THIS 10-YEAR WAR CAN BE WON

After three decades of studying the history of drugs and drug policy in the
United States, I was impressed (and surprised) by the Clinton
administration's recent proposal for a 10-year drug strategy. Here, at
last, comes recognition of the need for a steady and consistent policy over
an appropriate span of time. A common fault in drug policy has been
anticipating or promising dramatic results within an unrealistically brief
period.

Therefore, when the Speaker of the House rejected the strategy's goal as
too drawn out and defeatist, I wondered whether our drug policy could ever
escape the insistent, immediate demands of our political life.

Newt Gingrich feels that a 10-year strategy indicates pessimism and perhaps
lassitude in dealing with the drug problem. The Civil War, he says, "took
just four years to save the Union and abolish slavery." Why can't we solve
the drug problem, another form of slavery, in just a few years?

A look at our first drug epidemic, which peaked between 1900 and World War
I, reminds us that the duration of a wave of drug abuse has been roughly a
half-century even in the face of severe penalties and popular condemnation.
To approach the drug problem as if it were the gasoline shortage of the
1970s is to misunderstand the nature of the problem. Reducing and stopping
drug use requires fundamental changes in the attitudes of millions of
Americans, and that shift in attitude is more gradual than we would wish.
When Mr. Gingrich praises the decline in drug use among young people from
1979 to 1992, he is talking about a decline that was just one or 2 percent
a year. Declines in drug use are gradual, at least when compared with the
heated promises we have heard for three decades about a quick elimination
of the problem. Thus a 10-year strategy is reasonable in that it promotes a
steady pressure against drug use less affected by shifting political
forces. An approach that transcends more than two presidential terms even
carries a hope that the issue can be lifted out of partisan conflict.

Demanding quick solutions to the drug problem inevitably leads to
frustration because the decline rate is never as steep as promised. This
may lead to more severe penalties, the scapegoating of minorities and,
finally, discouragement. Can we say anything positive about the
congressional statement contained in the 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Act that the
United States should be drug-free by 1995? Such misperceptions of our
experience with drugs create a sense of failure, even though drug use
generally has declined since 1980. Promises of a quick-fix may energize
concerned citizens for a while, but the larger effect is to discourage
them. Repeated, hyped, short-term drug campaigns to end drug abuse "once
and for all" (a federal government slogan of 1972) are reminiscent of
cocaine use: Every time the same dose is taken the impact lessens, the
temptation to increase the dose escalates and, finally, you have burnout.

Gingrich's claim for the Civil War suggests he was not wearing his
historian's cap when he spoke. The Civil War marked the culmination of many
decades of an abolitionist campaign that gradually changed Americans'
attitude toward slavery. Altering perceptions is at the heart of such
principled efforts, and it cannot be done quickly. This is the wisdom of
John Adams's observation that the American Revolution was "done and the
principles all established and the system matured before the year 1775."
For Adams, to focus on the War of Independence was to lose sight of the
"revolution in the minds of the people" that occurred in the two decades
before the shot was fired at Lexington.

This is the historical perspective we must bring to the campaign against
drug abuse, not simplistic references to short wars that supposedly ended
prolonged and embedded social evils.

© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company

Checked-by: Richard Lake