Reno Questions Funding of Drug Interdiction Efforts : Crime: She raises the issue of whether the fight to cut off the flow of illicit narcotics into the U.S. is efficient and effective.

Signaling the likelihood of a major shift in U.S. drug policy, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno on Friday questioned the effectiveness of massive federal spending to cut off the flow of illicit drugs entering the United States.

While saying she was raising issues that “need to be addressed,” Reno stressed that she had reached no conclusions about the drug policy established under previous administrations. She also questioned the wisdom of stiff federal sentencing requirements in drug cases.

Speaking at a national drug meeting, she said that she had “always been struck” by a statement federal officials made to a Dade County, Fla., grand jury in 1983, a time when they said stepped-up federal efforts had managed to interdict about 25% of drugs entering the southeastern United States. She quoted the officials as saying that, to have any real impact, 75% of drugs would have to be cut off--a level of interdiction they described as “economically prohibitive.”

Reno, who was then serving as Dade County state attorney, said she has asked federal officials repeatedly about those conclusions and that none of them have denied them.

“I never thought that I would be in a position to really ask the question and now I think it’s time that we start and come up with hard data that deals with this issue of whether or not interdiction is efficient and effective,” she said.

Rep. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Judiciary subcommittee on crime and criminal justice who initiated the daylong meeting on drug control policy, went further than Reno. He branded the international eradication and interdiction effort as “a near total failure.”

He cited estimates that a field of opium poppies 20 square miles in size would produce enough heroin for the annual U.S. demand and that Americans’ cocaine habits would be met by four 747 cargo planes or 13 tractor trailers of pure cocaine.

These figures make it clear the drug supply cannot be eliminated at the source, Schumer said. He called for shifting much of the nearly $3 billion being spent by the United States on foreign interdiction to “demand side treatment programs that work, while still allowing us to have a strong law enforcement effort at home.”

Reno, in her comments at the conference, elaborated on her orders for Justice Department lawyers to examine the impact on the criminal justice system of mandatory minimum sentences, enacted in federal drug and crime bills over the last 12 years.

She said U.S. attorneys from around the country have been telling her that “their hands are tied by the approach of the minimum mandatory sentence and that that money (spent for imprisonment after many drug convictions) is being wasted because that person or people could be re-integrated into the community without further concern about crime.”

Responding to a question on whether changes in mandatory sentencing laws would “offer relief” to those already in prison under the laws, Reno said that she did not want to “put it in terms of offering relief to people who are in prison.” Instead, she said, she wants to determine if federal resources “are used as wisely as possible to prevent those people in prison from ever committing another crime.”