NARCOTICS BILL REOPENS DRUG WAR DEBATE

Colombia Measure Spurs New Look At Us Policy

WASHINGTON - An odd thing happened to the Clinton administration's plan to
fight drugs in Colombia on its way to passage by the House this week.

For the first time in more than a decade, Congress began a serious debate
on the drug war at home.

President Clinton and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, a Republican from
Illinois, had braced for battles over the wisdom of spending $1.7 billion
in the next two years in a guerrilla war, but no one expected the debate to
swing in a new direction: whether more money is needed for treatment of
hard-core addicts in the United States.

A bipartisan group of congressmen introduced three major pro-treatment
amendments to the Colombia bill, and while all of them were defeated, the
issue had suddenly arrived on the national stage.

There hasn't been such focus on drugs at home since 1986 and 1988, in
reaction to the cocaine death of Len Bias, the Boston Celtics first-round
draft choice. The demand then was for tougher sentencing in drug cases.

This time, though, with US jails crowded with inmates on drug charges, no
one was calling for more jail time for addicts. It was a call to help them.

"When you're up against the president and the speaker of the House, it's
much like pro wrestling: The results are pretty much ordained,"
Representative Jim Ramstad, a Minnesota Republican, said yesterday. "But we
just decided to run with it. And it resulted in the longest, most
protracted debate we have ever had on drug treatment in my 10 years in
Congress."

On the House floor, Ramstad talked impassionedly about his 18 years of
recovering from alcoholism. Representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a
California Republican and a supporter of Colombian aid, talked about his
son's drug addiction.

Representative David Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat, shouted: "If you are
willing to fight the drug war 1,000 miles from here, why aren't you willing
to fight it in your backyard!" Representative Dan Burton, an Indiana
Republican, shouted back: "This could get so big that if we don't help
Colombia now, we could be forced to send American troops in to deal with
it!"

For many who have followed America's war on drugs over the past three
decades, from President Nixon's focus on treatment to President Reagan's
shift toward cutting supply and putting offenders in jail, this week's
discussion was surprising and raised hopes for further debate.

"It is significant because treatment issues have not gotten much attention
at all," said Michael Massing, author of "The Fix," an account of the
history of US drug policy. "It is raising people's consciousness. One could
see the Colombian plan become an issue in the presidential elections."

The drug treatment proponents, led by Representative Nancy Pelosi, a
California Democrat, had one major weapon in their argument: a 1994 Rand
study, commissioned by the US government, that showed dollars spent for
treatment were 23 times more effective than dollars spent on interdiction
in foreign countries.

Peter Reuter, a professor of public policy at the University of Maryland,
was director of Rand's drug policy research center at the time of the
report. He said yesterday that while the report does show conclusive
evidence of the financial benefits of treatment over interdiction, it also
revealed that the vast majority of addicts return to drugs even after long
stints in treatment centers.

He believed the Colombian bill was an opportunity to reopen US drug policy.

"It's a major change, the first big initiative in a long time," Reuter
said. "The overseas budget is always very small, and suddenly the scale of
this has escalated dramatically, in a way that I believe is especially
galling. We're spending money on a bunch of helicopters to help a brutal
army crush a bunch of peasants. It's like waving a red flag and Nancy
Pelosi responded."

House leadership blocked Pelosi from introducing an amendment that would
add $600 million for treatment. But, under House rules, she was able to
raise the issue by inserting a symbolic amendment that called for cutting
$51 million from the Colombian plan and shifting it into treatment.

The debate lasted 2 1/2 hours.

"We made our point," Pelosi said yesterday in a telephone interview from
San Francisco. "There has been a gap in treatment, but there's also been a
gap in the debate. You don't hear about treatment. In a presidential
election year, with congressional races, you would expect people would
recognize this as a problem in our society. . . . Maybe there is a disdain
people have for people who use drugs."

The Senate will now take up the Colombian plan.

The issue will stay alive. Senator Paul Wellstone, a Minnesota Democrat, is
poised to add an amendment for $400 million to treat addicts. Then, Pelosi
and others plan to again fight for more treatment money when the bill goes
before a House-Senate conference committee.

The odds for success are low, but, Pelosi said, "This is just the
beginning."