Sharply Differing Anti-Drug Plans Told

WASHINGTON — Election-year jockeying to seize the initiative in the fight against drugs escalated Thursday as top Reagan Administration officials and Senate Democratic leaders unveiled separate, far-reaching plans.

In treating a problem that it called “epidemic,” a special task force of leading Senate Democrats far outpaced Administration proposals in calling for drastically increased funding for drug programs. Senate Democrats urged an annual increase of $3 billion--a doubling next year from current levels of about $3 billion--while Reagan’s National Drug Policy Board, headed by Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, called for a more modest 13% increase next year.

Focus on Cutting Demand

And on an issue that promises to spark fervent debate on Capitol Hill over the summer, Administration officials and Senate Democrats both made proposals aimed at reducing demand, though they diverged on how far to go.

The Democrats’ proposals were radical in their realignment of the drug budget: they proposed devoting 60% of all funds toward prevention, education, treatment and other efforts aimed at cutting drug demand and 40% toward reducing the supply. By contrast, they said about 75% to 90% of all drug funding over the last five years has gone toward cutting supply.

“This major imbalance in supply/demand efforts may help to explain the apparent failure of past anti-drug efforts,” said the Senate Democratic drug panel, which was formed last month by Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia and headed by Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York and Sam Nunn of Georgia.

The Senate Democrats said that their proposals are “founded on the firm belief that there will always be a supply of illicit drugs if people pay large sums to use them and that our ability to make any meaningful progress in the overall war on drugs will ultimately depend on efforts to reduce such demand.”

Call for Drug Czar

Toward that goal, the Senate Democrats offered these recommendations: creating a top-level drug czar--which has been opposed by the White House--to bring together federal anti-drug efforts that are now “fragmented and uncoordinated”; pulling together all the Justice Department agencies that deal with drugs and organized crime under the direction of a new assistant attorney general; assigning 20 new federal judges and allowing U.S. magistrates to hear drug cases to alleviate the tremendous backlog at the district court level; denying federal loans and other benefits for repeat offenders, and toughening drug penalties and fines.

The Senate Democrats’ proposals mark “a major step forward in crafting legislation to deal with the flood of drugs which is poisoning our children and our society,” Byrd asserted. “The quick action by the working group demonstrates that Congress has put drug legislation on the fast track.”

But while Byrd pledged to work with Senate Republicans to come up with a bipartisan drug package, an aide to Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) said that the Republican proposals are almost certainly “going to be less expensive” than the Democratic plan, probably by more than $1 billion a year.

The White House task force Thursday set out several priorities that included: mandating drug-free workplaces for those firms getting federal funds and, similarly, requiring anti-drug programs at federally funded colleges; stripping federal aid away from any students found guilty of drug offenses and providing increased military assistance to foreign nations to combat drug trafficking.

‘Send Strong Message’

Receiving the task force’s report, Reagan said: “These recommendations send a strong message to drug law offenders, including users and traffickers. I join the Chairman (Meese) in emphasizing that we cannot tolerate criminals who violate our borders, terrorize our communities, or poison our citizens . . . . “

Reagan said that he plans next week to approve an Administration package and present it to the Bipartisan Executive-Legislative Drug Task Force.