TRIANGLE OF TERROR

When it comes to leading the President's Drug War, "compassionate
conservatives" need not apply.

Last week, President George W. Bush formally appointed a pair of the Drug
War's staunchest fanatics to the federal government's highest ranking drug
policy posts.

On Wednesday, May 9, Bush nominated Republican moral crusader Asa
Hutchinson to head the Drug Enforcement Administration. Hutchinson, an
Arkansas Congressman, cosponsored legislation in 1999 that sought to impose
10-year prison terms on individuals who post drug-related information on
the Internet.

The following day, Bush ended months of speculation by introducing John P.
Walters as the nation's new Drug Czar. Walters is best remembered for his
tenure as chief lieutenant to Bush's father's Drug Czar Bill Bennett. He is
replacing Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who fled the Beltway in January to direct
an Internet-based drug treatment corporation, www.egetgoing.com.

The duo, upon confirmation by the Senate, will join Attorney General John
Ashcroft, a fellow Drug War hawk, as the point men in Bush's revamped War
Cabinet. Drug-policy reformers are calling the trio the triple threat: a
threat to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

John Walters not only hates drug addiction, "he hates drug addicts, and he
certainly hates drug users who are not addicts," asserts Eric Sterling,
president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, in Washington.

Kevin Zeese, head of Virginia's Common Sense for Drug Policy, echoes
similar sentiments. "If you've liked the Drug War so far, you will like
what's coming, because it's more of the same," he warns.

Not According to the Prez:

On the contrary, announced Bush at the May 10 Rose Garden ceremony for the
new Czar. Rather than hyping his picks' tough-talking resumes, he claimed
his appointments represent his administration's commitment to an
"integrated Drug War strategy," one that focuses predominantly on treatment
and demand reduction. "The most effective way to reduce the supply of drugs
in America is to reduce the demand for drugs in America," Bush announced.
"Therefore, this administration will focus unprecedented attention to the
demand side of this problem."

Unprecedented? Bush better consult a dictionary. According to the
President's proposed drug budget, only $1 out of every estimated $20 spent
on antidrug activities is earmarked for treatment programs. By comparison,
two-thirds of the budget goes to fund law-enforcement efforts, including a
whopping 21% increase in spending for federal prisons.

Moreover, Czar-to-be Walters is on record vociferously opposing the
expansion of "federally funded treatment programs for addicts," a position
so extreme that even McCaffrey balked at his nomination. "Some of his
positions, in my own view, need to be carefully considered by the
confirmation committee," he told the New York Times, adding that he
"remained hopeful" that "bipartisan support for treatment" would remain an
integral part of the Feds' antidrug strategy, despite the Walters appointment.

So Who Are These Guys?

Both Walters and Hutchinson are familiar, though far from friendly faces,
to drug-law reformers. In recent years, Walters has advocated expanding the
use of the military in drug interdiction, including voicing support for the
controversial US/Peruvian shoot-down program that took the lives of an
American missionary and her child last month. In 1996, he told Congress
that the program, which is authorized to use deadly force against airplanes
suspected of carrying drugs, and has shot down more than 100 planes, was
"cheap and effective."

"The US military can make a profound contribution to cutting the flow of
drugs through interdiction," he said. "The budget needs to reflect this
national priority."

Walters is also a vocal proponent of mandatory-minimum sentencing for drug
crimes, supports the sentencing disparity for crack and powder cocaine, and
claims "the idea that our prisons are filled with people whose only offense
was possession of an illegal drug is utter fantasy," despite the fact that
roughly 25% of America's 2 million prisoners are currently serving time for
drug offenses. He also denies that drug laws are enforced
disproportionately against minorities, opining in the March 6 edition of
The Weekly Standard that "the widely held view that the criminal-justice
system is unjustly punishing young black men [is] among the great urban
myths of our time."

"John Walters is a veteran of drug-policy shambles," says Mike Males, a
senior researcher at the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice --
http://www.cjcj.org/ "As the deputy director under former Drug Czar
William Bennett, he helped craft the Drug War policies that have shattered
millions of lives, wasted billions of dollars and exacerbated America's
drug crisis. He's a hardcore ideologue who misrepresents the facts and
spouts tough-on-crime rhetoric."

Asa Hutchinson's background is hardly better. Presently serving his third
term in the House, the Arkansas Republican is well known for his harsh
views toward drugs and drug offenders and his ardent opposition to medical
marijuana. In 1999, he backed legislation preventing Washington, DC from
implementing a ballot initiative legalizing medical marijuana, even though
it had been approved by 70% of District voters.

That same year, Hutchinson also proposed Congress amend the Hatch Act,
which prevents the use of federal tax dollars to influence state elections,
so that federal monies could be used specifically to influence voters to
reject state drug-law-reform initiatives. Two years earlier, he opposed the
White House's decision to fund the Institute of Medicine's inquiry on the
therapeutic potential of marijuana, arguing that such research would "send
the wrong message to children."

"A study of marijuana's effectiveness is absolutely the wrong way to go on
this issue," he said.

Such nonsense will likely be music to the ears of recently sworn in
Attorney General John Ashcroft, a former Missouri Congressman (who lost his
seat in Congress last year to opponent Mel Carnahan, despite the fact that
Carnahan died during the campaign) known for ignoring racial profiling and
favoring incarceration over treatment for drug offenders. Ashcroft made his
agenda clear on a recent broadcast of CNN's Larry King Live when he
announced: "I want to escalate the War on Drugs. I want to renew it. I want
to refresh it; relaunch it if you will."

With the appointments of Walters and Hutchinson, Bush has made his agenda
startlingly clear as well. His administration is not about "compassion,"
it's about casualties.