Man With a Plan : State Drug Czar Mecca’s Ambitious Goals Match His Boastful Style

California’s new drug czar believes he can cut the state’s monstrous and complex substance abuse problems in half by the end of this decade.

If that sounds like an ambitious--even boastful--assertion, well, Andy Mecca, director of the state Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs, happens to be an ambitious and sometimes boastful man.

“I’m prepared to stand up and be held accountable for setting a goal rather than just saying we’re going to reduce alcohol and drug abuse,” he proclaims.

Mecca, 45, who formerly headed the state’s controversial self-esteem commission, is a trim, fashionably dressed, physical fitness fanatic with a graying beard, a bald pate and a wide, toothy grin.

He has impressive credentials for the job of drug czar, including two decades of experience in the field of substance abuse, advanced degrees in public health, a quick mind and an enormous supply of energy.

But whether he can accomplish his dramatic goal of slashing in half California’s substance abuse problem is another matter. His plan of attack is not likely to cause a great deal of excitement. It is based primarily on a series of studies: one to define the problem, another to find out what substance abuse programs are most effective, and another to determine the “feasibility” of the first two studies.

“It should have been done 10 years ago,” Mecca said of the studies.

Yet such studies will take plenty of time and money, and there is no certainty that they will ever be done. The effectiveness study would begin next year and cost $2 million annually over a five-year period--if the funds are found to complete it.

Mecca’s tendency to boast extends to his personal accomplishments. At times he exaggerates his experiences as a sort of New Age Indiana Jones doing good works in exotic places throughout the world.

He claims to have worked with Mother Teresa in Calcutta when, in reality, he simply observed her Missionaries of Charity helping the destitute.

Mecca also sometimes speaks in a bewildering rush of unfinished sentences and trendy catchwords that obscure his message. In an impromptu speech to a Sacramento drug conference last fall, Mecca said: “Isn’t it interesting that we (in the United States) have absolutely the infrastructure, the theoretical construct, whatever you want to call it, the cultural ethos that nurtures people coming together, not to feel isolated but to feel strength and to celebrate the richness in our diversity, our interconnectedness?”

Mecca was appointed to the $95,000-per-year job as director of substance abuse programs by Gov. Pete Wilson last year and was confirmed by the state Senate last month. The job does not involve law enforcement duties. He is instead responsible for administering a $300-million annual budget that is aimed at preventing and treating substance abuse.

It is not easy to judge the effectiveness of a drug czar in a state that has long been awash with dope, and Mecca has been on the job barely a year. Yet he seems to be making a favorable impression.

While awaiting the results of his studies, Mecca is beefing up substance abuse programs that appear effective.

Under his administration, more money is going into such efforts as perinatal treatment for addicted pregnant women and their babies, “sober graduation” and designated-driver programs, high school organizations that provide drug and alcohol-free social events, and attempts to involve officials in planning drug treatment and prevention.

“He’s certainly fast-moving,” said C.B. (Bud) Bautista, president of the California Assn. of County Drug Program Administrators and an outspoken critic of the state drug bureaucracy. “I think he’s beginning to move the Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs into a leadership role where it belongs. . . . The relationship between the state and counties has shown some significant improvement under Andy Mecca’s leadership.”

Mecca has brought a new, high-profile style to the job of drug czar.

Taking over the position from Chauncey L. Veatch, who had no formal credentials in the field of substance abuse, Mecca trumpets his own qualifications.

One of the handouts from Mecca’s office quotes Wilson as saying of the new drug czar: “This is a man with vision.” His office literature proclaims that Mecca not only won the Bronze Star for directing an Army drug detoxification program in Vietnam but that he was “one of the top runners in the prestigious Ironman Triathlon in Hawaii.”

The press releases echo Mecca’s personal communications style.

Mention legalization of drugs and Mecca will tell you that he not only opposes it, but that he debated the subject with William Buckley, who favors it. “I adore the man,” Mecca said.

Ask about his plans to combat substance abuse in California, and Mecca said: “I was one of 12 (people) who were selected from around the country to participate . . . in a think tank at Harvard to revisit the entire national drug control policy.”

And sometimes he exaggerates.

In one of his printed statements, Mecca said that he has been “working with Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta.” He repeated that claim to a group of reporters last fall: “I’ve worked with Mother Teresa in Calcutta and she deals with a magnitude of problems that I’ve never even seen in my life before.”

But when Mecca was later pressed for details, he said that he had observed the Sisters of Charity working with the poor while he was in Calcutta attending a drug conference and acknowledged that he had never actually worked with them or with Mother Teresa, who was ill during Mecca’s visit. He said that he has had two brief conversations with Mother Teresa--one in Calcutta and the other when she was visiting San Francisco.

Asked why he had claimed to have worked with the Nobel laureate, Mecca said: “The fact is what I talk about is what Mother Teresa does. . . . How many people do you know that have been . . . exposed to what they (Missionaries of Charity) deal with? . . . The attempt is not to build myself up, but rather, if anything, the personal experience I’ve internalized from that work, and the other work I’ve done in impoverished areas, is the humility.”

