COUNTYWIDE : Thornburgh Tells of Gains in Drug War

On a swing through Southern California on Monday, U.S. Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh cited a decrease in drug use nationally and touted the Bush Administration’s recent plans to increase federal funding for programs that combat narcotics.

“The hard work is paying off, but we must not be complacent,” Thornburgh told a gathering of high-ranking law enforcement officials in Anaheim. “Although the news is much brighter, levels of drug use and its attendant violence are still unacceptably high.”

Thornburgh spoke at the 14th annual conference of the California Police Chiefs Assn. at the Disneyland Hotel. More than 400 top officers are attending the five-day event to examine law-enforcement issues across the state.

High on their list of priorities Monday was last week’s promise by the Bush Administration to increase federal funding 11% for law enforcement programs in the war on drugs. About $11.7 billion is earmarked for the President’s national drug control policies in fiscal year 1992.

With that money, Thornburgh said, the Justice Department hopes to augment funding for prosecuting drug traffickers by 25%, and increase the budget of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force program by 19%.

Outlining some available funds for California, Thornburgh said the state will share in another $32 million allocated to the federal High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program for regions with serious narcotics problems. There are five such regions in the nation, including Orange and Los Angeles counties. So far, $50 million has been spent on the program.

Thornburgh said California also will receive $43 million from the Edward Byrne Memorial State and Local Enforcement Assistance Program, which was set up to honor a New York police officer killed while guarding a witness in a drug case.

Thornburgh said the stepped-up enforcement effort as well as drug education efforts in schools across the nation have resulted in a significant drop in at least casual drug use among young people.

He cited statistics from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which showed that slightly more than half of graduating high school students in 1990 said they had never tried illegal drugs. In contrast, roughly two of every three in 1980 said they had tried drugs.

“Survey after survey not only shows that our citizens overall and our young people in particular are taking fewer drugs, (but) they are now telling us that they perceive drugs to be harmful and that they disapprove of drugs,” Thornburgh said.

In the future, the attorney general vowed to push for wide-sweeping legislation to make it easier for police to get evidence into court, to reduce federal appeals in state death-penalty cases, and to provide the death penalty for mail bombing and terrorist-related murder.

Just before Thornburgh spoke, the Criminal Investigation Division of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service turned over more than $3.2 million to the Orange County Regional Narcotics Suppression Program, a coalition of local law enforcement agencies.

The money was distributed under an ongoing federal program to redistribute cash and property seized in drug raids to local law enforcement agencies. About $1.5 billion has been confiscated using asset-seizure laws, about a third of which has been shared with local law enforcement agencies since 1985.