BUSH: DENY DRUG USERS SCHOLARSHIPS

MacKay campaign calls that `very harsh treatment'

TALLAHASSEE -- Promising an assault on illegal drugs, Republican Jeb Bush
proposes tougher policing and prosecution, better detection and treatment of
drug abuse and denial of scholarships for teenagers who use drugs.

``We're not going to reinvent the wheel, but we're going to do something
revolutionary,'' Bush pledged Thursday, unveiling a wide-ranging, 19-page
plan in his campaign for governor to wage a war on drugs -- and win it.
``We're going to stop at nothing less than total victory.''

Bush's game plan, with an estimated cost of nearly $40 million its fourth
year, comes at a time when overall crime is in decline, but concern about
teenage crime and drugs -- especially highly addictive substances, such as
heroin -- is growing. It also poses new points of contention for Bush and
Lt. Gov. Buddy MacKay, the Democratic candidate for governor, criticizing
such tactics as assignment of a state drug czar and denial of scholarships.

``This is a problem of such importance that it is going to be on the
governor's and lieutenant governor's desks. . . . That is where it stops,''
Robin Rorapaugh, MacKay's campaign manager, said Thursday. ``The drug
problem of Florida is not one that Buddy wants to pitch to someone else.''

MacKay applauds much of what Bush proposes, Rorapaugh says, because much of
it -- from drug interdiction at Florida's ports to drug treatment in prisons
- -- already is under way. The problem, she says, is that a Republican-run
Legislature has inadequately funded program after program.

However, in the state budget that Gov. Lawton Chiles and MacKay proposed to
lawmakers this year, the problem of illegal drugs was virtually unmentioned.
The administration did seek more money for juvenile justice, and a massive
campaign against underage smoking -- which Bush supports and says he wants
to improve -- but made no concerted pitch against illicit drug abuse.

Acute shortages of cash hamper some of the state's drug-fighting efforts.
Florida's prisons say 22.6 percent of the convicts who entered last year
came with drug-related convictions -- 13.3 percent for sale, purchase or
manufacture, 6 percent for possession, 3.3 percent for trafficking.

But there is room for only about 3,000 inmates a year in the most effective,
six-month-long drug treatment programs. Bush proposes adding 1,250 inmates a
year, at a cost of $2 million a year, until the full need is met.

All told, Bush says, it will cost $11.6 million next year to cover what he
wants, and $37.5 million by the 2002-03 budget year.

For high schoolers and college students convicted of drug offenses, Bush
proposes cutting off financial aid -- suspending or revoking the ``Bright
Future'' scholarships Florida offers high-scoring students.

``There has to be a recognition that being a good citizen means remaining
drug free,'' said Bush, 45, who acknowledges trying marijuana when he was
17. ``It was a stupid thing to do, and it was wrong.''

MacKay views withholding of scholarships as ``very harsh treatment,''
Rorapaugh said. ``Drug use, for children, is a problem, but taking away
their tools for education and becoming better citizens does not solve it.''
She said MacKay, 65, ``has never experimented with illegal drugs, never.''

Copyright 1998 The Miami Herald

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett