Pros Are Urged to Adopt Harsh Drug Penalties : Bennett Wants National Rules That Would Ban Any Athlete Caught Twice

Outlining an unyielding approach to narcotics policy, the official in charge of the Bush Administration’s war on drugs Wednesday urged professional sports to adopt uniform regulations that would put an end to the careers of any athletes found twice to have used illegal drugs.

William J. Bennett, director of the White House office of drug control policy, said that such severe penalties would complement a similarly harsh policy for teen-agers, whom he said should be expelled from school if caught for the second time using or possessing drugs.

“If that is the standard for 16-year-olds, shouldn’t it at least be the standard for professionals?” Bennett asked after a meeting here with commissioners and players’ officials from professional football, baseball and basketball.

Participants in the session said that the sports officials responded without enthusiasm to Bennett’s suggestion. But in what the White House official called a “frank and candid exchange,” they agreed to discuss the issue further at a meeting later this summer.

The proposal, more stringent than any now in place in the sporting world, represents the latest in a series of Bennett initiatives calling for a national refusal to tolerate even casual drug use. Among the penalties Bennett has proposed for minor drug offenders are weekend imprisonment in jails or “boot camps” and the confiscation of automobiles.

“How do I justify a policy like this for kids when I don’t have one like it for adults?” Bennett said in an interview later. He said that he had “pressed the issue” repeatedly during the session, which marked the first time that officials of the three major sports had gathered to discuss the drug problem.

“Professional sports play a very important part in American life, a very important part in American imagination,” Bennett said. “Since they are so important, they ought to be a focal point of our effort.”

In addition to rules banning drug use by players, Bennett indicated that he might call for mandatory drug testing of professional athletes. He said, however, that he had not discussed that idea with the sports officials.

Although the officials said that they favor stiffer penalties for drug use, most voiced qualms about the severity of Bennett’s approach.

“We’re always behind harsher penalties but we’re also behind the need for rehabilitation,” said Gene Upshaw, executive director of the National Football League Players Assn.

Said Baseball Commissioner Bart Giamatti: “One can quarrel about discipline but what we found out today was that (Bennett) and we have very similar views without having identical views either philosophically or practically.”

Only professional basketball now requires the expulsion of players who use drugs and that punishment is enforced only after the third offense.

Charles Grantham, executive director of the National Basketball Assn. Players Assn., indicated that his group would be likely to oppose any effort to remove the “third strike” from the league’s policy.

Bennett has no direct authority to impose rules on professional sports, just as he has no authority to order schools to expel drug-using students. But his recommendations conceivably could be implemented in Administration-backed legislation.

Although the commissioners and players’ representatives praised Bennett’s approach to the drug problem in sports, most said that their remaining differences with him could not easily be resolved.

“I don’t know how many people around that table agreed with his approach,” said Upshaw. “But I don’t know that that’s going to stop him from writing the policy that he is going to write.”