Anti-Drug Bill Readied by Senate Leaders

Senate leaders, after days of intense negotiations on a massive anti-drug proposal, Thursday produced a bipartisan compromise on which debate is expected to begin today.

Few details of the Senate legislation were available, but aides to the leadership of each party described it as a “base bill” that had been stripped of many controversial provisions, including proposals backed by the Republican majority to require mandatory drug testing of government employees who hold sensitive jobs and to allow imposition of the death penalty for some drug-related crimes.

Also omitted was a Democratic plan to establish a federal “drug czar” to oversee combined government efforts against illegal narcotics.

Potential Amendments

However, under the agreement, any of those measures could be added to the bill as amendments. And, if last week’s experience in the heavily Democratic House is any indication, there will be strong political pressure behind them. The House voted by large margins to attach to its anti-drug plan most of those provisions and almost any others that could be seen as tough on drugs.

Drugs have emerged as a hot political issue during the final months of the campaign season. Public concern has grown in the wake of the cocaine-related deaths of athletes Len Bias and Don Rogers, as well as the publicity that has been given the wide availability of newer and more dangerous forms of drugs.

Among the Senate races in which it has become a major issue is the hard-fought battle between Sen. Paula Hawkins (R-Fla.) and Democratic Gov. Bob Graham.

But anti-drug zeal is causing deep uneasiness among some senators. Sen. Daniel J. Evans (R-Wash.) warned at a news conference that a “congressional lynch mob” has set off a “sanctimonious election-year stampede which will probably trample our Constitution.”

Reagan Issues Appeal

President Reagan, who has approved his own version of the legislation, continued his anti-drug campaign Thursday, asking the National Fraternal Congress to recruit its 10 million members to help in the war against narcotics. “Despite our best efforts,” he told the organization of ethnic community volunteer groups, “illegal cocaine, including crack, is streaming into the United States.”

Cocaine supplies are increasing “in spite of the fact that we have intercepted 10 times as much of the drug than was previously done,” the President said, without giving specific figures. Four to five million Americans are regular cocaine users, he said, and drug consumption is highest “among the age group 18 to 25--young people just entering the work force.”

“Nothing in our nation’s history is more offensive to our fundamental values and national sense of purpose than drug abuse,” Reagan said.

An International Commitment

The President and Mrs. Reagan will meet next month with U.S. ambassadors to countries where people are believed to be involved in the drug trade, as producers, shippers or consumers of illegal drugs. “Nancy and I will meet with them to discuss how we can mobilize an international commitment to win the war against illegal drug use,” the President said. “As I’ve said before: No drug network will remain alive.”

Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, praising the success of the joint U.S.-Bolivian crackdown on cocaine processing in Bolivia, said Thursday that the United States is discussing with other governments similar operations to disrupt the illicit drug production in their countries.

Operation Blast Furnace, the code name for the Bolivian effort, has destroyed 16 “major” cocaine refineries and 23 “large” storage facilities, seriously disrupting cocaine production there, Meese told a press conference. Six U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopters, piloted and maintained by 160 Americans, are taking part in the effort, which began in July and is expected to continue for three years.

“The whole production of cocaine in Bolivia has been disrupted in a major way for the rest of the year,” Meese said. He refused to identify the other countries where operations “tailored” to their needs are under consideration.

Staff writer Ronald J. Ostrow contributed to this story.