A Special Editorial Page Report

With unrelenting pressure the war on drugs can be won

To rely on Bill Clinton or Congress for smart, comprehensive steps against
drugs would be foolish. It's much wiser to combat narcotics by emphasizing
local initiatives in South Florida.

Clinton is notoriously wishywashy on drugs. The president's current
antidrug comments fell on skeptical ears after his earlier failure to
pursue reports of drug abuse by White House employees, before they were
hired. Clinton's sappy admission of smoking marijuana once in the 1960s,
but not inhaling, added neither to his credibility nor his seriousness on
the drug issue.

Congress as a whole isn't much better. Many members of Congress take a
primitive but popular stance in public no matter what they think
privately that it's better to attack the foe without than the enemy within.

Not that the United States should stop pressuring Colombia, Mexico and
other drugproduction and drugtransit countries. Interdiction and arrests
of drug kingpins must not flag.

The main enemy, though, is inside this nation. With the tremendous U.S.
demand for narcotics from 13 million regular drug abusers, and from
millions of children experimenting dangerously with their futures,
smugglers always will find a way to get drugs to buyers.

Besides, the U.S. is itself is a drugsource country, with, for example,
the increasing popularity of expensive, domestically grown marijuana. Barry
McCaffrey, the White House's antidrug policy chief, predicts in the next
15 years U.S.made ``boutique'' drugs will become the biggest narcotics
threat to America's children.

Whatever is done to block the flow of cocaine and heroin into the U.S. may
therefore become less important, as the home front encompasses more of the
drug supply as well as the huge demand. However that change plays out, the
most deeply entrenched enemy is us, and the local level is the most
promising place to wage the battle a civil war of sorts for drug
prevention.

It's right here in South Florida next door, across the street and in the
neighboring town where the gritty struggle against drugs will be won or
lost. House by house. School by school. Child by child.

The Florida Legislature nibbles at the edges of the drug emergency, passing
laws occasionally that push the state toward creating an antidrug climate.
This year it approved the Hugh O'Connor Memorial Act, honoring the
32yearold actor who committed suicide after years of drug abuse and
despite desperate attempts by his father, renowned actor Carroll O'Connor,
to chase away dealers and save his son.

Introduced by Rep. Sharon Merchant, RPalm Beach Gardens, the law targets
drug dealers by making them liable for civil lawsuits, not just criminal
charges. The law aims at all drug dealers, particularly those who sell
small amounts of narcotics in the workplace and who often escape criminal
prosecution.

Carroll O'Connor could have used that kind of law, if it had existed, to
sue the drug dealers who were wrecking his son's life. It's a sound and
useful addition to the legal arsenal deployed against drugs.

In next year's legislative session, two bills from Rep. Sally Heyman,
DNorth Miami Beach, deserve unswerving support. One allows stern action
against parents who abuse drugs or alcohol and refuse to get clean so they
could take better care of their children.

If a parent has a chronic history of substance abuse, meaning a year or
more, and either refuses treatment or fails to be drugfree despite
treatment, parental rights could be terminated. Then the children would be
taken away from that rotten, sick environment and given a chance at life.

The other Heyman bill would make the drug testing of pregnant women even
more comprehensive than it already is. Right now, 95 percent of pregnant
Florida women are tested for drugs and HIV voluntarily, and this bill would
provide $500,000 to target the other 5 percent.

In South Florida, slumbering politicians on the Broward County Commission
ought to wake up and smell the repugnant odor coming from Port Everglades,
which is under their jurisdiction. Workers with drug convictions, lots of
them, are employed at the port and therefore excellent prospects for
recruitment by narcotics smugglers.

The Port of Miami finally requires background criminal checks of its
workers, and bans those with felony convictions. How can the Broward
commission be so dense? If the commissioners emerged from their torpor and
passed a similar ordinance, right away, not only would they astonish every
county resident, they'd make crime tougher for drug smugglers.

For the long term in South Florida, local antidrug coalitions are the best
hope to gradually build a social norm or atmosphere that shoves narcotics
out of bounds. If energetic and wellrun, local coalitions take advantage
of national resources research on drug prevention, say, or new TV
advertisements against drugs and apply them here.

Broward County's Commission on Substance Abuse is a mature, energetic
organization with an excellent track record; it needs more financial help
from the business community. In Palm Beach County the Partnership for a
DrugFree Community is younger and should expand its scope if it can obtain
a reliable source of significant amounts of money.

In law enforcement, South Florida has been declared a High Intensity Drug
Trafficking Area no surprise there and a HIDTA office operates out of
Miami. It initiates enforcement projects, vigorously and usually
effectively, while coordinating efforts of 17 federal agencies, six state
agencies and 37 local police departments and other groups.

That's 60 agencies, altogether, and ``coordinating'' is hardly a large
enough word to describe getting them all on the same page for antidrug
actions. HIDTA does good work, hard and slogging, and South Floridians live
better lives because of it.

Complicated? Oh, yes. The South Florida HIDTA reflects, in miniature, the
complexity of this nation's long and frustrating war against drugs.

Frustration and complexity, however, don't imply the war can't be won. As
cocaine and heroin are pushed along their twisting journey from the coca
and poppy fields of Colombia to the hands of eager addicts in Florida,
there are many chances to break into the process and halt it.

To actually win it, which means reducing drug abuse to the levels of 35 or
40 years ago, will require more than arrests and confiscation of narcotics,
as vital as those actions are. It will require a drastic reduction, through
advanced methods of drug prevention, in the number of Americans foolish
enough to stumble into the world of drugs in the first place.

For those already inside that selfdestructive world, it will necessitate a
drastic change of behavior, as they learn to reject the drugs that harm and
kill them.

Without smart and unrelenting pressure to prevent drug use before it
starts, and to treat its victims so they become drugfree, the war never
will be won. With that pressure maybe. But it's a big, robust maybe,
leaning toward victory.

Copyright © 1997, SunSentinel Company and South Florida Interactive, Inc.