In another apparent exaggeration, Mecca told the Sacramento drug conference: “Some of you know that I’m a medical anthropologist and it’s taken me to some rather strange corners of this globe. And working with . . . West Africans, the aborigines in Australia . . . and Athabaskans in Alaska, I’ve learned that wonderful tradition that it takes a village to raise a healthy child.”

He went on to tell of how Alaskan “elders” talked with him “in the sweat lodge one night.”

Later, when pressed for details of his contacts with native peoples in remote villages, Mecca acknowledged that the Alaskans had set up the sweat lodge in a suburb of Anchorage, where they were attending a conference. He said he had once visited an aboriginal village in Australia while in the Army 20 years ago and that he had met the West Africans in San Francisco.

Why did he portray a deeper involvement?

“The fact remains,” he responded, “that I was exposed to these people and they had an effect on me. I brought back (to his audience) the fact that people who are humble, who have far less than us, are struggling to build healthier communities. That’s the message I bring back.”

Andrew Mark Mecca was born in Santa Monica in 1947 to a father he says was a hard-drinking aerospace industry salesman and a mother who for a time was addicted to prescription drugs.

Although Mecca’s family was economically comfortable while he was growing up, he boasts of working since boyhood. Now, in middle age, he puts in 60 to 70 hours per week on the job.

When talking about the 30-foot sailboat that he and his wife, Kathleen, keep in a slip in Tiburon, the affluent community where they live, Mecca is quick to interject, as though justifying the luxury:

“Kate and I both worked since we were 10 years old.”

Mecca attended San Diego State University. He was president of the Kappa Sigma fraternity, from which he developed at least two important contacts for later in life: Tim and Terry Flanigan. The Flanigan twins both subsequently served as appointments secretaries for California governors. As a student, Mecca met Wilson, who was then mayor of San Diego.

Mecca graduated as president of his class in 1969 with a degree in business administration and entered the Army Medical Services Corps. After being promoted to captain, Mecca was put in charge of a drug detoxification program for soldiers in Vietnam.

In 1973, at age 26, Mecca was out of the Army and obtained a $250,000 federal government grant for Marin County to operate a program providing treatment rather than jail for drug users who broke the law. Mecca was put in charge of the program.

While operating the program, Mecca obtained a master’s degree in public health from UC Berkeley and in 1975 was appointed head of Marin County’s alcohol and drug programs. He obtained his doctorate at UC Berkeley in public health in 1978.

That same year, Mecca and his wife, who runs a private elementary school in Marin County, founded the California Health Research Foundation. He also taught college courses at night.

Besides using his foundation to publish his own books, Mecca channeled money through the organization to fund social programs such as Friday Night Live, which attempts to keep high school students from using drugs or alcohol, and which he continues to champion.

In 1986, Mecca quit his county job to become full-time executive director of his research foundation. He also lectured in various countries for the United States Information Service and received rave reviews.

In 1990, Mecca acknowledged, part of his private foundation salary was paid by a $25,000 grant from Philip Morris U.S.A. Asked about the propriety of his health research foundation accepting cigarette money, Mecca insists that there were no strings attached to the funds and that Philip Morris received no public acknowledgment for the gift.

Mecca asserted that the donation could be viewed as plucking a rich tobacco company for a good cause.

“There’s the Robin Hood nature of me,” he said.

Mecca was appointed in 1987 by Gov. George Deukmejian to the California Task Force on Self-Esteem and Personal Responsibility. Tim Flanigan, who was Deukmejian’s chief deputy appointments secretary at the time, helped Mecca gain the appointment, according to Tim’s twin brother, Terry, who also served in the Deukmejian Administration. Mecca, who was considered an authority on self-esteem, was named chairman of the panel. The findings of that commission have been ridiculed as feel-good platitudes--but the self-esteem movement has gained increasing acceptance.

In January, 1991, with the recommendation of Terry Flanigan--the gubernatorial appointments secretary at the time--Mecca was named by Wilson to the post of state drug czar.

“He is a man with a mission who will not rest until the state is drug-free,” Wilson said. “So he was the very best person for the job.”

“I love the governor,” Mecca said.

Profile: Andrew M. Mecca

California’s new anti-drug czar describes himself as a high-achieving public servant who hopes to cut California’s illegal drug problem in half by the end of the decade. Born: Jan. 11, 1947

Hometown: Santa Monica

Education: B.S. in business administration from San Diego State University, 1969; master’s in public health, 1975, and Ph.D. in public health, 1978, from UC Berkeley.

Career highlights: 1972-73: Director of drug treatment services for the U.S. Army in Vietnam. 1973-75: Director of federally funded drug offender diversion program in Marin County. 1975-86: Chief of alcohol and drug services for Marin County. 1978-91: Executive director and founder of California Health Research Foundation. 1987-90: Chairman of the California Task Force on Self-Esteem. 1991-present: Director of state Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs.

Interests: Physical fitness, running, sailing.

Quote: “I want to leave (the job of state drug czar) having worked myself out of a job. That’s my goal.”