TWO-FACED POLICY ON THE DRUG WAR

The Drug Czar Isn't Listening To What The President Is Saying

When George W. Bush introduced John Walters as his new drug czar last week,
it was the strangest example of being of two minds since Ray Milland and
Rosie Grier shared the same torso in "The Thing With Two Heads."

Talk about your mixed messages. There was the president, making a huge
shift in national drug policy by pledging to close the nation's massive
"treatment gap" while announcing the appointment of a man who is on record
deriding the idea that "we need to embrace treatment." Silly me, I always
thought presidents were supposed to appoint people to their Cabinet who, at
least roughly, agree with them.

Instead, reading over Bush's and Walters' statements on the drug war, you
can almost picture them manning opposite sides of the desk on a rancorous
episode of "Crossfire." "The most effective way," the president said at the
Rose Garden ceremony marking Walters' nomination, "to reduce the supply of
drugs in America is to reduce the demand for drugs in America. Therefore,
this administration will focus unprecedented attention on the demand side
of this problem."

I half-expected Walters to leap from his seat and begin lashing out, as he
has done so often in the past, at this "manifestation of the liberals'
commitment to a 'therapeutic state' in which government serves as the agent
of personal rehabilitation."

To which the president would no doubt have replied: Huh?

Despite the fact that study after study has shown money spent on treatment
to be far more effective in cutting drug use than interdiction and
eradication, Walters has steadfastly clung to the bellicose,
testosterone-fueled policies he championed as a lieutenant serving under
drug warriors William Bennett and Bob Martinez in the late '80s and early '90s.

A big fan of "punishment and prisons," he was instrumental in creating the
first Bush administration's Andean Strategy, a disastrous gift that keeps
on giving: Without it we would never have seen Roni Bowers and her infant
daughter murdered in the skies of Peru or the multibillion dollar debacle
now unfolding in Colombia.

And despite the tens of billions of dollars and the lives we've wasted
prosecuting our failed drug war, Walters still feels that the answer to the
crisis lies in flexing our military and law enforcement muscle just a
little more. As he put it during the White House ceremony: "Our efforts
rest on the knowledge that when we push back, the drug problem gets smaller."

What planet has this guy been on? Surely not the one where drugs are purer,
cheaper and more available than they've ever been, even while we've devoted
incredible resources to "pushing back."

I wonder if his musty, Ramboesque rhetoric was lost on the president, who
only minutes before had promised a "humane and compassionate response to
drug use." Is he showing early signs of political schizophrenia? Or just an
advanced case of rampant hypocrisy -- the latest manifestation of the
administration's penchant for talking one kind of game while actually
playing another?

Why else would the president overlook the fact that Walters, whom he called
"the right person to lead America's anti-drug efforts," recently mocked the
very notion that drug addiction was anything other than a lapse of moral
character? "The therapy-only lobby is alive and well and more dogmatic than
ever," Walters wrote in an op-ed entitled "Just Say No ... To Treatment
Without Law Enforcement," scoffing at bleeding hearts who think that
"addiction is a disease, not a pattern of behavior for which people can be
held responsible."

You know, bleeding hearts like his new boss who, in January, said that
"addiction to alcohol or addiction to drugs is an illness" and that "we've
got to do a better job of ... helping people cure themselves of an
illness." If that's the case, then how, exactly, is a person who
contemptuously ridicules this belief "the right person"?

And treatment is far from the only facet of drug war policy on which the
two men have been reading from different talking points. For example, Bush
has expressed a willingness to reconsider the effectiveness of mandatory
minimums: "I think a lot of people are coming to the realization that maybe
long minimum sentences for first-time users may not be the best way to
occupy jail space and/or heal people from their disease."

Walters, on the other hand, has called the idea that "drug and criminal
sentences are too long and harsh" one of the "great urban myths of our
time." He should tell that to the 460,000 nonviolent drug offenders
currently languishing behind bars. Sadly, it's no myth -- just a nightmare
- -- that the average federal sentence for a drug offense is 78 months, over
twice the average sentence for manslaughter. That's manslaughter -- as in
killing someone.

Walters' appointment is like the clock that strikes 13: Not only is it
wrong itself, it throws into question every hopeful, pro-treatment
statement Bush has made since assuming office. Heightening these suspicions
is the amount of money Bush has allocated for treatment: $320 million a year.

With around 3 million addicts who are not getting treatment, that works out
to roughly $100 a year -- or 30 cents a day -- for each of them. Hardly
indicative of a policy Bush claims is "a high priority." Especially when
compared to the $1.8 billion that's been earmarked for Colombia or the $19
billion budget Walters will be overseeing.