Bennett Scores Capital Officials’ Anti-Drug Efforts as Lackluster

William J. Bennett, director of national drug control policy, on Friday accused District of Columbia officials of lackluster efforts in the war on drugs, and a Bennett aide said the city let $2.4 million in federal funds slip away.

“I don’t know why it’s heresy when I say it,” Bennett told the Senate Budget Committee. “Everybody in this town knows that this government is not fulfilling its responsibilities to its citizens.”

The testimony came at a hearing in which Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee questioned Bennett about efforts to combat drugs in the District of Columbia.

Chairman Jim Sasser (D-Tenn.) sought to spotlight the rampant problem in this city, whose mayor, Marion Barry, is in a Florida alcohol and drug clinic after his arrest on a cocaine possession charge. An aide has said that Barry is being treated primarily for alcoholism.

Sasser reminded Bennett that when he became drug policy director a year ago, he promised to make Washington a test case in the fight against drugs that still can be bought on street corners “only blocks from this Capitol.”

Bennett said that action by federal officials “cannot take the place of local government, federal initiatives cannot replace local initiatives.”

District police estimate that more than 60% of the 438 murders recorded in the nation’s capital last year were drug related.

Sasser said District of Columbia officials have complained that they have not received the assistance from the federal government that was promised in the early days of the drug war.

Bruce L. Carnes, director of planning, budget and administration under Bennett, told the panel that the federal government has made a commitment to provide more than $90 million of the $102 million that the district sought.

But he said that despite repeated warnings, district officials allowed $2.4 million in Defense Department funds for bolstering the National Guard as a drug-fighting tool to lapse through inaction.

“Almost every penny of that lapsed because the district did not draw down that money,” Carnes told lawmakers. “I kept telling them, the clock is ticking. . . . You’ve got to draw down that money, or it’s going to lapse. It lapsed.”