Drug War Inc spends $15bn but the dope keeps on coming

: "Are you worried about your trip to Tijuana, General?" Reports
that a Mexican drug trafficker had called the FBI and threatened to
fire a missile at America's drug tsar had sent a squad of American
and Mexican reporters into a minor frenzy. "No," Barry McCaffrey
answered, stonily, then used the question to launch into his theme
of the day: a toll of 400 violent incidents involving US personnel
on the border, and 200 Mexican law officers killed. "What about
the rocket?" someone called. For four days last week, General
McCaffrey had been doing what drug tsars do best: gladhanding and
press conferencing his way along the USMexico border, rallying the
troops. The death threat was apparently leaked by his own staff, who
called it " credible". True, the general was exhorting
MexicanAmerican cooperation against traffickers, but it seemed
unlikely that the drug cartels would actually loose off a missile at
a top US official.

The fourstar general, a muchdecorated Vietnam veteran and Gulf war
commander, rode around the dry flatlands with his large entourage in
a lumbering silver Greyhound bus, tailed by security guards in
camouflage gear and goggles. He cast an approving, suitably steely
eye over confiscated bales of marijuana, wrapped in plastic and
grease in hidden compartments in Subarus and Mercedes, and inspected
a wholetruck Xray system that picks out cocaine concealed in tyres
and cargo. Then he slipped into Tijuana to meet Mexican officials at
an undisclosed location.

Applications close on Friday to be the British Government's own drug
tsar, at a salary of pounds 80,000. British experts are warning
against "gung ho " figures leading the new "battle against drugs",
but Gen McCaffrey, who led the 24th Armoured Infantry Division in the
100hour ground war against Iraq, prefers to speak of drugs as a
cancer rather than an enemy. He said last week that he would
willingly meet a British tsar, but warned that while the title
"sounds like a step up from General", the reality of the job "doesn't
lend itself to topdown solutions".

"Each country has to sort out on your own how best to deal with this
issue," he added, diplomatically. "We think it's preferable to have
one office of government with a single focus on this issue." But in
the words of John Walters, who served as deputy and later acting
drugs tsar in the Bush administration, the job is a "weird hybrid
that is difficult to maintain. . . You are never going to have a
Department of Drugs."

Concrete achievements are few: while the Clinton administration now
boasts of
spending some $15bn (pounds 9.3bn) on antidrug operations, Gen
McCaffrey's office
controls less than 1 per cent of it. The rest is funnelled through
nearly 60 departments
and agencies who run a myriad of programmes, from the FBI to the US
Forest Service
and the Department of Education.

Gen McCaffrey's power rests largely on his access to the President
through the Cabinet, the skill of his 150strong staff and the force
of his personality in a country that puts much faith in military
leaders. He has won over Congress, but is reported to have struggled
with the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency and other big institutional
players in what the Washington Post called "Drug War Inc". Getting
the government to do anything, he observed recently, "is like herding
ducks with a broom".

The 2,000 milelong Mexican border captures the current
contradictions of US drug policy. Despite the formidable hardware and
manpower now deployed there, in scenes reminiscent of Cold War
Berlin, the drugs keep coming through. The street price of heroin and
cocaine has not appreciably increased in the past 15 years; in fact,
according to DEA figures, drugs are purer and cheaper than ever,
though US agencies seize about 100 tons of cocaine a year.

Then there are the new US trends in narcotics: highgrade, smokeable
heroin,
increasingly of South American origin, and the decidedly unglamorous
methamphetamine, known as crank or speed, cooked up in kitchen
laboratories. (Ecstacy
and other "club drugs" barely rate a mention in Gen McCaffrey's 1997
strategy report.)

America seems fatigued by the "war on drugs". A President who has
admitted trying marijuana (though not inhaling) dwells more on the
evils of tobacco. Reports showing rising drug use by children
breathed some fresh life into the issue last year, but after 10
years, crack cocaine killings are receding, and crime is falling.
Drug use is still considerably lower than in the late 1970s.

Into this vacuum has stepped the financier, George Soros. His money
helped fund ballot initiatives in California and conservative Arizona
to legalise medical marijuana, in the teeth of opposition by Gen
McCaffrey and the legal establishment. Mr Soros recently told Time
magazine that he will give a further $15m over five years to groups
that oppose a drugs policy he calls "insane ", and which has helped
double the US prison population to more than a million.

Sorosfunded groups are pushing at the very least for prevention and
treatment programs to get a half share of the drugs budget, against
the third they get now. Gen McCaffrey, they say, agrees publicly on
the principle of reducing demand rather than supply, but has yet to
bend the budget figures towards these politically "soft" solutions.

"Would this be your first tsar (in Britain)?" asks Rosalind
Brannigan, of Drug Strategies, a Sorossupported group. Seven US
states, she notes, now have their own. The advantages, she says, are
at least having " a spokesman, a lightning rod, a sense of focus".
But the overall experience at the national level has not been a happy
one.

The most successful tsar was probably the first man to hold the job,
William Bennett. The bullish former Education Secretary came with the
political clout and temperament to fight the Washington bureaucratic
battles, but he left after two years of unavailing attempts to get
the Defence Department and CIA involved in the fight against drugs.
Mr Bennett went on to write the bestselling Book of Virtues,
establishing himself as a moral force on the Republican right.

"He brings people together,"declared Johnny Williams, Border Patrol
chief for the San Diego sector, among the gaggle of people greeting
Gen McCaffrey. Trying to explain the role, Mr Williams groped for
Americanisms. "Our drug tsar is trying to set some standards that can
help consistentise is that a word?" It was important, he continued,
to "deconflict " agency turf wars on the border.

"I hope they give the person some teeth. That's what's missing,"
said Donald Ferrarone, recently retired as head of the DEA's Texas
border operations. "You've had competent people put into a position
where no one is compelled to listen. If you are going to have it,
make it a real deal, don't fool yourself with some politician unless
you just want somebody to be a spokesman. Our experience has been
that good people have been basically wasted."

[Copyright 1997, Dialog]