DRUG WAR DEMANDS WALTERS' TOUGHNESS

By selecting John P. Walters to be his drug czar, President Bush has
chosen a tough drug fighter for a tough fight.

Walters left the Office of National Drug Control Policy, where he
served as a senior official and later as acting director, at the
onset of the Clinton administration. His departure marked the end of
a team and a time through which the scourge of illegal drugs had been
drastically reduced across America.

At his departure, the measure of lifetime illicit drug use among high
school seniors had been cut to 40.7 percent from its 1979 high of
60.4 percent. The "party drug" ecstasy and the lethal methamphetamine
had not yet burst upon the scene. And when, as acting drug czar,
Walters turned his post over to the Clinton team, the drug
legalization movement was a nonstarter.

Those were the 1980s and early 1990s -- the "Just Say No" years
during which Walters developed successful strategies working with
then-drug czar William Bennett. They were the years of the Reagan and
Bush administrations, in which overall drug use in America was cut by
60 percent -- even as other social problems were increasing -- and
the entire country was mobilized in the fight.

Now Walters has been asked by President Bush to go back and fight the
good fight again as director of the drug office. This time, Walters
will need all the tenacity attributed to him to come back and right
the corrosion of the last eight years.

That 40.7 percent of high school seniors is now 54 percent. The
explosion in the use of ecstasy and methamphetamine is very much with
us, taking a terrible human toll. And, to our disadvantage, the
country has been persistently subjected to well-financed and clever
propaganda claiming that the problem is the drug war, not the drugs.

Sad to say, members of the media, lawmakers and citizens have, in
significant numbers, bought the pro-drug propaganda and have signed
on to gradual drug legalization in its various forms.

Those include the eight states -- Alaska , California, Colorado,
Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Washington -- that have legalized
raw, smoked marijuana as "medicine," as well as the ill-advised
needle exchanges that extend addiction and create open drug markets
under the dubious claim of AIDS prevention.

Drug legalizers have persuaded many lawmakers that treatment alone
must be the focus of drug policy and that "harm reduction" is the
goal.

Ethan Nadelmann of the pro-legalization Lindesmith Center explained
to The New York Times, "We must learn to live with drugs so they can
cause the least possible harm and the best possible good." With such
reasoning, Nadelmann and his allies give new life to the old slogan,
"This is your brain on drugs."

Having had eight years to build their case unopposed, financed by the
money of George Soros and others, it is no surprise that the drug
legalizers do not welcome John Walters. They never speak of the human
and economic costs that legalized drugs would inflict on all of us.
And they don't want any interference from someone who can claim both
the facts and the record of real drug reduction.

And so the proposed drug czar is attacked by both the legalizers, and
by others who should know better, as the "Draco of Drugs," the "wrong
man," and too "tough."

Their wrath is aimed at a man who understands what it takes to win: a
strong combination of interdiction, law enforcement, education,
prevention and, yes, effective treatment. No one policy can replace
the other -- all are required.

In March, The Associated Press reported the results of polling by the
Pew Research Center for People and the Press, saying, "Three-fourths
of Americans think the nation is losing the war on drugs ... but that
arresting drug dealers and stopping the importation of drugs should
be the government's priorities."

Pollster Andrew Kohut said the public "is sticking with the tactics
of the drug war." Americans remember and support a serious fight.

It has been my privilege to know John Walters during the years since
1993. During that time, he never took his eye off America's drug
problem. He spoke, he wrote, he testified, he consulted and he
displayed an obvious allegiance and extraordinary knowledge of the
issue. Now he has come back at a time when the country needs his help.

Manon G. McKinnon is a former drug policy analyst at Empower
America, a Washington policy institute where she worked on anti-drug
issues for former federal drug czar William Bennett. Write to her at
PO Box 3058, Arlington, VA 22203.
- ---