U.S. DRUG POLICY, PROBLEM NEED FIX

Barry McCaffrey came to Kansas to promote the national drug control
strategy last week, spending nearly an hour with The Topeka
Capital-Journal's editorial board in the process.

McCaffrey was a four-star Army general when he abruptly was named
director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy at
the beginning of President Clinton's second term. When the president
announced the appointment, McCaffrey's expression was that of a man
who had just learned he was the main course at a cannibal banquet.

Absolutely nobody envied him, because despite a couple of bodyguards,
there is more visibility than authority in being drug czar. And, in
the past, much frustration.

McCaffrey claims he doesn't know just why he was picked. He certainly
didn't ask for it, he said, but "I took it because the president asked
me -- and because my dad told me to do it."

On the surface, the appointment would seem a waste of a good officer.
Youngest and most-decorated four-star general in the Army, he twice
earned the Distinguished Service Cross -- the Army's second-highest
award for valor in action -- had been wounded in combat three times,
led the "Hail Mary" dash deep into Iraq that ended the 100-hour Desert
Storm ground campaign in 1991. He is the son of a lieutenant general,
the father of a major and was an obvious choice for Army chief of staff.

Still, the West Pointer's background and 39-year Army career clearly
serve him well here, too.

Placed in command of 150 Washington bureaucrats, McCaffrey set about
analyzing national policy in light of the Army's near-disastrous
experience with drugs in Vietnam and crafting a modified version of
the successful military cure: Education by the boatload, combined with
stiff penalties against transgressors.

The low-key general says confidently that a 10-year program can work
nationally, too, though he is careful to define success as a 3 percent
user level -- half what it is today and well down from the 14.1
percent of 1979.

And he is candid about the costs, pointing out the United States now
has more people (1.8 million) in prison than in the military, a figure
that will grow another 20 percent in the next five years.

"There is no segment of American society that isn't touched,"
McCaffrey said, despite the popular perception drug use is a problem
of young urban minorities. "It's everybody," seven out of 10 of them
still employed, he said.

Refreshingly, McCaffrey immediately directed his staff to lay off the
"war on drugs" language.

He may have been too late. The past several years show the already
tattered Bill of Rights may have suffered permanent damage -- most
recently from the U.S. Supreme Court, which decided 7-2 this month
that a law enforcement officer who stops and searches a driver under
probable cause also may search other occupants of the vehicle without
their consent.

It is merely the latest in a long line of transgressions.

The FBI lied and used Texas National Guard helicopters and armored
personnel carriers in the murderous 1993 assault on David Koresh and
his followers outside Waco.

Navy SEALs and other military specialists are training police SWAT
(Special Weapons and Tactics) teams in several larger cities. Such
teams are now so popular they are almost universal in U.S. police
departments.

The Department of Defense gave 600 selective-fire M-16 assault rifles
to the Los Angeles Police Department last year after complaints the
officers were "outgunned" by a couple of bank robbers carrying legal
AK-47s and wearing body armor. Of course, responding officers armed
themselves with autoloading rifles from a nearby gunshop and killed
both bandits, but ...

Dedicated "street crime" units (as opposed, perhaps, to traffic
control?) routinely use "dynamic entry" -- breaking down doors with
battering rams at 2 a.m. Without warning, of course.

Government files, from tax returns to the new FBI log of gun buyers,
increasingly are being used to snoop in the lives of ordinary citizens.

Police are buying the latest in military technology: fifth- and
sixth-generation night vision devices, heat-seeking scanners,
parabolic listening devices -- often paid for off-budget from "extra"
money seized from people accused (not charged) of drug offenses.

Kansas state authorities use airplanes seized from private owners to
search for evidence of cultivated marijuana, methamphetamine
laboratories (they put out heat) and other narcotics activity. The
Kansas Army National Guard used to do that, until they re-equipped
with newer helicopters that are much more costly to fly. In a pinch
they may do it again, anyway.

Across the nation, sheriff's deputies and police officers are using a
variety of unmarked cars seized from private owners accused of drug
violations. It has become so commonplace no one even remarks on it.

There are other abuses, but these illustrate the trend.

"Recreational" narcotics are unquestionably one of the worst curses in
an evil and bloody century. The need to halt their spread, rebuild
families, educate the young and restore religious faith among our
people is all very clear.

McCaffrey says Kansas is lucky. It has only roughly half the "average"
drug activity of other states -- a judgment that speaks well for
Kansans and Kansas society.

Still, Kansas suffers the same surge in methamphetamines as other
states. The Kansas Bureau of Investigation reports activity is up
sharply, while other figures show marijuana is almost keeping pace.

Marijuana grows wild. Methamphetamines can be made quickly and cheaply
anywhere, though the stuff is volatile, highly explosive and dangerous
to make -- prompting McCaffrey to remark that the producers tend to
come unwrapped within a year.

The result: a dilemma. Deal with drugs or preserve our
freedoms.

Maybe this white-haired ex-general can find a way to do both. Let us
pray that he does. And that, like a physician, he first does no harm.