HE HAS A BETTER WAY

The first thing you should know about Barry McCaffrey is that he didn't
want his current job. Yes, director of the Office of National Drug Control
Policy (ONDCP) is a Cabinet-level appointment made by the President. But
McCaffrey wasn't particularly interested, his friends and associates told
him not to take the job, and reporters said the ONDCP was "a mess."
McCaffrey had all but decided to say "no." But then, as McCaffrey tells it,
"My dad asked me, 'Do you think you can make a difference?' I answered,
'Yes, of course.' And he told me to take the job."

Thus, in 1996, Gen. Barry McCaffrey went from being our youngest and
most-decorated four-star Army general to being the nation's drug czar. And
this is the most important thing to know about Barry McCaffrey: He is a
soldier. It makes him an unusual drug czar.

McCaffrey, 57, and I met in Washington, D.C., and traveled across the
Southwest to the Mexican border. He is a man whose reputation precedes him.
Like other soldiers of his generation, McCaffrey carries his own private
map of Vietnam. You can see it in the deep scar tunneling along his forearm
and in the stiff way he holds his left hand. Soon after graduating from
West Point in 1964, he volunteered for Vietnam. He served two tours of
ground-combat duty. "I didn't think I'd live through it," he says of the
second one. That is an understatement. I n McCaffrey's first tour, his unit
had a 100% casualty rate: Every soldier was wounded or killed. When
McCaffrey ordered his men to "get up and move," he knew one of them would
likely lose his life.

McCaffrey himself was wounded three times, once almost losing his left arm.
He received three Purple Hearts, two Distinguished Service Crosses and two
Silver Stars for extraordinary heroism and valor. Of that third and worst
wounding, he wrote, "I would have gladly died there that day if I could
have protected B Company from harm."

McCaffrey saw a different kind of combat in Desert Storm, where he led the
famous armored "left hook" that trapped the retreating Iraqi army. Through
it all, he and his wife of 34 years, Jill, a national chair for the
American Red Cross, raised three children. Daughter Tara is an Intensive
Care Unit nurse and National Guard captain; daughter Amy is a teacher; and
son, Sean, is a U.S. Army infantry major in Europe. "Our kids are some of
our closest friends," he says.

When McCaffrey retired from the military to become the drug czar (salary
$151,800), he was no stranger to the drug problem. He vividly remembers the
1970s, when almost a third of the U.S. military used drugs. "I found people
dead on the floor of heroin overdoses and passed out in pools of their own
vomit outside the mess hall," he says without flinching. "Illegal drug use
brought the U.S. military to its knees. Only when we had a no-tolerance
policy did it change." And he adds, "Many of my friends' children were
devastated by drugs." He recalls visiting one friend's "beautiful
20-year0old son." The boy had spent 42 days in a coma while his mother sang
at his bedside. When he woke, he had permanent brain damage and had lost
partial use of his limbs. The cause? McCaffrey answers simply, "Heroin."

In the days when Hollywood made black-and-white movies, Barry McCaffrey
might have been picked by Central Casting, less because he is classically
handsome than because he is so genuinely American. Despite having lived all
over the world, he speaks as if he just stepped off an Indiana grain farm.
"Beautiful" is his favorite adjective, "and oh, by the way" his favorite
expression. He met his wife on a blind date when he was 21 and proposed to
her that same evening. "He is a very generous, funny man," she says. Around
the house, he cuts the lawn "with gusto" and loves Seinfeld reruns.

McCaffrey is not physically imposing. But when he moves, it is with a
purpose. "I was a boxer when I was young," he tells me as we head to Texas.
And it shows when he deflects a few hecklers or a disagreeable question at
a speech in Austin. "The guy's been shot at," says his former military aide
and ONDCP strategy director, Pancho Kinney. "He doesn't fear anything."

McCaffrey also has a steely, independent vein. He held up the Pentagon
budget for not doing enough to combat drugs and stopped an Administration
plan for needle exchange. He will correct a translator in mid-sentence. He
will keep the White House waiting for days before saying "yes" to a
personnel decision, and he will let a journalist accompanying him stand for
hours in hallways while he meets with governors or drug-treatment
counselors. "He may be Bill Clinton's appointee, but he's nobody's man,"
say Bob Weiner, the ONDCP chief of press relations.

And having seen real war, McCaffrey the drug czar doesn't believe in a
"war" on drugs. Rather, his central message is that drug abuse is like a
cancer, and we must try through prevention, treatment and education to hold
this chronic and devastating disease at bay. "Each year, 50,000 people in
the U.S. die from durg use," he says. "That's almost worse than all the
years we were in Vietnam."

"I tell my wife I've become a crier in this job - listening to stories,
seeing lives ruined," he continues. "Heroin changes the neurochemistry of
your brain, so you are literally incapable of loving another person in the
same way." Even marijuana is much more potent today than just 10 or 20
years ago, he adds. And McCaffrey worries about newer drugs: teens sniffing
household aerosol products or abusing prescription drugs like Xanax or
Ritalin or the stimulant methamphetamine ("speed").

