NO SURRENDER

Try Harder Against Drugs

The tempest over President Bush's nomination of John P. Walters as the
new drug "czar" is obscuring a larger, and reassuring, reality.
Whatever Walters' past reservations about drug treatment as a
component strategy in the so-called drug war, the Bush administration
is already committed to a balanced national drug policy that includes
more, not less, drug treatment.

This balance means focusing alike on the complementary objectives of
reducing the supply of illicit narcotics while increasing efforts to
reduce the domestic demand for drugs. The latter objective, in turn,
requires what Barry R. McCaffrey, Walters' able predecessor as
director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, fervently
recommended in his final report -- more anti-drug education, more
research into addiction, and more drug treatment.

Bush left no doubt that this is where his drug policy is headed. At
the White House announcement of Walters' nomination and that of Rep.
Asa Hutchinson, R-Ark., to head the Drug Enforcement Administration,
the president declared:

"This administration will focus unprecedented attention on the demand
side of this problem. We recognize that the most important work to
reduce drug use is done in America's living rooms and classrooms, in
churches, in synagogues and mosques, in the workplace and in our
neighborhoods."

These aren't the words of someone who imagines that America could
arrest its way out of the drug problem or somehow end the flow of drugs.

Bush's proposed 2002 budget includes a 16 percent increase in funding
for the National Institute on Drug Abuse and an 11 percent boost for
the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. In addition,
Bush has directed Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson
to conduct a state-by-state inventory of drug treatment needs.

These are tangible markers of the administration's
commitment.

But Walters and former drug czar William J. Bennett, for whom he
worked, also have a potent point when they argue that the misnamed war
on drugs wasn't so much lost as abandoned during the 1990s. Walters
was briefly ONDCP director in 1993. He resigned in protest when
President Clinton slashed its staff and budget, the former by 75
percent. McCaffrey and his mission never had Clinton's personal
support or commitment.

Walters believes revitalized interdiction efforts in places like
Colombia (where 80 percent of America's cocaine originates) and along
U.S. borders could, in fact, stop more of the drugs that poison 14
million Americans.

Tough law enforcement and assertive foreign policy can no more be
excluded from a balanced counter-drug strategy than drug treatment,
education and prevention. An effective strategy needs to employ them
all. That's Bush's policy and Walters' mandate.

Their pledge is no surrender on the drug front. We, and most
Americans, agree.