LOSING PATIENCE WITH THE DRUG CZAR

This week's "pathetic" White House report on the war against
methamphetamine should be close to the final straw for John Walters

Indiana's Rep. Mark Souder, the top House Republican on drug policy,
stopped barely short of demanding the resignation of White House drug
czar John Walters this week.

Walters' problem? He and his advisers still don't understand the
extent and implications of the methamphetamine epidemic. They should
consider Souder's damning remarks Wednesday as a final warning in
what amounted to an official performance review.

The exasperated congressman talked of resignations Wednesday after
hearing yet another all-too-sunny presentation by Bush administration
officials on what's being done to thwart the meth scourge. Emerging
from the closed-door session, Souder branded it as "pathetic" and "an
embarrassment."

He demanded the resignation of the Walters aide who led the
dog-and-pony show. And later, in an interview with The Oregonian's
Steve Suo, Souder suggested that Walters and others on his staff may
have to go, too.

Drastic talk, but it is exactly what's needed. Participants in the
Wednesday session said administration officials painted a glowing
picture of success in the fight against meth, including a sharp
reduction in "superlabs" run on U.S. soil by Mexican traffickers,
promising treatment techniques and improved cooperation with nations
where drug cartels obtain meth's key ingredient.

It all sounds comforting, unless you're painfully aware, like Souder,
that the availability and purity of meth continues to rise. So does
the spread of meth, once considered a West Coast drug but now a
plague in Souder's Indiana and almost every other state.

Wednesday's puffery came one year after the administration trotted
out a fancy-looking initiative that was supposed to curtail meth. It
clearly hasn't, and members of the bipartisan House Methamphetamine
Caucus call it a sham.

Indeed, it lacks smart new policies and measurable goals. It offers
no comprehensive, workable strategy. And it fails to call on Congress
to approve additional resources.

Meanwhile, amazingly, the administration wants to cut budgets of
local drug task forces.

In the past, Walters' office has been used as a scapegoat, a
convenient target for Congress in diverting attention from its own
failures in dealing with the drug war. But that's not what's
happening now. House members today are under extreme pressure from
their home districts, where communities have become overwhelmed by
problems stemming from meth abuse.

It's no wonder many of the House members at Wednesday's meeting came
away disgusted. The White House team didn't even ask for any
additional help from Congress -- a sure sign that the crisis still
isn't being taken seriously. Instead, according to Souder, the drug
czar's staff seems mostly interested in defending itself.

"I don't trust the director's office to make the decisions anymore," he said.

We have been voicing similar frustration since last October, when The
Oregonian published Suo's series, "Unnecessary Epidemic." Today, a
full year later, meth abuse is still an epidemic, only more widely
spread, and it's still unnecessary.

When Souder is ready to go all the way on shaking up the Office of
National Drug Control Policy, he'll find most Oregonians standing
right there with him.