FORMER DRUG CZARS BELIEVE THEIR WAR HAS BEEN WON

The United States has won the war against illegal drugs. That was the
conclusion of a unique gathering on June 17, which marked the 35th
anniversary of the war's beginning in 1971 with the appointment of Dr.
Jerome H. Jaffe, a psychiatrist, as the first White House drug czar.

Jaffe was joined at the the anniversary gatheing in by six other
former czars, Dr. Robert L. Du Pont, Dr. Peter G. Bourne, Lee I.
Dogoloff, Dr. Donald Ian Mac-Donald, Lee Brown and retired Army Gen.
Barry R. McCaffrey. Also attending were 20 former staff members and a
handful of experts, including me, a specialist historian.

The meeting, sponsored and hosted by the University of Maryland, was
held for the purpose of making a historical record.

The seven former czars and former staff members held remarkably
unanimous views, though they come from a variety of backgrounds and
included Democrats and Republicans who worked for five very different
presidents. And what they had to say was often surprising.

The main conclusion that we won the war on drugs was the biggest
surprise, because advocates of illegal drugs have in recent years
filled the media with rhetoric about "the failed war on drugs." The
czars' straightforward conclusion may come as a shock, but, as they
outlined what the war was about, what they had to say made a lot of
sense.

Thirty-five years ago, the big worry was the veterans who were
returning from Vietnam who had been using illegal drugs. And the drug
causing overwhelming concern was heroin. A hard-headed public-health
approach showed an alarming number of deaths directly related to
heroin, not to mention crimes committed by addicts. As the veterans
showed that their use did not continue after their return to the
United States, and as methadone-maintenance programs came into place,
along with enforcement and education, heroin use declined, and even
more dramatic was the decline in heroin-related deaths. This was the
great victory of the war on drugs. A recent small uptick in illegal
drug use is remarkably insignificant compared with the original problem.

Only in the 1980s, when the price of cocaine, in the form of crack,
went down did that drug become a significant public-health problem.
But what about marijuana? At that time, the serious effects of pot
smoking were largely unknown. But in the late 1970s, the parents
movement developed parents who had seen what happened when their
kids got addicted to marijuana and their young brains got fried. This
was a huge group of very angry people, and they were political dynamite.

The main tension in the office of drug czar was between enforcement
and treatment. Congress would fund enforcement but did not like
treatment, although one czar told of taking a couple of reluctant
members of Congress to view a treatment center and see how much money
treatment was saving the public as addicts, often under court
coercion, were enabled to work productively.

For historians like me, the collective experience of the former czars
provides two lessons. The first is unwelcome to extremists of the
right and left and their shady commercial allies: Prohibitory laws can
work. Historians have established that the 1920s experiment in alcohol
prohibition was successful and was repealed in 1933 only because of a
massive, well-financed propaganda campaign. The leadership of the drug
czars in reducing supply and demand of illegal drugs is reflected not
only in the public-health statistics. They can also cite public
opinion polls. Thirty-five years ago, illegal drugs were usually first
or second and no lower than fourth as public concerns. Now the drugs
issue trails many other problems.

Everyone at the conference knew that the problem is going to continue
for American society, but at a much lower level than 35 years before.
That is what laws do: They attempt to control problems, not bring
perfection. Laws against murder provide hope to control the problem,
not abolish murder.

The second lesson is more subtle. The title czar was ironic, because
the appointees had no direct, executive power. Instead, they
coordinated the many federal and local agencies dealing with aspects
of the drug problem and drug-law enforcement. The czars used
persuasion. They got a drug detection and treatment system into the
armed services, where the programs served as models for private
businesses and other units. When new substances of abuse came along,
often the czar was able to get officials and private businesses,
especially pharmaceutical companies, to get one substance or another
restricted before it became a major problem.

So what if the amusingly designated czars had no real power? They
proved that in American government, there can be impressive leadership
beyond formal power.