A DRUG WARRIOR

The man President Bush reportedly has chosen to head the Office of National
Drug Control Policy takes such a hard-line, law-and-order approach to
controlling illicit drugs that even former drug czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey
is expressing concern. When it comes to punishing drug addicts, John
Walters is no compassionate conservative.

Walters is a hawkish, supply-side drug warrior. As a former chief
administrator to William Bennett, the nation's drug czar under the elder
President Bush, Walters was known as a hard-nosed conservative who favored
severe penalties for drug-related offenses over treatment for addicts. He
was a vocal critic of what he called the Clinton administration's
"commitment to a "therapeutic state.' " And his record of emphasizing
source interdiction and eradication over reducing demand has even McCaffrey
openly fretting. McCaffrey told the New York Times that Walters once
complained "that there is too much treatment capacity in the United States,
which I found shocking."

Nothing about Walters suggests he's a forward-thinker on drug strategies.
He has supported policies to retain the disparity in sentencing between
crack and powder cocaine, and he wants to increase American military
involvement in fighting drug cultivation overseas. He is behind the shifts
in American public opinion on the anti-drug war.

Americans are becoming more sophisticated in their understanding of our
nation's drug problem. It used to be political suicide for a politician to
embrace anything short of a punitive anti-drug policy. But Gov. Gary
Johnson of New Mexico, a Republican, advocates a sensible approach to
overall harm reduction, emphasizing treatment programs and public health
over harsh penalties. The public's growing frustration with the
law-and-order drug war has been in evidence at the ballot box. Since 1996,
eight states have approved medical marijuana initiatives, and Californians
recently passed Proposition 36 that requires treatment rather than prison
for nonviolent drug offenders.

Walters, though, reflects none of these nuances. He is same old, same old,
and likely to exacerbate the worst elements of our nation's current drug
policies: stuffing prisons with nonviolent drug offenders serving mandatory
minimum sentences, clogging the federal courts with drug cases, expanding
the role of the military in domestic law enforcement and, correspondingly,
militarizing local police.

The recent downing of a plane carrying an American missionary family by
Peru exposes the danger of a policy that entangles the U.S. military and
intelligence agencies in the harsh drug enforcement programs of foreign
militaries. Yet Walters is a strong proponent of these relationships. He
says fighting drugs at their source is cheap and effective. Funny, history
teaches just the opposite: that battling cultivation at one source merely
shifts it to another.

Before being inaugurated, Bush told CNN, "I think a lot of people are
coming to the realization that maybe long minimum sentences for the
first-time users may not be the best way to occupy jail space and/or heal
people from their disease." Now he intends to choose a drug czar who is not
one of those enlightened people.