Drug Program Dear to First Lady Loses Grant

A Justice Department unit Friday suspended a $1-million grant for a nationwide program spearheaded by First Lady Nancy Reagan and Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III to fight drug and alcohol abuse among youth after an auditor questioned how the money is being spent.

“The Justice Department has asked us to suspend activities pending a program and financial review to determine goals, accomplishments and financial stability,” said Elaine Arkin, senior vice president for communications of the National Partnership to Prevent Drug and Alcohol Abuse Among Youth.

Notification of the suspension, which a Justice Department spokesman said had been relayed to the White House, was made in a letter from Verne Speirs, acting administrator of the department’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, to Robert H. B. Baldwin, acting board chairman of the national partnership.

Took Over Monday

Details of what led to the fund cutoff were sparse. “Unfortunately, the goals of the partnership may no longer be achieved under the present circumstances,” Speirs, who took over the juvenile justice office Monday, said in his letter to Baldwin.

“Quite a bit of money has been spent, and it’s not entirely clear that it has all been spent wisely,” said Patrick Korten, a Justice Department spokesman.

The funds were suspended after a project monitor in the juvenile justice office said it appeared that the national partnership has not met “a good number” of the project milestones outlined in a plan it presented to obtain the $1 million in Justice Department seed money, said Anne Voigt, a spokeswoman for the office.

Sensitive Political Nature

Officials in the juvenile justice office said they could not recall a similar suspension in the past. However, many Justice Department officials--aware of the extremely sensitive political nature of the decision--attempted to play down its importance.

The partnership was launched with White House fanfare Oct. 10 by Mrs. Reagan, Meese and Baldwin, president of the Morgan Stanley & Co. investment banking firm. The umbrella organization was designed to encourage the drafting of strategy for attacking drug and alcohol abuse, and to send health data on substance abuse to parent groups and others working at the local level.

Mrs. Reagan, the national partnership’s honorary chairwoman, said at the time that she believed the organization would help make “my dreams of ending this terrible problem . . . a reality. However, I don’t fool myself. It’s going to take a lot of time. It can’t be done overnight.”

‘Responsibilities Suspended’

In a possibly related move Friday, James M. Wootton, deputy administrator of the juvenile justice office, had “all my responsibilities suspended” by Speirs. Wootton said Friday that he has had nothing to do with the national partnership since December when there were discussions about his running the organization.

Wootton said Speirs told him Thursday that the suspension of his “delegation of responsibility” will require everyone in the agency to report to the new administrator, “so he would have a handle on what’s going on.”

About $700,000 of the $1 million in “seed money” for the national partnership has been spent, according to the juvenile justice office. Although Meese had projected that more than 200 subgroups would join the national organization, only one such subgroup--in Mobile Bay, Ala.--has been incorporated and is at work.

Arkin, however, said that “about a dozen other communities are very interested” in forming partnerships and that about two to four of them had been expected to be formed by the fall.