THE 30 YEAR WAR ON ILLICIT NARCOTICS

Vacillating Between Rehabilitation And Enforcement

We hunted a comprehensive approach; but we understood first and
foremost that the system had to get tougher. the ideas of treating
this as a social problem instead of a major criminal problem had taken
the upper hand and things had gotten out of hand - Dan Lungren

President George Bush was not the first American politician to try to
quench the nations thirst for illicit drugs.

Wars against drugs have been fought since the turn of this century, when
police and politicians began decrying the evils, of Chinese opium, Turkish
hashish, and extracts of coca leaves in quack medicines and a popular new
soft drink named Coca-Cola.

But the modern war began in 1971, when Richard Nixon declared drugs "public
enemy number one after American servicemen and women began returning home
from Vietnam hooked on American morphine and Asian heroin.

Dr. Jerome Jaffe, Nixon's -drug czar," convinced Nixon to pour money into
methadone treatment for heroin addicts. The number of cities with federally
funded methadone programs increased from 54 to 215 in just 18 months. Soon,
heroin use declined, not just among addicts, but among first-time users,
who decreased in number from 114,000 in 1969 to 80,000 in 1975.

"What you had was a sharply rising rate of heroin addiction. We were
basically on almost the crest of an epidemic. Whether whatever we did
turned that around, a good scientist has to say 'I'm not sure,"' Jane said.
"I can only say the two things coincided."

Despite Jaffe's caution, some modem treatment proponents are certain that
emphasizing treatment 'above law enforcement is an effective approach -
more effective, at least, the policies of

Nixon's successors

President Gerald Ford eased up on his predecessor's antl-drug policies,And
President Jimmy Carter spoke in favor of decriminalizing small amounts of
marijuana. But, within a few years, Carter was out of the White House, a
former California governor was in, and a new drug war was on the horizon;
President Ronald Reagan came to power during a milestone period in American
narcotics use: the 1980's, when Americans were suddenly introduced to a new
form of cocaine that was cheap, smokable, and potent - crack.

Crack made selling drugs easier and more profitable than ever before,
causing crime to spiral, newspapers to pay attention and streets to run
again with the blood of competing street-comer dealers. The drug problem
came home to middle America in 1986, when star University of Maryland
basketball player Len Bias died a cocaine-related death two days after
being tapped to play for the Boston Celtics.

"it had a significant effect," said former California attorney general Dan
Lungren, who represented California. in the House of Representatives in 1986.

- -When members of Congress are In Washington D.C., they read newspapers and
watch the television just like anyone else. And after they read the
politics, they turn to the sports page, he said. "It was someone they could
identify with."

But there was a second effect, said Eric Sterling, who helped write the
anti-drug laws passed during the Reagan administration as a lead attorney
for the U.S. House of Representatives' Judiciary Committee. Sterling since
has become a critic of those same laws as president of the Criminal Justice
Policy Foundation in Washington.

The death of Len Bias actually clarified for members of Congress the
political opportunity that the drug problem created," he said. "By 1986,
partisan politics dominated completely the way in which the drug issue was
handled. In fact Lungren was one of the architects of that effort."

On August 4, 1986 - a day he described as "Pearl Harbor for the drug
traffickers"'- Reagan called for a national crusade against drugs. The
nation's drug budget grew from $1.2 billion in 1981 to $6.7 billion In 1989
- - the bulk of it going to the criminal justice system.

The consensus in Congress, Lungren said, was that treatment just hadn't worked.

"We wanted a comprehensive approach but we understood first and foremost
that the system had to get I

tougher," Lungren said. "The idea of.', treating this as a social problem
instead of a major criminal problem had taken the upper hand, and thing had
gotten out of hand.

Congress gave Reagan powerful anti-drug tools in the 1986 and 1988
Anti-Drug Abuse Acts. But those tools were assembled too late for Reagans'
administration, and they passed to his successor.

President George Bush's first drug control strategy called for the most
expensive drug control effort in the nation's history. The 1990 budget
alone was more than $2 billion greater than the fiscal year 1989 budget,
and total expenditures climbed above $12 billion before Bush left office.

Throughout the Bush years, treatment received about 20 cents of every drug
war dollar. But some contemporary observers maintain the ratio did! not
reflect the President's priorities.

"What we always felt was there was a need for a balanced strategy. There,
was no question that both (Drug Czar William Bennett) and the President
were committed to expanding treatment," said Dr. Herbert Kleber, deputy for
demand reduction in the National Drug Policy Office from 1989 until 1991.
Funding for treatment was a bipartisan 7, failure (in Congress)."

Bush's new strategy seemed to work for the first two years, as researchers
reported! some declines in drug use. But by the end of Bush's term, even
the drug warriors were saying that progress against drug; abuse had slowed
to a crawl -and in some cases, actually reversed.

- -1 look at the message coming out of Washington that we're the war on drugs
and I don't know what city they're talking about,- New York's Commissioner,
Lee P. Brown, told The New York Times in 1992. "It's certainly not New York
City.

In 1993, Brown Bill Clinton's first Czar. Seeking to shift emphasis from
reducing the drug supply to reducing the demand for drugs, he asked
Congress for $355 million for an aggressive new treatment program. lie got
$59 Million.

'The problem was people (in Congress) were making decisions about
treatment, and had never spoken to a recent addict," Brown said. "Its very
frustrating when you know what the right thing is, but you don't get the
necessary financial support.'

Brown soon resigned. In the election year of 1996, Clinton replaced him
with General Barry McCaffrey, a, retired four-star general who experienced
interdiction efforts as leader of the U.S. Armed Forces Southern Command in
Panama.

McCaffrey's strategies have included several novelties, especially the
massive media campaign that White House officials say already has had a
measurable effect on teenagers' attitudes about drug use. But drug war
hawks and doves also have both found places to criticize Clinton's drug
policies

Conservatives, such as Lungren and former U.S. Attorney General Edwin
Meese, remember that Clinton cut the Office of National Drug Control Policy
staff by 83 percent in his first term to help make good a promise to reduce
the size of the White House staff And they quote Clinton's first surgeon
General Joycelyn Elders, who openly discussed the idea of drug legalization.

Those deviations from tile tough Bush policies, they believe, contributed
to increased in drug use during, Clinton s term - especially among young
people.

"You have to keep reemphasizing and refocusing this," Meese said. "The
attention span of the American public 0 is fairly short, and without
national leadership, there was no continuing reemphasis."

But critics of past drug policies, too, have taken Clinton to task - for
failing to go far enough. in rejecting the drug wars of the past.

- -Under Clinton ... we have 1.8 million people in prison."- said Joseph
McNamara of the, Hoover Institution at Stanford University. -Drug arrests!
have soared, and it's because he's been even more of a hawk because of, the
accusations that he didn't inhale, and he Is soft on drugs."