DRUG CZAR WALTERS: MARIJUANA MOST ABUSED DRUG

John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control
Policy, visited Detroit on Thursday and spoke to The Detroit News editorial
board. Walters, a former Michigan State University professor, developed
anti-drug education programs in the Reagan administration and was a chief
of staff to drug czar William Bennett during the first Bush administration.
The following are edited excerpts:

Q. Talk about your trip here.

A.We are focusing on how the federal government effort actually reaches
people in critical areas, and 80 percent of the drug problems are in the 25
biggest cities in the United States.

What we have tried to do is re-energize a balanced effort on drug use and
dispelling the cynicism that institutions that are designed to effect this
problem don't work. So the president set a national goal of reducing drug
use by 10 percent in two years for adults and teenagers and 25 percent in
five years.

One of the reasons for coming here is to make sure we're highlighting those
things that are working at the local level.

Prevention is where you want to start. If young people do not begin
experimenting with drugs -- or alcohol or cigarettes -- during their
teenage years, they are unlikely to start later on. If we do a better job
of preventing experimentation, we change the dynamic of this problem for
generations. And it is about addiction. The biggest single consumers of
drugs are dependent users. They are the ones we also have the most
difficulty reaching with treatment. The president has committed an
additional $1.6 billion to federal treatment spending over five years.

A new survey allowed us to see the drugs people are dependent on. Over 60
percent of the 6 million (drug addicts) are dependent on marijuana. Many
Baby Boomer parents believe we should legalize it and treat it like alcohol.

Q.How do you refute that?

A.According to most available data, marijuana is more than twice as
important as a source of addiction and abuse than the next most important
illegal drug, which is cocaine. Today, more young people are being admitted
and presented for treatment for marijuana than for alcohol. That has not
been true in the past. Unlike when I was in college in the 1970s, when THC
content, the psycho-active ingredient in marijuana, was 1 percent, today's
marijuana is 10 to 14 percent. And hybrids go up to 30 percent and above.
They are not starting at 17 or 18. They are starting at 14, 13, 12 and 11.

Q.Are people dying from marijuana use?

A.Marijuana does not have the same toxicity qualities as alcohol or heroin
or cocaine. But in combination with other drugs, it has now surpassed
heroin in emergency room admission cases. It is a serious part of the more
than 50 percent of the people who are arrested and tested for having drugs
being in their system. It is not true that marijuana makes you mellow, a
nice docile Cheech and Chong characters. It increases tendencies toward
stealing, isolation, fighting and violence.

Q.Are we moving more toward a strategy of reducing demand instead of supply?

A.We have not -- partly because of the relationship of many of these
programs to the war on terror -- shifted money to demand over supply,
although the president's single largest recommendation in this area was the
$1.6 billion over five years for additional treatment spending. But we are
still spending more with the increases in border control. We are certainly
on the supply side spending more.

Q.What are we getting for the money we're spending on reducing supply?

A.As we increase our control of the border, we will do a better job on
drugs. There are signs that already has been happening since last Sept. 11,
because of the heightened alert status and the sharing of information.

Q.We've been fighting supply for more than 30 years. Do we have any
indication that we've done any good? Can anyone who wants drugs get them?

A.It is not possible for everyone, everywhere, any time they want to get
drugs. When you actually ask young people, "Can you buy drugs?," over 50
percent say it is difficult. It is harder to buy crack than it is to buy
beer, and that helps us control supply.

On the other side, what has not been understood is that the estimates of
interdiction coming from Colombia are that we seize with their help 30
percent of what is shipped. Last year, cocaine purity in the United States
dropped 9 percent. That is good for us. This helps us help people get into
treatment because over time it is less easy to maintain the habit you've
established with less and less potent drugs.

Q.Many people, including this editorial page, have questioned the
effectiveness of the drug war. Are you able to say whether we are winning?

A.Drug use is too high. But I also think from my experience that is too
harsh a view. When we push back against this problem with common sense
ways, like prevention, treatment and enforcement, it shrinks. When we joke
about it and act as if it is not a serious threat, it increases.

