MCCAFFREY DID GOOD JOB IN DRUG FIGHT

RETIRED ARMY GEN. Barry McCaffrey departs as director of the White
House Office of National Drug Control Policy with a five-year record
he would candidly acknowledge is mixed.

On the plus side, drug use by adolescents is down 21 percent since
1997. Drug-related murders are down by half since 1990. Overall rates
for use of cocaine and heroin have stabilized since 1992. Federal
spending on programs to prevent drug abuse has increased 55 percent
since 1996. The number of community drug courts has gone from only 12
in 1994 to about 700 planned or in operation today.

Moreover, the use of illegal drugs in the United States has declined
by about 50 percent over the last 20 years.

UNFORTUNATELY, THERE is at least as much bad news on the drug front.
The use of so-called club drugs, like ecstasy, by teenagers is
increasing almost exponentially. Heroin is making a comeback. The
methamphetamine plague continues. About 6 percent of Americans, 14
million of us, use illegal narcotics. The latest figures available
show that 57 percent of addicts in the United States get no drug
treatment. That's disastrous.

In addition, escalating federal efforts over more than 20 years to
interdict drugs entering the United States have failed to reduce their
availability or raise their street prices. Cocaine and marijuana are
cheaper than ever.

So it's easy for skeptics to brand America's supposed "war on drugs" a
failure, and even urge its termination. It's also easy enough to brand
McCaffrey a failure, a soldier out of his element and over his head on
the narcotics issue.

Easy, but wrong.

IN TRUTH, McCAFFREY has been by far the most energetic and determined
White House drug fighter in the dozen years the office has existed.
True, he made mistakes, like his misguided plan to buy anti-drug
messages inserted into television entertainment.

His bureaucratic battle to put himself into a centralized chain of
command that the drug war lacks proved a divisive flop. The White
House and Congress couldn't be persuaded, and federal law enforcement
agencies like the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration predictably
resisted any encroachment on their authority.

Still, McCaffrey was undeterred. He used the office's bully pulpit
relentlessly to crusade against the drug abuse that kills an estimated
50,000 Americans a year and blights millions of lives. He got steady
increases in funding for counter narcotics programs. Two decades ago,
the federal government spent barely $1 billion fighting drugs. Today
the figure is $19 billion.

To his credit, McCaffrey grew and learned on the job. He now
acknowledges that "America can't arrest our way out of the drug
problem," meaning simply putting people in jail for drug crimes is not
a long-term solution. Federal funding for drug treatment and drug
prevention has increased dramatically, with McCaffrey's support.

TOO OFTEN IN the past, it has been seen as soft on drugs to commit
money to treatment rather than to law enforcement. That view is
short-sided. While there is no easy solution to America's drug habit,
it is obvious the war on drugs cannot be won solely on the supply
side. While it would be foolish to assume America will ever completely
rid itself of drug abuse - let us not forget the abuse of legal drugs
such as alcohol and nicotine - it is important to acknowledge the
progress in recent years from the multifaceted approach of prevention,
punishment and treatment.

His as-yet-unnamed successor in the Bush administration should spend
the time needed to digest the lessons McCaffrey learned, and the
recommendations he leaves behind. Those start with, in McCaffrey's
words, "prevention coupled with treatment accompanied by research."