BUSH'S NEW DRUG CZAR?

John Walters, a hard-line drug warrior, is the leading candidate to
replace Barry McCaffrey. Advocates say he's a throwback to the bad old
days of Bill Bennett.

April 20, 2001 - John Walters, a hard-liner who was former drug czar
William Bennett's deputy during the first Bush administration, has
emerged as the leading candidate to become director of the Office of
National Drug Control Policy, according to a knowledgeable drug policy
source.

The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that three
reliable sources, including one in the White House, told him on
Thursday that Walters was likely to be chosen to head the drug office.
The White House declined to comment on the report.

Walters is a self-proclaimed hawk on drug policy matters who has been
strongly critical of the Clinton administration's execution of the
drug war. At the ONDCP, he was responsible for developing enforcement
policy and coordinating attempts to reduce the supply of banned drugs.
The Bennett-Walters drug office was characterized by widespread use of
the bully pulpit to issue harsh moral condemnations of users of
illegal drugs, little distinction between marijuana and drugs like
heroin and cocaine and an emphasis on punishment over
rehabilitation.

Walters and Bennett also made a decision to stop the longtime practice
of representing drug use as a health matter, arguing that doing so
made drug users too sympathetic. In his 1996 book on the drug wars,
"Up in Smoke," Dan Baum quotes Walters as saying, "The health people
say 'no stigma,' and I'm for stigma." Baum writes that Walters "took
the position that marijuana, cocaine and heroin 'enslave people' and
'prevent them from being free citizens' in a way that tobacco and
alcohol do not."

Walters' appointment would end a three-month period during which the
ONDCP functioned without a director. The office's former director,
Gen. Barry McCaffrey, resigned on Jan. 6.

Walters was a coauthor, with Bennett and John DiIulio (who was recently
named by President Bush to head the White House Office of Faith-Based and
Community Initiatives), of the 1997 book "Body Count: Moral Poverty and How
to Win America's War Against Crime and Drugs," which warned of a coming
wave of "superpredators" and called for longer sentences and more arrests.

Walters, who has taught political science at several universities, is
president of the conservative group The New Citizenship Project, which
advocates an enhanced role for religion in American public life.

Allen St. Pierre, the executive director of the NORML Foundation, a
drug reform organization, said "NORML and myself are very disappointed
by this selection. We'd hoped that the Bush administration would turn
away from the hyperbolic, table-thumping approach of Walters and his
mentor, William Bennett, which was one of the most destructive periods
in public policy in the last 30 years. Walters equates moral turpitude
with drug use, and I'm afraid he'll increase the harsh rhetoric coming
out of the drug office's bully pulpit."

St. Pierre added that the selection of hard-liner Walters made it
unlikely that a higher percentage of the drug office's $22 billion
budget would be spent on treatment and education, as opposed to
enforcement and interdiction. "Under Nixon, the ratio was 50-50. Under
Clinton, who was extremely hard-line on drug war enforcement although
he didn't use the bully pulpit as much as Walters would like, that
ratio went up to 75-25."