Bush Advocates Quick Execution for Drug Lords

Vice President George Bush, concluding a campaign trip meant to showcase his urban concerns, declared Wednesday that the death penalty should be carried out in “swift” fashion for convicted drug kingpins.

Bush said: “We’ve got to find a way to do it swiftly. Due process is fine, but we’ve got to find a way to speed it up.” Asked later how he would preserve constitutional protections while still ensuring quick executions, he said: “I don’t know the answer to that. I’m not a lawyer.”

Both Bush and the man he hopes to succeed, President Ronald Reagan, took up the issue of drugs Tuesday, but their comments about the state of America’s anti-drug effort left them in rare disagreement.

‘Holding Our Own’

Reagan told the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington that “right now we’re holding our own.

“We’ve stopped America’s free fall into the drug pit,” he added. “We’re getting our footing to climb out.”

Bush, however, while saying that the country had made “dramatic progress” against drug insurgency, said in New York that “we are barely holding our own against the flood of drugs, and in some ways we are losing ground.”

Asked who was right, Bush said bluntly: “Me. But I don’t see a contradiction here. I mean I know there’s this insatiable desire to make a difference between me and the President, but I think we can rationalize that to show you there’s no difference.”

In his speech to a municipal association here on the last day of a three-day swing through New York state, the probable Republican nominee also unleashed vague criticisms of his Democratic counterparts, contending that they had been critical of the nation’s drug enforcement officers.

Challenges Opponents

“Many of our political opponents criticize the anti-drug effort, but how many of them have been out front for mandatory sentencing, tougher penalties?” Bush charged.

“I challenge the opponents of mine to stand up,” he said. “You say this is war--then treat it as such. Don’t let these killers back on the streets.”

He refused to elaborate on which of the Democratic candidates he considered critical of drug agents.

“If the shoe fits, wear it,” he said.

Bush wound up three days of campaigning in New York by traveling to a Harlem school and then flying to Buffalo and Rochester for brief appearances. In the course of his trip, he accented urban-oriented concerns, keying on job training, for example, in economically vulnerable areas of western and upstate New York.

“We’re going to need to train or retrain displaced workers and young job-seekers, people in Schenectady who through no fault of their own were put out of work because of major technological changes,” Bush told supporters in that city Tuesday.