NEW CZAR FAVORS FAILED POLICY

The man President Bush reportedly has chosen to head the Office of National
Drug Control Policy takes such a hard-line, law-and-order approach to
controlling illicit drugs that even former drug czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey
is expressing concern.

When it comes to punishing drug addicts, John Walters is no compassionate
conservative.

Walters is a hawkish, supply-side drug warrior.

As a former chief administrator to William Bennett, the nation's drug czar
under the elder President Bush, Walters was known as a hard-nosed
conservative who favored severe penalties for drug-related offenses over
treatment for addicts.

And his record of emphasizing source interdiction and eradication over
reducing demand has even McCaffrey openly fretting. McCaffrey told the New
York Times that Walters once complained ""that there is too much treatment
capacity in the United States, which I found shocking."

Walters is either out of touch or unmoved by the shifts in American public
opinion on the anti-drug war. It used to be political suicide for a
politician to embrace anything short of a punitive anti-drug policy. But
recent years have seen several speak out against that failed approach.

Taking a high profile on the issue is Gov. Gary Johnson of New Mexico, a
Republican, who advocates treatment programs and public health over harsh
penalties.

The public's growing frustration with the law-and-order drug war has been
in evidence at the ballot box. Since 1996, eight states have approved
medical marijuana initiatives, and Californians recently passed Proposition
36 that requires treatment rather than prison for nonviolent drug offenders.

Walters, though, reflects none of those facts.

He is same old, same old, and likely to amplify the worst elements of the
nation's current drug strategies: stuffing prisons with nonviolent drug
offenders serving mandatory minimum sentences, expanding the role of the
military in domestic law enforcement and, correspondingly, militarizing
community police.

The recent downing of an aircraft carrying an American missionary family by
Peru exposes the danger of a policy that entangles U.S. military and
intelligence agencies in harsh drug enforcement philosophies that accept a
few innocent casualties as if they were simply "collateral damage." Yet
Walters is a strong proponent of those ideas. He says fighting drugs at
their source is cheap and effective. Yet, history teaches just the opposite
- - that attacking production at one source merely shifts it to another.