his time playing defense and taking
unpopular anti-environmental positions that send his ratings plummeting.

He needs to find the traction that a new issue can give him. The issue must
be one in which he truly believes and that taps deeply into the wellspring
of his value structure.

In political terms, it should be one that unites Republicans and splinters
Democrats an issue on which his friends can agree and which will trigger a
civil war in the other party.

The issue is: tough, mandatory measures to reduce drug use in schools,
homes and workplaces. Americans are increasingly wondering why we ask
hundreds of thousands of police, border patrol, Coast Guard and Drug
Enforcement Agency (DEA) officers to risk their lives trying to stop the
illegal drug traffic while we do almost nothing to get Americans to stop
using the drugs that get through. While drug use remains widespread in
America's schools and on our streets, we fiercely chase the suppliers but
do very little to deter the consumers.

The Clinton administration's response to the need to cut domestic drug
demand was to initiate an advertising program to persuade people,
particularly parents and kids, not to permit drug use. These politicians,
for whom advertising is a political panacea, had hoped that paid media
would work its wonders on the drug culture. But, as Geraldo Rivera is fond
of pointing out, drugs sell for about the same amount now as they did 20
years ago. The war on drugs has done so little to dent the supply of
illegal narcotics that anyone can buy anything, anytime and anywhere with
relatively little risk.

It's not difficult to tell who is using drugs.

A simple urine test or even a hair sample is enough to figure it out. But
while we ask law enforcement officers to risk their lives stopping drugs
from entering the United States, we won't pass laws requiring high school
kids to pee into a cup once a month to see if they are falling victim to
drugs. The success at eradicating drug use in the U.S. military through
random and aggressive drug testing shows that we can eliminate the drug
culture in our schools any time we want to. We just are in the grip of a
permissive, Democratic, liberal society that doesn't want to.

Bush should wade right into the middle of this fight.

With his new DEA administrator former Congressman Asa Hutchinson (R-Ark.)
(of impeachment fame), he should propose:

1. Mandatory drug testing for all high school students, with the sole
requirement of parental consent;

2. Treatment for those found using drugs and a program of repeat testing;

3. Special residential treatment facilities for those who repeatedly fail
drug tests;

4. Monthly drug testing as a condition for any federal college scholarship
or student loan;

5. Tax incentives to encourage drug testing by employers in workplaces; and

6. Mandatory differentials in HMO (health maintenance organization) and
other insurance rates for workplaces that require drug testing

This program of sensible steps to fight drug use will send the liberals
into orbit. Civil libertarians will scream about the privacy rights of
minors to kill themselves with drugs.

Indulgent parents will be horrified.

The left will ultimately be forced to show its true colors that it doesn't
really condemn illegal drug use. As long as all that it must do is pay cops
and troops, men and women in uniform, to battle drugs on the borders or in
the ghettos, it's OK. But if a stand against drugs means that we really
have to eradicate them, then they feel that goes too far. Were Bush to make
such a bold proposal, he would capture the national spotlight. Nothing else
would be able to make it onto the national stage. The congressional
elections of 2002 would be fought over the issue of student drug testing.

And the Republicans would hold onto Congress.