Drug Czar Replacement

National drug czar Barry McCaffrey has retired -- and is now doing some
back-pedaling by saying that he doesn't want the thing called a drug "war"
anymore. Of course he doesn't. That turkey has been lost many times over,
and should not have been waged in the first place.

There's a synthetic street drug today which sells for $30, but costs less
than $1 to produce. The DEA would have us believe the $1 drug was their
concern. It isn't. It's the punks making the $29 profit -- from a profit
structure created and made lucrative by the Rambo black-boots themselves.
Our focus is really the kid with the dope? You're kidding.

I was once a probation officer. We would get from the courts someone, say,
20 years of age who had been busted two years earlier for possession. At
probation intake, his situation has often changed -- he is now in college,
has a full-time job, or has started a family ... but no, we have on him a
charge, an indictment, a plea ... so we must now convict and brand him, or
even pack him off to prison.

Folks, all is not well with the drug culture. But neither is the way we've
been trying to handle it. Our successes are being measured in heralded
arrests -- without admitting, or even considering that each of these
chest-beating arrests is first a parental/educational failure.

Please have your senators insist that McCaffrey's replacement be of either
the medical or education persuasion.

Herb Childs