Moving Debate on Drugs From Rhetoric to Action

President-elect George Bush has named nearly all the members of his Cabinet. One nomination remaining could be his most important: the national drug director.

For each of the past three elections, Congress and the President have attempted to outbid the other in tough-sounding proposals to “win the war” on drugs. We’ve passed more than 2,000 pages of “get-tough” drug proposals, some good and others less than they appear.

For the first time, we have enacted legislation to create a Cabinet office on narcotics control--a mechanism to make one person accountable for administering these thousands of pages of laws, to end the turf wars between the 16 Cabinet departments involved in drug abuse and narcotics control. Perhaps most important, this legislation creates within six months a detailed national strategy for reducing drug abuse and improving narcotics control.

The national debate on narcotics can move to a new phase--from ideas to action. This new law presents the President-elect and the 101st Congress with the opportunity to move beyond the campaign rhetoric and undertake responsible efforts to cope with the drug crisis.

The President, the new Cabinet officer and the Congress must rise to this new challenge:

The President: Bush has a special obligation to take the challenge of narcotics control seriously. He was elected partly because of his commitment to curb drugs. Americans consider drugs the No. 1 domestic problem, in large part because the epidemic has brought some neighborhoods to the edge of anarchy.

The President-elect must choose an individual of talent and commitment. The success of a Bush presidency may be determined as much by this appointment as his secretary of state. Bush must select a nationally recognized leader who comes to the office assured of the respect, support and cooperation of the President, the other Cabinet secretaries and Congress. The challenge is too great and deadlines for action too short to allow time for a less well-established person to build credibility.

Furthermore, the new director must have the confidence to speak honestly to the American people about the drug problem and what it will take to deal with it. But he or she should not come to the office with a narrow focus on either enforcement or prevention as the means for dealing with drugs. Far more important than any specific drug-related expertise will be the ability to exert broad leadership over the anti-drug activities of the executive branch and to attract broad support in Congress for the new National Drug Strategy.

The Cabinet officer: The new director will face one of the most difficult public-policy challenges in recent memory. Within 180 days, the office must produce a specific, realistic national strategy for coming to grips with the drug crisis. This blueprint for action must force a national debate on the fundamental questions of controlling narcotics trafficking and abuse. For example:

-- What is the proper balance between demand reduction and supply reduction? The new legislation says the balance should be 50-50. Will the new director have the courage to take funds out of existing enforcement programs and put them into treatment and prevention? Or to go to Congress and ask for the funds? Do we even know what kind of treatment works--especially for the most destructive kinds of drugs, such as crack? Do Congress and the public have the patience to find out what sort of prevention and education programs work?

-- Should we be increasing street-level enforcement at the expense of interdiction, crop substitution or arrest of drug kingpins? While there have been demonstrable successes in other Northeast cities for using street-level enforcement, especially in smaller cities, the Washington experience with “Operation Clean Sweep” is not encouraging.

-- How much time and money would it take to meet a pledge of “treatment on demand” for drug abusers? One reason street-level enforcement programs may be failing is that small-time distributors or users, when arrested and released on bail, have to wait weeks or even months to get into a treatment program.

We should be spending as much energy trying to require a combination of rigorous drug testing and monitoring for these kinds of arrestees as we do for antitrust attorneys in the Department of Justice who don’t know crack from baking soda. Even with a good drug-testing program, how can we expect to get people off drugs if we don’t have treatment slots available?

-- What is the proper balance between enforcement and interdiction, and is the new director prepared to draw clear lines to prevent overlapping programs? This is the key to ending the backbiting that continues to dominate federal efforts. Whether it’s double-reporting of seizure figures or hiding cases from each other or hiring public relations firms to lobby Congress against rival agencies, the new director must end this turf warfare. He must honestly evaluate Navy and Coast Guard programs that cost $2 million per seizure and a Customs air surveillance program using a 245-foot blimp that costs $19 million and that in six months of operation has not caught a single drug courier plane.

-- Should we be encouraging community-based prevention programs? One of the most encouraging developments in the past few years has been articulate and organized neighborhood-watch programs. But in some cases, vigilance can slip into vigilantism. How do we encourage the kind of effort that is going on, especially in drug-infested neighborhoods, without the residents taking the law into their own hands out of frustration?

Congress: While I hope this new phase means fewer omnibus crime bills and a greater emphasis by the Administration on how to use the laws we have, it does not mean Congress’ work is done.

First, we must commit ourselves to rigorous oversight of the new office and be prepared to stand behind the national plan developed in consultation with Congress. We should insist on specifics, with objective measures of success and a monthly timetable for implementation.

Second, we must be prepared to create our own oversight system. Beginning with the nomination hearings and continuing through the oversight by various committees, it is essential that the new director know who he is reporting to in the Congress and when. This may mean some sharing of turf on the part of committees. I have doubts about creating a single committee because the consolidated substantive jurisdiction would probably not be given to it. However, Senate chairmen should get together with the majority leader to create an informal oversight mechanism, much as we did with task forces in the past three Congresses to pass omnibus crime packages.

Finally, Congress must be prepared to put its money where its mouth is. For two Congresses in a row, we’ve passed large authorization bills that sound as if we are going to spend huge sums of money--$1.7 billion in 1986 and $2.6 billion this fall. But when it comes time to spend the money, the Office of Management and Budget either finds a way to defer or redirect it out of drug programs or the appropriation is not forthcoming from Congress.

In October, Sen. Warren Rudman (R-N.H.) and I offered an amendment to raise cigarette and liquor taxes to fund full implementation of the drug bill. That proposal was defeated. The new drug office, the President and the Congress should either endorse that proposal or come up with some alternative for full funding. The American people are prepared to spend an additional 2 cents for a pack of cigarettes to pay for narcotics control, and if some alternative is not found Rudman and I are prepared to keep offering this proposal until some alternative passes.

This is an ambitious agenda, and it must begin immediately. We hope the President-elect will start the process in the right direction with the selection of the right person to direct this effort. Once that is done, the rest of the Cabinet, the Congress and the American people will be prepared to make the sacrifices necessary to begin the war on drugs.