D.C. DOWNERS

In Which Our Man In Washington Listens To The Drug Czar Babble And
Learns Why We Can't Afford Tax Cuts

Spent a morning last Tuesday at the Heritage Foundation, listening to
the outgoing drug czar, Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey. Heritage billed the
speech as, "Is Our Balanced Approach to the War on Drugs Working?"
McCaffrey, who prefers assertions to questions, made the title
declarative: "Our Balanced Strategy Against Drugs Is Working."

Let me admit a bias of my own: Long before I spent time in Santa Fe
talking with New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson about how much fun, if
arguably counterproductive, it is to get stoned, I felt the drug
war's insistence on jailing people for sensory enhancement is a waste
of human effort (see "America's Most Dangerous Politician," January).
Still, I was surprised to find just what an idiot McCaffrey is in
person.

Like drug dealers, McCaffrey targets America's youth. "The whole
notion of prevention and education, aimed at getting American
adolescents from the 6th grade through 12th grade, where they are
reduced exposure to gateway drug taking behavior," he said in a
moment of what passes for clarity. "That's the heart and soul of our
national drug taking strategy."

As you can see, McCaffrey expresses his concern for youth via a
strange bureaucratic speech pattern that exhibits a Bushian inability
to form coherent sentences. Hence, 8th graders end up "encountering
drugs in our society" and getting "wrapped up and end up in a
statistically enhanced probability of being engaged in compulsive
drug taking activities as young adults." Still, some of what he said
reassured me. "You are statistically not going to get to age 30 and
develop a cocaine habit, or start experimenting with heroin," said
McCaffrey, which means I'm out of the most dangerous neck of the
woods.

More worrisome was his larger world view, a perspective that is
neither unique to McCaffrey nor likely to change with the new
administration. The general's favorite refrain is "We're moving in
the right direction," which I think he really believes. We're moving
in that direction because after years of increases, drug consumption
by youths appears to have leveled off. More important, to achieve
this we are increasingly giving the state tremendous powers and
resources. "We have billions of dollars flowing into these programs,"
McCaffrey said, adding without irony: "Some of them kind of creative."

It's not just insipid social programs that "vector you back to your
community anti-drug coalition" that McCaffrey wants. When he became
drug czar, the United States employed only 3,000 people as border
guards. Today, he says we're up to 7,000. He thinks 20,000 would be a
good number. He likes the increase in prisoners, too. "The Drug
Enforcement Administration, backed by the CIA, the FBI, and the armed
forces, are working vertical integrated crime organizations pretty
effectively. That's why our federal prison population has gone up
substantially, 120,000 people behind bars, two-thirds there for
drug-related offenses, and there's room for more," said McCaffrey,
emphasizing room for more.

"This isn't a problem to solve; it's a system to put in place," he
explained. And what a system it is: On top of tens of thousands of
border guards, hundreds of thousands of prisoners, and countless
international anti-drug military excursions, children are
propagandized in school on the dangers -- some real, some
make-believe -- of drugs, prisoners are released under supervision
for one to five years of regular drug testing, and insurance
companies are forced to pay for extensive mental health and drug
treatment services.

The system offers one more thing: a safe haven for politicians who,
like other members of the power class, are likely to use drugs in
their youth without fear of going to jail like common citizens. Asked
about Bush's alleged and Clinton and Gore's acknowledged drug use,
McCaffrey responded, "We went through an irresponsible period in the
1970s and 1980s, and lots of Americans used marijuana in particular,
and that includes some of our leading public figures. I want to stop
asking them whether they smoked a joint in 1972. Unless they've got a
medical, social, or legal problem, which they should share with us, I
want to get the conversation on what do you think, Mr. or Ms.
Politician, ought to be our policy -- and do you commit yourself by
your example to supporting that policy?"

In other words, as long as politicians promise not to question
whether drug use is a medical or social problem and pledge to keep it
a legal problem, they're home free. Too bad that's not an offer
available to the rest of us.