PUBLIC LIVES: A DRUG WARRIOR WHO WOULD RATHER TREAT THAN FIGHT

WASHINGTON -- REFLECTING upon nearly five years as the Clinton
administration's top drug policy official, Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey
looks back even farther, to 31 years in the Army, where he became its
most highly decorated general after fighting in the Vietnam and
Persian Gulf wars.

"I doubt that I've ever seen in combat the misery such as I've
encountered through watching what drug abuse does to people," said
General McCaffrey, who is preparing to step down as the White House
director of national drug control policy.

"They're doing things which they know to be morally and physically
repulsive," he said. "They're ashamed of themselves. They're fearful,
they're sick, they're driven."

And they are fellow Americans, added General McCaffrey, a professional
warrior who refuses to accept the metaphor of a war on drugs.
Beginning with his Senate confirmation hearings in early 1996, the
retired four-star general has likened America's drug problem to a
cancer that must be treated.

In an interview, he said that treatment for addiction and mental
illness should be covered by the same health insurance that recognizes
physical illnesses. General McCaffrey was instrumental in persuading
President Clinton to extend such parity in health coverage to nine
million federal employees.

The general does not fit the stereotype of a drug czar, whose
authority primarily consists of facilitating the antidrug policies of
a range of federal departments and agencies.

He called it "silly" for federal law to impose harsher penalties for
selling or possessing crack cocaine than for powder cocaine because
they are two forms of the same drug.

He criticized predetermined prison sentences for drug felons, like
those set under New York's Rockefeller-era drug laws. "I am
unalterably opposed to the system of mandatory minimums," he said. "I
think we need to give this authority back to the judges."

And most nonviolent addicts behind bars, he said, belong in treatment
centers, not in prison, where they learn to become better criminals.

The solution to drug abuse and its social consequences, he said, is
"to engage in a more coherent, rational way the chronically addicted
as we encounter them in our communities." And, he added, "we find them
in the criminal justice system, in the health care system and the
welfare system."

"At that point, it seems to me," he continued, "if you want to save
taxpayer dollars, and you want to reduce violence in your communities,
if you want to accomplish all of these larger social goals, you have
to draw them into effective drug treatment."

General McCaffrey conceded that appropriating money to treat every
addict had been a hard sell, on Capitol Hill and elsewhere.

"That's the argument that has to be made to state legislatures," he
said. "Then we've got to tell the health insurance industry: `Look,
you're going to pay for it one way or another. You can pay for it in
the emergency room, you can pay for it with a lot less dollars in drug
treatment centers. You can wait till they're H.I.V.-infected and then
pay a quarter of a million dollars to deal with AIDS as a medical
condition.' "

But he acknowledged that drug abuse elicited more revulsion than
sympathy from the majority of Americans.

"They look at this and they're frightened and disgusted by it, and
they want to walk away from it," General McCaffrey said. "And we're
saying, `You can't walk away from it, you've got to rationally deal
with it.' "

Since General McCaffrey took office, federal financing has increased
by 55 percent for prevention programs and by 34 percent for treatment
programs. "It's been hard lifting, but we've made the arguments that
resulted in $2.78 billion in federal money going into drug treatment,"
he said.

The bulk of the government's drug-fighting budget, which jumped to
$19.2 billion in the current fiscal year from $13.5 billion in 1996,
is still spent on drug interdiction and law enforcement. Treating
addicts does not mean legalizing drugs, General McCaffrey said, "and
it doesn't mean condoning the dysfunctional behavior that emanates
from chronic drug abuse."

General McCaffrey said he took pride in having overseen a $185 million
advertising campaign to dissuade adolescents from experimenting with
drugs, which he said helped account for a 21 percent decline in drug
use by teenagers in the last two years.

THE son of an Army lieutenant general, Barry McCaffrey, 57, grew up on
Army bases before attending Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., and
then going to West Point. He has been invited to teach national
security issues at West Point starting later this month. He and his
wife, Jill, who live in Virginia, have one son, an Army major, and two
daughters, an intensive care nurse and a secondary school teacher.

Even as he leaves the White House, General McCaffrey continues to
challenge the perception of a lost war on drugs, which he said was
fueled by "a very deliberate, well-thought-out strategy by drug
legalization forces" seeking public acceptance of drug use.

"You can convince people that it's a war and it's lost and rational
people ought to move on," he said. "When you talk about it in a
theoretical fashion, lots of educated, thoughtful people will accept
that.

"But when you're confronted with drug abuse in your community and your
family and your business, that kind of logic evaporates."