SWEET-TALKING DRUG OFFICIALS LEAVE THIS REGION ON ITS OWN

A team of White House policymakers accomplished one thing with their visit
to New Bedford this past week: They removed much doubt about why the drug
war is going so badly here and across the nation.

"There's no magic in Washington," said Joseph Peters, the ex-cop from
Philadelphia who is now deputy director of the Office of National Drug
Control Policy's Bureau of State and Local Affairs.

While pledging support down the road from the ONDCP, Peters kept insisting
on local not federal strategies, "The solution is you," he said at a
stilted and stultifying forum Thursday night in the steam bath of an
auditorium at the Hayden-McFadden School.

So while a Congress that is dominated by Southern suburbanites contemplates
tax cuts that will strip the federal government of much of what's left of
its capacity to help cities like New Bedford, Bill Clinton's surrogates
advise us to keep pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps.

Instead of promises, Peters heaped praise on the plates of local officials,
as if he and his teammates had suddenly stumbled on a city actually on the
verge of victory over the dealers and users.

He didn't dwell on the facts: that the city remains an epicenter for AIDS
and hepatitis C; that poverty and ignorance power a pipeline feeding
hundreds of young people each year into lives of dependence on drugs and
alcohol; that lack of resources makes a mockery of treatment programs; that
the courts and jails are overburdened to the crisis point; that law
enforcement is sadly uncoordinated; that there are not enough parole
officers, social workers and outreach programs to go around.

Peters summed it all up on Friday when he suggested that New Bedford might
become a national model for overcoming drug trafficking and abuse, given
its level of political insight, the heft of its community groups and its
innovative law enforcement strategies. "This community is positioned to
bring it all together," he said. "It's just a matter of orchestrating all
the pieces."

Believe that and you believe in the Easter Bunny.

If any substantial change is going to occur in the New Bedford drug
problem, people have to stop playing "Let's Pretend" whether they are in
Washington or in New Bedford City Hall.

Let's not praise law enforcement coordination, for example, when the
county's chief law enforcement officer, District Attorney Paul F. Walsh
Jr., can't coordinate his schedule well enough to attend even a single
session during the whole of the two-day visit by the Washington drug team.

Mayor Fred Kalisz deserves credit for arranging the visit and pulling
community groups together to assess the situation and help with briefing
papers for the visitors. Let's hope he set the stage for continuing and
realistic action in the months ahead.

Let's also hope that the mayor will insist on concrete aid from the White
House in the place of patronizing praise and vague promises from
second-string bureaucrats.