Coast Guard Ends Drug Patrols in Face of Proposed Cutback

The Coast Guard, worried about a potential $230-million budget cut, has suspended routine drug patrols as part of an effort to avoid even harsher spending reductions later, its chief spokesman said Thursday.

“The bottom line is if it costs a dollar, don’t do it unless you have to,” Capt. James Greene, chief of public affairs, said in an interview.

Greene and Coast Guard spokesmen in Miami, Boston and Astoria, Ore., said that also means stopping routine maintenance, reducing fisheries patrols, slowing down training, reducing recruiting and awarding no new contracts.

The steps are a response to orders that Adm. James Gracey, the Coast Guard commandant, issued last week, shortly after the Senate approved the budget cut, to stay within overall spending guidelines it had adopted in August.

The cut would reduce the Coast Guard’s budget for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1 to less than $2.3 billion, instead of the $2.5 billion recommended by President Reagan and approved by the House.

Rep. Silvio O. Conte (R-Mass.), a member of the House-Senate conference committee on the proposed Transportation Department budget, said House conferees are fighting to get the money restored.

Coast Guard officials said they are taking the orders seriously.

“I don’t want to give the impression that we’re going out of business,” Lt. Cmdr. Jim Simpson said in Miami. “It is important to know that major cutters will still patrol for smugglers. But what all this does mean is we can’t just go out and look for it with the smaller cutters.”