McCaffrey believes ideas should drive the drug debate. For starters, he
wants to end most mandatory jail sentences for drug possession, to allow
judges more discretion. He wants more drug treatment available in prisons
(see box) and believes that private health insurance must cover drug
treatment, just as it does a broken arm. He questions the validity of votes
on medical marijuana, noting: "We don't take a vote on how to treat heart
disease. We leave that up to medical science." And he doesn't think it's
anyone's business whether a politician has ever tried marijuana or cocaine.
"Spare me," he says, "I don't want a moral inventory of all your failures."
Instead, he wants to hear candidates' views on drug abuse in America.

Some of McCaffrey's strongest views involve drug legalization. "To say that
the legalization of drugs will make them less harmful to the person and
society just doesn't make any sense." He says. "Do you believe that the
reason heroin is a problem is because it's illegal or because it develops
compulsive use behavior? Do you think drugs won't have the same impact on
the human brain if they're legalized? Do you mean that you support having
industrial-quality methamphetamines available at a 7-Eleven in your
community for your 18-year-old son or employee? It's an elitist argument to
say drug abuse doesn't affect me and my kind, that if you just legalize it,
the problem will go away. You don't know what you're talking about."

McCaffrey and his office have vocal critics, starting with supporters of
drug legalization and medical marijuana. Some top experts also worry that
U.S. anti-drug efforts are driven too much by teenage marijuana use and not
the hard-core addicts who inflict the most dollar damage. Experts on all
sides persuasively argue that we don't even know how many Americans use
drugs, because federal surveys rely on people to honestly answer a
government interviewer's questions about their illegal drug use. (Some 13
million Americans are estimated to use drugs; 4 million are hard-core
addicts, though McCaffrey concedes they are undercounted.) Questions also
have been raised about whether alcohol and cigarettes should be considered
part of the drug problem. And anti-drug activists have criticized national
leaders for ignoring drug issues.

But McCaffrey believes that those who have the most influence over drug
behavior are families, mentors and communities. To that end, his office -
which has the frantic air partly of a command center, partly of a college
dorm at exam time - began an annual $400 million national ad campaign in 11
languages in 1998, to run for five years. Half of it is paid for by federal
tax dollars; the rest is donated. "We know accurate advertising does shape
attitudes," McCaffrey says. He hopes the ads will tell people that drug use
is a dead end. "What easier product to sell?" he asks.

McCaffrey believes there are ways to help people with substance abuse. He
support Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous programs and
residential drug-treatment centers. To parents and mentors, he says: "Spend
time with your kids and maintain your principles." (In the McCaffrey home,
Sunday was set aside for church, brunch and a family outing.) Most
important, McCaffrey says, if you suspect a problem, "don't go into denial.
Go to the Internet, call the drug clearinghouse, go to sources of strength,
like doctors and clergy. Otherwise, you will be leaving the problem up to
law enforcement and ER physicians, who will be dealing with your child or
loved one."

"Parents and adult mentors of children can make all the difference in the
world," McCaffrey adds. "Kids are listening to you. If a person reaches age
20 without smoking, drinking or using drugs, he or she is almost guaranteed
to be drug free for life."

[sidebar 1]

Ten Ways To Drug-Proof Your Child

1. Set a family standard on drug and alcohol use: Tell your children the
rules early in grade school and repeat them often. Live by them yourself.

2. Let kids know there are consequences and punishments for violating all
family rules, like no car or TV. Make them clear and enforce them.

3. Set aside time every day to talk with your kids about their lives, how
they feel, what they think. Listen and care.

4. Help your children establish realistic personal goals in academics,
athletics and social life. Then encourage and help them to achieve their
goals.

5. Know your children's friends and spend time with them.

6. Get excited about the things your kids care about. Do fun things as a
family.

7. Be aware. Find out the warning signs of drug abuse, from phsical changes
to hostility to loss of interest in school or hobbies, and watch for them.

8. Talk with your children about the future. Discuss responsibilities -
yours and theirs.

9. Enjoy your kids. Make your home a happy, positive place.

10. Be a nosy parent. Ask you children questions, know where they are and
who they are with. Let your children know you are asking because you love
them.

[sidebar 2]

Dealing With Drugs Behind Bars

Barry McCaffrey and others insist that our justice system needs to change.
Between 50% and 75% of people arrested test positive for drugs. "With
numbers like these," says Mark A.R. Kleiman, a drug-policy expert at UCLA,
"why shouldn't burglars be drug-tested as often as transportation workers?"
Kleiman advocates testing those on probation or parole, noting that places
like L.A. County give fewer than one drug test per probatioiner per year.
That is not an incentive to get help or stay clean, he argues. If you test
positive, you should spend a few days in jail. Indeed, states with tough
testing programs, like Maryland and Connecticut, have seen drug-use rates
fall. "Reducing the few million hardcore drug-users will go a long way
toward slving our probelms," Kleiman says.

McCaffrey also wants more prison treatment programs and less mandatory
sentencing. He supports drug courts - more than 600 now exist - where
drug-involved offenders must undergo treatment. "If we don't treat the drug
problem behind bars, we're wsting our time," he maintains. "An offender
will go right back to his or her aberrant behavior once out."