Bush Tells Plan to Combat Drugs : Asks Americans to Get Involved in ‘Toughest Domestic Challenge’

President Bush, appealing to Americans to get involved in “the toughest domestic challenge we’ve faced in decades,” proposed a comprehensive four-point strategy Tuesday to combat illegal drug activity.

In his first televised address to the American people since taking office, Bush painted a vivid picture of a drug scourge that he warned is “sapping our strength as a nation.”

Holding up a plastic bag as he spoke, the President said that it contained crack cocaine seized a few days ago by Drug Enforcement Administration agents in a park across the street from the White House.

“It could easily have been heroin or PCP,” he said. “It’s as innocent looking as candy, but it is turning our cities into battle zones, and it is murdering our children. Let there be no mistake, this stuff is poison. Some used to call drugs harmless recreation. They’re not. Drugs are a real and terribly dangerous threat to our neighborhoods, our friends and our families.”

The President proposed a $7.9-billion budget for fiscal 1990 to combat illegal drugs. That represents an increase of $2.2 billion, or 39%, from 1989, by far the largest jump ever in the federal anti-drug budget, although it includes $800 million in previously proposed prison construction that had not been counted before in the drug war.

The federal anti-drug budget has increased steadily but slowly since former President Ronald Reagan’s first year in office in 1981, when it stood at $1.1 billion.

Bush, declaring that cocaine--particularly its smokable derivative, crack--represents the most serious problem today, said he wanted to tell “straight out” who is responsible for the drug crisis.

“Everyone who uses drugs,” he said. “Everyone who sells drugs. And everyone who looks the other way.”

Bush, wearing a simple dark-blue suit and seated in front of several family pictures, said one of his first missions as President is to keep the national focus on the offensive against drugs. “Next week,” he said, “I plan to take the anti-drug message to the classrooms of America in a special television address, one that I hope will reach every school, every young American.”

Biden Criticizes Plan

Bush’s strategy, which was immediately criticized by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Md.) as “not tough enough, bold enough or imaginative enough,” consisted of four points:

--Law enforcement at home. “We won’t have safe neighborhoods unless we are tough on drug criminals,” Bush declared. Asking for more prisons, jails, courts and prosecutors, he promised swift and sure punishment for drug dealers. The price tag: nearly $1.5 billion a year.

--Drug production abroad. “Our message to the drug cartels is this: Our rules have changed. We will help any government that wants our help,” the President said. He vowed to use the U.S. military against drug production overseas, to intensify efforts to stop the flow of drugs across the borders. The price tag: more than $250 million a year.

--Drug treatment. Asserting that only 40% of drug users are getting treatment, Bush said: “Many people who need treatment won’t seek it on their own. And some who do seek it are put on a waiting list.” He proposed greater federal assistance to states and employers. The price tag: $321 million.

--Education. “We must stop illegal drug use before it starts,” Bush declared in proposing a school and community prevention program. “Every school, college and university--and every workplace--must adopt tough but fair policies about drug use by students and employees,” he said, asking for authority to cut off federal aid to schools and workplaces that fail. The price tag: $253 million.

War on Drugs Not New

Ever since the Administration of Richard M. Nixon two decades ago, U.S. presidents have declared war on drugs and proposed many of the same remedies that Bush now suggests, including tougher law enforcement, stiffer penalties and interdiction at the borders. But the White House argues that Bush’s new strategy differs in two fundamental ways: It focuses on casual users and provides for a coordinated attack by more than a dozen federal agencies.

Democrats declared themselves unimpressed.

Biden, who delivered the Democratic response on television, said: “We don’t oppose the President’s plan; all we want to do is strengthen it. We don’t doubt his resolve; all we want to do is stiffen it.”

The plan, he said, does not provide for enough police officers, prosecutors or judges and it doesn’t call for enough prison cells to put drug traffickers “away for a long time.”

Will Speak Out on Issue

White House officials said that the President and top Administration officials will continue to speak out on the drug issue in the days ahead.

Bush is expected to address the issue again today at a meeting with editors and publishers, and William J. Bennett, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, will discuss the program during a speech at the National Press Club. Bush plans to focus on the subject in a speech Thursday at the American Legion convention in Baltimore and again on Friday in New Orleans, when he addresses the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the National Baptist Convention.

