White House to Emphasize Treatment in Battling Drugs : Narcotics: President’s new policy coordinator says more humane and effective strategy will be part of health care plan. Details are still debated.

WASHINGTON — The Clinton Administration will provide much more treatment for drug offenders than the previous Administration and most likely will make treatment for drug addicts part of its health care plan, the President’s new drug policy coordinator said Wednesday.

Lee P. Brown, in his first meeting with reporters since he was sworn in last week, said that recent conversations with First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton have convinced him that drug treatment will be included in the health care program being developed by a task force she heads.

“Final decisions have not been made,” Brown said. He added that he and the President both regard treatment and prevention programs in the drug war as more humane and effective than what he termed a too-heavy emphasis on interdiction and law enforcement in previous years.

“Someone who wants to be treated should be treated, but that’s not the case now,” he said.

A spokesman for the health care task force said that Brown generally is correct “but the details have not exactly been worked out yet.” Other sources said that one of the details yet to be resolved is whether everyone should be guaranteed coverage for substance abuse or whether only addicts below a certain income level or with a long history of drug abuse should be accommodated.

“The exact coverage and how many episodes (of drug abuse would be covered) in a year is still up for some debate,” one source said.

Brown, 55, who formerly headed police forces in Atlanta, Houston and New York City, said that his law enforcement experience has convinced him that the nation’s drug problem is not easily solved by arrests and imprisonment alone.

“A big part of the money we spend goes into our prison system and yet the crime rate is not going down,” he said. “We have to take a close look at the consequences and what the alternatives are.”

While stressing that “we have to make sure that people who have violated the law are punished,” Brown said that he favors drug treatment programs within prison walls and “boot camp” experiments where young offenders particularly receive military-type training to raise their skills and self-concepts as a step toward rehabilitation.

Brown’s point was reinforced in a recent study by the Center for Health Policy Research at George Washington University. The nonprofit research group said that the federal government spent $12 billion to $13 billion on anti-drug programs last year with “less than a fifth allocated to treatment.”

The report criticized the government for its “emphasis on punishment,” while more than 375,000 infants were affected annually by drug and alcohol abuse during pregnancy. This rise in drug-exposed babies, it said, resulted from “the inaccessibility of treatment for drug-addicted mothers.”

Other authorities have said that a relatively small number of severe addicts commit a high percentage of street crime and that, by targeting them, drug programs have a great potential for reducing crime.

Brown said “the issue of drugs is very complex” but that, “if we raise the level of consciousness of the American people, I think we can make a difference.”

“But we have to involve state and local officials in matters involving family health, secondary and elementary education and the job picture,” he added. “When people don’t have jobs . . . it impacts” the criminal justice system.

In addition to his law enforcement background, Brown holds a Ph.D. in criminology from UC Berkeley and was a professor at Texas Southern University.

As director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, he said he is required by Congress to develop, publish and execute a national strategy each year for controlling the drug problem.