I think the drug war term is counterproductive in the sense you use it. The
original consensus was we need to create a seriousness in the country
because there was a cultural, moral dimension to it. It had to have an
underlying popular support. But it has been phrased as though this is like
a war, and because it has taken a long time, it's Vietnam. Therefore, we're
losing, therefore, let's withdraw.

It is a problem of taking care of, educating and protecting young people.
We don't say we've been educating people for hundreds of years, and it
costs a lot of money, and we're not happy with the dropout rate or the SAT
scores, so let's just save the money and just pay people and stay home.

Q.Making drugs harder to obtain may cut the number of users, but it has
increased crime in neighborhoods like in Detroit. And in countries like
Colombia it has caused the United States to start meddling in civil
domestic situations. Would it not be better for the United States to
tolerate slightly higher drug use but control these other unintended
consequences of the war on drugs?

A.No. The overwhelming part of violence associated with the drug trade is
catalyzed by the people who use drugs. Eighty percent of child abuse and
endangerment cases in every metropolitan area in this country are
attributed a guardian or parent using drugs. The same thing is true with
crime. Over 50 percent of those arrested in every metropolitan area in the
country test positive for drugs.

There's also a misperception about how the criminal justice system has
worked on enforcement. There are those, especially those who want to
legalize drugs, who say we've filled our prisons with low-level, nonviolent
offenders. That is a gross and obvious lie. The single biggest source of
growth in prisons is violent repeat offenders. The criminal justice system
has done an outstanding job of sorting through drug courts and diversion
programs those who have a dependence problem from those who are dangerous.

In countries where drug production exists, yes, there has been violence,
and yes, there has been a problem. But parts of those countries that are
not controlled by the central government are being used to market drugs and
taxed by other groups or the drug traffickers. If you legalize drugs and
increase the volume, you would simply increase the funding of those people
who are using the money to try to take over the government or establish
their own authority. The president has made this clear that the American
drug consumer is the single largest funder of anti-democratic forces in
this hemisphere.

Q.Is it possible to reduce supply?

A.When I was out of government, I was always struck by the businessmen who
spent millions of dollars to make sure the lobbyists prevented the
government from using its regulatory and other authorities to damage their
business and cause a recession, but in the drug market the government
couldn't do anything.

I do believe the drug problem is much smaller today because of what is
being done on the enforcement side. Let me give you an example. The most
famous advocate of legalization was Kurt Schmoke, mayor of Baltimore. When
he took office in the 1980s, Baltimore had an above average rate of
addiction. He said let's de-emphasize criminal enforcement and focus on
treatment. During the 1990s, when almost every city was experiencing boom
times, Baltimore had no new office buildings built, had net disinvestment
and lost population. And there were an estimated 40,000 to 60,000
intravenous drug users. The rates of hepatitis and HIV infections in
subpopulations were almost unbelievable. I would argue Baltimore has been
more damaged by the drug problem than any city in American history.

Q.Ontario has a proposal to decriminalize marijuana. It would have a major
impact on Metro Detroit. What will the Bush administration be doing on this?

A.I met with Canadian officials in June. I'm pleased to see that the Health
and Justice ministry people say they don't intend to adopt in the near term
this proposal. The first result if they did adopt is there would be a lot
of Canadians who would be a lot worse off. I invited them to learn from the
experience that the United States has paid so dearly for in regard to what
drugs do. In addition to (the problem of marijuana) dependency, I was
surprised to see the Canadians have no national surveys of rates of drug
use, no surveys of drug dependency or trend analysis.

We already have a problem in the western part of Canada with high- potency
marijuana being shipped to the United States. It is being exchanged for
cocaine by gangs in the western part of the United States. Canada is a
large drug supplier to the United States, and the United States is a drug
supplier to Canada. Both of our populations are the worse for that. As we
take the policing steps on the northern border because of the war on
terrorism, we are undoubtedly going to have greater seizures of drugs. The
drug problem does not respect borders. It uses borders as a way of
circumventing enforcement pressure and a way of carrying on business.