FLETCHER PLANS DRUG FIGHT ON THE CHEAP

The Fletcher administration is headed in the right direction with its
plan for a wide-ranging assault on Kentucky's drug problems. But if
the state is going to get where it needs to go, it must support the
operation.

From the beginning, we have sided with the Republicans - Gov. Ernie
Fletcher and Lt. Gov. Steve Pence - in what appears to be a
competition with Democratic Attorney General Greg Stumbo for
leadership of the drug fight.

The point, of course, is that this shouldn't be a partisan campaign.
It's about all those meth labs afflicting rural Kentucky. It's about
the long-term prescription drug problem in Eastern Kentucky, which has
become even more ruinous with the advent of OxyContin. It's about
suburban cokeheads and urban crackheads. It's about pot - in county
seats and city streets.

It's not about who can make the best show as a potential candidate for
governor some day, Mr. Stumbo or Mr. Pence.

Actually, it's the Governor himself who must show the way, and he's
doing that with a good first step: creating an Office of Drug Control
Policy, to be headed initially by the talented and energetic Sylvia
Lovely of the Kentucky League of Cities. Like national intelligence
efforts, state drug policy should be fully coordinated, and this is
one way to do it.

But, just as an army moves forward on its supplies of arms,
ammunition, food and gasoline, the war against drugs has to be
equipped and provisioned. Kentucky's hasn't been, even before Gov.
Fletcher's decision to pick up the pace.

Everything from rehabilitation programs to drug courts is short of
money and personnel.

Last week, the Governor announced "Kentucky's first comprehensive drug
control plan," then assured that "all of this will be done with the
use of existing funds." Which is some maneuver, if he can pull it off.

As state Rep. Mary Lou Marzian pointed out, the state is near the
bottom in funding mental health and substance abuse treatment.

Just moving to the middle would cost $25 million more per year, for 10
years. But the Governor says he wants Kentucky, with its entrenched
culture of drug trafficking and abuse, to be a leader. Does this track?

Referring to a report from his task force on drug control, Gov.
Fletcher said, "We are now armed with a comprehensive, balanced,
long-term strategy." But a strategy that can't be implemented is a
hoax.

How about a comprehensive, balanced, long-term strategy for financing
this drug initiative, and all the other pressing needs that budgetary
gridlock and political cowardice, in both parties, have created?