NEW DRUG CZAR SAYS WAR ON DRUGS A NATIONAL HEALTH ISSUE

Seattle's Police Chief, Gil Kerlikowske, Will Direct the White House
on Its National Drug Policy

SEATTLE -- During nearly a decade as Seattle's top law enforcement
officer Gil Kerlikowske was confronted with concerns about corner
drug dealing almost daily.

"I would meet with community folks and they would say 'about two
blocks from here,' or 'over in Belltown near where I live,' or 'down
the street from my house, there's people selling drugs on the corner
at all hours.' "

Kerlikowske's response as chief was playbook police work -- deploying
officers to the scene, arresting players along the illegal drug trade
food-chain and seizing territorial, if temporary, victory on the drug corners.

But a week into his new assignment as President Barack Obama's drug
czar, Kerlikowske is using the platform to recast the "War on Drugs"
as a matter of national public health and not simply the domain of
the criminal justice system.

"I'd be happy if I can change the conversation about drugs. We
recycle people through the criminal justice system but it's more than
that," Kerlikowske said Thursday during a visit to Seattle before
wrapping up his move to Washington, D.C., to direct the White House
Office of National Drug Control Policy.

He sat in a small meeting room at the Four Seasons Hotel that
overlooked ferry traffic in Puget Sound on a cloud-free afternoon.
Two weeks earlier, the interview might have taken place under those
blue skies, checking out a nearby drug corner or dropping by one of
the city's needle-exchange sites.

But new constraints -- including advance teams and a cadre of U.S.
Marshals -- come along with his new leadership role within the
Executive Office of the President. So instead a deluxe setting served
as the backdrop for a one-on-one conversation with The Oregonian on
the linguistics of the war, the ravages of addiction and the social
cost of drug incarceration.

The office may only be 20 years old, but the war it has waged was
declared four decades ago, when President Richard Nixon outlined the
federal government's illegal drug prohibition campaign.

"Pill Mills" in Florida

No one claims the war has been won. While fewer high school seniors
say they've been offered marijuana or amphetamines than they were a
generation ago, nearly 2 million people are arrested every year for
nonviolent drug offenses.

And abuse of steroids and designer drugs has mushroomed, as have
"pill mills" like the ones Kerlikowske visited in South Florida --
storefront, walk-in facilities that dispense millions of addictive
prescription pain medications to people who flood in from other
states. Think OxyContin for out-of-towners, or Vicodin for visitors.

To combat the problem, Kerlikowske said he will push all states to
adopt the sort of prescription-monitoring databases already in place
in 30 states, including Oregon and Washington, where police,
pharmacists and physicians can track prescriptions for addictive drugs.

Without a national system to monitor abuse, "the cost to society," he
said, "is huge."

A statistic that haunts the new "drug czar" may come as a surprise:
more people in the United States die from pharmaceutical and illegal
drugs than from gunshot wounds.

"In the past few weeks, we've had three deaths from swine flu or the
H1N1 virus, and, in the same period, we've had thousands of people
overdose and die," he said. "This a public health issue."

Police Background

Kerlikowske, the sixth drug czar since the position was established
in 1989, is only the second to come from a background in law
enforcement. That perspective -- rooted in jobs as police chief in
Buffalo and coastal Florida cities -- was honed over nine years in Seattle.

But missed opportunities in Seattle also may shape Kerlikowske's
focus as federal drug policy chief. Take needle-exchange programs, for example.

Although the Obama administration's 2010 budget does not lift the ban
on federally-funded needle exchanges, as a candidate, Obama strongly
favored such efforts, and Kerlikowske said he supports law
enforcement officials working alongside treatment providers to solve
drug issues.

"I think needle exchanges can be part of a larger health care issue.
Police chiefs know judges and prosecutors, but I don't think they're
shoulder-to-shoulder with the treatment community," he said.
Kerlikowske said he admits he didn't foster such relationships with
service providers in Seattle, including the city's needle exchange
near Pike Place Market.

"We have a chance now to forge relationships with our treatment
colleagues," he said. "You can increase the impact because you're
collaborating."

Will Soon Talk Policies

Kerlikowske expects to meet soon with Attorney General Eric Holder to
talk drug policies. Matters of special interest to the Pacific
Northwest are high on the agenda, he said, including medical
marijuana and the scourge of methamphetamines.

He is keeping in mind the words of fellow West Coast police chiefs,
who were raising red flags about meth long before federal officials
began to listen.

"It wasn't being heard," he said. "We're gonna be a lot faster to
look at things on a regional basis. Meth is one thing. Medical
marijuana is another."

In Seattle, Kerlikowske followed but didn't embrace city direction to
ignore medical marijuana crimes.

Still, if pot legalization supporters haven't exactly found a vocal
ally in Kerlikowske, advocates for medical marijuana -- on the books
in 13 states -- may be pleased with his track record.

"Whether it's the Drug Enforcement Agency or the Seattle Police
Department, you use your resources to go after the most violent
offenders," Kerlikowske said.

"Medical marijuana doesn't pose that threat."