AMERICA'S DRUG CZAR AND LATEST STRATEGY ARE 'HIGHLY' DELUDED

After an hour-long conversation with John P. Walters, President Bush's drug
czar, I haven't got a clue how to win the war on drugs. But I do have a much
clearer understanding of why we haven't got a hope of winning it.

We are doomed, because Walters is not so much a drug czar as he is a
moralist and propagandist. His new take on how to win the war on drugs is
actually a very old one. He believes we can keep people off drugs by shaming
them and making them feel hopelessly guilty about harming the country as
well.

For instance, Walters talked earnestly about how he wants to appeal to the
"idealism" of drug users in post-Sept. 11 America. He cited a statistic --
of the 4 million drug-dependent people in America, 65 percent of them have a
primary dependence on marijuana -- and said he wants to make a connection in
the minds of these marijuana users that "smoking a joint is harming
democracy.

"Oh, please.

As my own teen-agers remind me every day, I am an old lady, hopelessly
un-hip and completely out of touch, but even I know that this approach is
not going to work.

As anyone who has ever known an addict realizes, drug users lose whatever
sense of idealism they ever had -- much less sense of self -- once they get
trapped in the web of addiction. Trying to shame them by blaming them for
terrorism is not only futile, it's also a cruel, cynical attempt to take
political advantage of the personal suffering of millions of addicts and
their grief-stricken families.

Yet that in a nutshell is the focus of Walters' massive new anti-drug
advertisement campaign, a campaign that costs taxpayers $180 million a year.
That's money going to pay for television ads that teenagers see an average
of 2.7 times a week.

The new ads were debuted during the Super Bowl, which in itself seems like a
goofy decision by Walters. How many of the 4 million drug-dependent people
in America do you suppose were watching the game? Alcoholics, yes, but
football seems likely an unlikely passion for your average cocaine or heroin
user, but then again, what the heck do I know?

In one of the Super Bowl ads, a group of sheepish-looking American
teen-agers admit that their drug use helps fund terrorism. "I helped a
bomber get a fake passport. All the kids do it," said the voice-over. "All
the kids do it." The ad ends with the slogan: "Drug money supports terror.
If you buy drugs, you might too."

Common sense to the contrary, Walters continues to be high (forgive the pun)
on the terror-drug ads. He once worked for former drug czar William Bennett,
and has the same accusatory tone in his speaking voice as Bennett. According
to Walters, the primary challenge of every civilized society is to "push
back from the destructive tendencies of its individuals" -- a line he must
have picked up from Bennett -- and the way to do that is to morally condemn
drug users.

Walters did not like the TV ads the Clinton administration used, and he had
good research to show that the ads, which cost taxpayers $1 billion over a
five-year period, were not particularly effective in curbing teen-age drug
use. In fact, the research showed the ads might have provoked an increase in
marijuana use among girls. The ads focused primarily on negative
consequences of using drugs. Remember the fried egg on a hot griddle with
the tagline: "This is your brain on drugs."?

From the research that showed those ads didn't work, Walters correctly
deduced that we aren't seeing a return on our billion-dollar investment in
anti-drug ads.

But why does he think linking the war on terrorism with the war on drugs
works any better?

Perhaps the correct conclusion of the market research should be that all
anti-drug TV advertisements are a waste of money. Drug use is simply too
vast and complex a problem -- driven by biochemical factors as well as
psychological and social ones -- to be approached with a 30-second slogan.

If that's the correct conclusion, Walters is suffering from denial, which is
deadly for the nation's drug czar.