Before Bush’s televised address, the White House released a 154-page report on the “National Drug Control Strategy.” According to the report, there are two drug wars to be fought, one against casual use of drugs, a battle that it says already is being won, and the other much more difficult war against addiction to cocaine, a fight that “is being lost--badly.”

The President’s anti-drug strategy “proceeds from a rationale, which in the past was missing,” said Bennett, who put together the plan for Bush.

Stresses Coordination

“What we had in the past was a lot of departments and agencies doing things--good things, very good things, catching bad guys and putting bad guys in prison and seizing cocaine and making life difficult for traffickers,” Bennett said. “But these efforts were going on often independently of each other and not in a coordinated way.”

As outlined by the White House, the strategy calls for a coordinated plan of attack involving all basic anti-drug initiatives and agencies.

The strategy assumes that society has been too permissive of drug abuse and asserts that perhaps the single greatest obstacle to drug reduction efforts is the absence of a significant risk of punishment for illegal drug activity. More predictable and severe sanctions are seen as among the most powerful forms of drug prevention.

To carry out the strategy’s goal of more effective deterrence, the criminal justice system is expected to expand to accommodate more people at every point--from arrest through prosecution, release and final supervision. That will require more law enforcement officers, prosecutors, judges, courtrooms and jails.

Sets Up Priorities

The President established several criminal justice priorities, including increased federal funding to states and local governments for street-level drug law enforcement and federal funding to states for alternative sentencing programs for nonviolent drug offenders, including house arrest and boot camps.

The package also calls for vigorous prosecution of and increased fines for misdemeanor state drug offenses, expanded programs to eradicate domestic marijuana crops, adoption by states of drug-testing programs throughout their criminal justice systems and Housing and Urban Development funding to establish security systems for public housing projects.

The $260 million in increased foreign aid proposed in the plan would be deployed as the first installment in a five-year, $2-billion Andean strategy designed to staunch cocaine production at its source: in Peru, Bolivia and Colombia.

The initiative, a dramatic increase in assistance to a region that last year received just $57 million in anti-drug aid, would provide both economic and military assistance to encourage those nations to launch new campaigns against powerful drug enterprises within their borders.

Much of the $2.2 billion in additional spending recommended by Bush represents funds that the Administration already had requested. A large part of that money was requested in May to pay for prison construction, with the rest coming from Bush’s original budget proposal last February. Only $716 million of the plan requires new funding, officials said.

Urges Cuts in Programs

To finance the new spending, Bush proposed cutbacks in several domestic programs. Although supported by Democrats in Congress, the programs have long been on the Administration’s hit list.

These include eliminating the Commerce Department’s regional and local development subsidy program and paring back grants to local governments aimed at separating juvenile offenders from adult criminals. In addition, development of a ground and air radio system for the Defense Department is behind schedule, allowing the Administration to claim $132 million in savings that can be used in the drug war next year.

Bush’s budget officials also suggested that Congress could save $320 million by giving states less money to pay costs related to the program granting legal status to illegal aliens, contending that state governments have not been able to spend all the money given to them in the past.

Asks for Reallocation

Moreover, the White House asked lawmakers to reallocate $50 million destined for public housing operating subsidies to be used to improve security in public housing as part of the anti-drug program.

Bush’s program will face hurdles in Congress, where Democrats want to fund a costlier, bolder program. But the President urged lawmakers to move forward with his proposals immediately and said that he wants the program “fully implemented--right away.”

Urging bipartisan support, he said: “This is the toughest domestic challenge we’ve faced in decades. And it is a challenge we must face--not as Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives--but as Americans. The key is a coordinated, united effort.”

Bush said that the federal government cannot do the job alone. “The states,” he said, “need to match tougher federal laws with tougher laws of their own--stiffer bail, probation, parole and sentencing.”

Appeals to Parents

He urged people who know users to help them get off drugs and urged parents to talk to their children about drugs.

“Call your local drug prevention program,” he implored. “Be a Big Brother or Sister to a child in need. Pitch in with your local Neighborhood Watch program. Whether you give your time or talent, everyone counts.”

Holding up the bag of crack cocaine once more as he concluded his address, Bush declared:

“If we fight this war as a divided nation, then the war is lost. But if we face this evil as a nation united, this will be nothing but a handful of useless chemicals.

“Victory. Victory over drugs is our cause, a just cause, and with your help, we are going to win.”

Staff writers James Gerstenzang, Tom Redburn and Thomas B. Rosenstiel contributed to this story.

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