NO TRUCE ON DRUGS

Drug Czar Urges Michigan To Keep Up Guard Against Softer Laws

John Walters won't be spending nearly as much time as he expected in his
native Michigan this fall. His travel plans changed when state courts
decided that a ballot proposal to change Michigan drugs laws drastically was
hopelessly screwed up and kept it off the Michigan ballot.

"I'm glad you dodged that bullet here," said Walters, a Michigan State
University graduate who is director of the White House Office of National
Drug Control Policy. Usually described as America's "drug czar," Walters was
in the Detroit area recently to visit a drug court in Troy and to speak out
against the ballot proposal that's not happening. He still has work to do
fighting drug liberalization proposals in Ohio, Arizona and Nevada,
undeterred by critics who say Walters should not be jumping into political
campaigns.

"Look," he said in a meeting with the Free Press, "every one of us in the
federal service takes an oath that includes protecting and defending the
Constitution and the laws of the land. A lot of these campaigns have been
based on misrepresenting the law and the realities. . . . I have a
responsibility to lay the facts on the table."

In fact, the legislation that created Walters' office in the heyday of the
"war on drugs" in the 1980s specifically directs him to fight the
legalization of illicit drugs. Walters, who also worked in the office from
1989-93, acknowledges that is a bigger issue today than it was then.

"Things have changed," he said. "Cynicism is our fundamental enemy. . . .
That phrase, 'war on drugs,' people think because it isn't over, it's
Vietnam, so let's pull out. That phrase was originally used to rally a
country to get serious about the problem, not to suggest that this was
warlike."

In other words, like crime fighting, there will be no decisive victory, no
surrender, but an ongoing struggle to minimize the damage.

"There are some things you have to do with every generation," Walters said.
"You don't say that because education costs a lot of money, and you have to
do it over and over again, that we're going to drop it because we're not
happy with the SAT scores or the dropout rates. Let's move that money to
jobs, or just pay people to stay home. That's ludicrous."

Before the ballot proposal was struck down, Walters was concerned about the
ability of the Michigan criminal justice system to mount an effective
campaign against its well-heeled backers. Time was short to raise money and
get out the message, he said.

But now that the need is not pressing, Walters suggests an offensive all the
same to reshape the image of the anti-drug forces. It's something law
enforcement and the drug-treatment community should coalesce around, because
the folks behind the drug proposal expect to be back in Michigan for the
next election, or the one after that, making their oversimplified pitch for
treatment, not prison.

Actually, their proposal was far more complex, setting up a separate branch
of government to handle drug offenders, but failing to assure treatment and
making it next-to-impossible for authorities to build cases against the real
villains of the drug world, the dealers. But who was going to read the
details? The public perception of the drug problem is kicked-in doors,
packed prisons, wrong-house raids, desperate addicts and high-rolling
dealers, a never-ending sequence of violence and tragedy. Who wouldn't vote
to change that?

"We've just got to do a better job of explaining what we're doing in terms
of prevention and treatment and enforcement," Walters said, "and not just
wait until there's a ballot proposal that makes people question whether our
institutions are working."

Although surveys of drug use are inherently imperfect -- who admits such
things to a pollster? -- numbers from a variety of sources show use today is
about half what it was in the peak years of 1979-80.

How come? Tougher laws? Maybe. A lot of folks went away for a long time. But
it wasn't just cops and courts and kicked-in doors. That has never been a
satisfactory solution. Using treatment to extract people from the slavery of
addiction has to be part of the equation, as does ongoing education to
discourage kids from experimenting with drugs. There has been a culture
change of sorts with drugs over the last decade. They have lost their cool.
But it has been a long, painful road, with thousands of families hurt,
including the families of Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

Walters' office figures there are about 6 million drug users in America
today in need of help. So the supposedly simple solution -- softer laws --
will still have considerable appeal when it makes its way back to Michigan.
That's why the debate the ballot proposal would have triggered -- are we
doing the most effective things we can to prevent drug use from spreading?
- -- should still happen. The need is still there. Let's see what we can do to
meet it on our own terms.