'IRON TRIANGLE' FAVORS DRUG INTERDICTION OVER TREATMENT

On his recent visit to Mexico, President George W. Bush signaled a
shift in America's drug control policy -- from a traditional emphasis
on cutting drug supplies to reducing drug demand here at home. He
said, "The main reason why drugs are shipped through Mexico to the
United States is because United States citizens use drugs. Our nation
must do a better job of educating our citizenry about the dangers and
evils of drugs."

But in Washington, where dollars speak louder than words, a powerful
iron triangle of interests wedded to the status quo, not drug
education and treatment, will resist the change suggested by Mr. Bush.
A speech alone will not turn things around.

Washington's bureaucracy: The first side of the triangle consists of
dozens of federal bureaus, including the Justice Department headed by
John Ashcroft, whose budgets are fattened by drug war moneys.

In 1997 Attorney General Ashcroft summed up his views this way, "A
government which takes the resources that we would devote toward the
interdiction of drugs and converts them to treatment resources...and
also implements a clean needle program is a government that
accommodates us at our lowest and least instead of calls us to our
highest and best."

And just a few weeks ago, on the Larry King Live show, Ashcroft said,
"I want to escalate the war on drugs...We want to relaunch the war on
drugs and we want to bring parents into the equation...But we'll
enforce the law with vigor and with intensity."

At budget time Ashcroft can't have it both ways. These law enforcement
bureaus will pressure him to boost their already large budgets still
higher: Bureau of Prisons, $2.5 billion; Drug Enforcement
Administration, $1.5 billion; Coast Guard, $617 million; and the U.S.
Customs Service, $840 million. Every dollar added to education and
parental action will place funds for enforcement agencies at risk.

Law Makers: Washington lawmakers occupy the second side of the
triangle. When legislative and budgetary push comes to shove,
committees with names like Early Childhood, Youth and Families, which
view alcohol and drug abuse as education and treatment problems, have
far less clout than committees that oversee drug enforcement. Members
of Congress are eager to show the folks back home how hard they are
cracking down on drug crimes.

Congress also practices a "Yes...but" budget shuffle. For example,
citing a lack of basic data needed to make drug treatment policy, a
1998 act of Congress ordered the Office of National Drug Control
Policy to prepare a study of the status of drug treatment facilities
in the United States. But, since Congress did not provide funding to
actually carry out the study, nothing happened.

Contractors: Vendors make up the triangle's third side. Here we find
companies selling high tech intelligence gathering, communications and
other law enforcement equipment. Ford and General Motors supply
thousands of vehicles to federal, state and local police departments,
and Sikorsky Aircraft Division in Stratford, Conn., will deliver 13
UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters this year for use in Colombia, South
America, costing U.S. taxpayers at least $195 million.

Then there's the booming prison industries. With hundreds of thousands
of drug war convicts now in prison, the building material industries
have been very busy. It costs about $8.6 billion annually to keep drug
law violators behind bars, including 30,874 federal and 391,015 state
correctional employees in American prisons.

The three sides of the triangle work as one. Members of Congress,
government bureaucrats and vendors are all determined to keep the
interdiction drug war going, even though interdiction efforts in
the1990s have failed to curtail the flow of drugs. Indeed, street drug
prices have gone down, according to government data.

From 1991 to 2001 every federal budget passed by Congress spent $2 of
every $3 on law enforcement and drug interdiction. If Mr. Bush means
what he says, his challenge is to reverse this ratio and put $2 of
every $3 in his administration's budgets toward drug education,
parental involvement and drug treatment programs.

Doing so, however, will take more than words. It will require
dismantling the three-sided drug policy straitjacket America finds
itself in.

Ronald Fraser, Ph.D.

DKT Liberty Project