U.S. DRUG CZAR JOHN WALTERS SAYS 'CHEESE' IS MOSTLY A TEXAS ISSUE

Q&A: John Walters, U.S. Drug Czar

John Walters has been the nation's drug czar since December 2001,
coordinating federal anti-drug programs and spending as director of
the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. On the eve of
President Bush's trip to Latin America, he spent a half-hour at his
office near the White House with Washington correspondent Todd J.
Gillman in a conversation that ranged from Andean coca production to
the wave of heroin-laced "cheese" hitting Dallas schools. These are
excerpts.

Q: How is the war on drugs going? Is it still a "war" on drugs? Is it
still a focus of U.S. government effort?

A: The phrase also came to be used by some to suggest that we were
going to have a battle, or a fixed set of battles, and we were going
to win or lose, and if we still have a problem, we ought to give up -
the Vietnam analogy. It's silly. ... This requires balance on reducing
supply and demand. It's a health problem, it's an education problem,
it's a public safety problem, it's a national security problem. And
it's something that - as with education and health and safety - we
have to continue to work on, because if you don't work on these
things, you stop being a civilized society.

Q: Are we making progress?

A: You see drug use going down in important categories. Use by kids -
down 23-plus percent in five years. We're expanding treatment - better
treatment, more treatment, treatment within the criminal justice
system. ..We're using the health care system to grab on to people at
various stages of potential danger.

Q: It's interesting that you emphasize a public health approach,
because there's a perception in the academic community that studies
drug policy that there's too much emphasis on interdiction and not
enough on treatment. Also Online

Cocaine confounds eradication efforts

A: The academic community that works on drug policy is almost
uniformly second rate. They're fighting battles over dogma that
doesn't really exist anymore, that's in the past.

Q: You say that drug use among children is down, but there are
alarming developments. In the Dallas area, we've had an outbreak of
"cheese" (heroin combined with Tylenol PM and sold for as little as $2
a hit, often to middle school students). How big a problem is that?

A: It's been largely localized. It has been a problem in parts of
Texas. We have not seen this visible nationwide. We have a reasonably
good sentinel system, so if it was uniformly a problem nationwide, we
probably would detect it. ... It's dangerous because obviously these
are very powerful, addictive substances. ...Fortunately, it's not that
incredibly widespread.

Q: What about drugs coming out of South America, mostly heroin and
cocaine? Figures from your office show a decrease in supply and
purity, but other studies contradict that. Illegal drugs remain cheap
and widely available.

A: I certainly recognize that there are particular places in the
United States that won't see the same performance as the aggregate.
That's true of education performance and crime and consumer prices.
We're a big country, and there are variations. But we have seen
declines, through a combination of eradication of both poppy and coca,
and record seizures.