Drug Czar Sells New Strategy to L.A. Audiences

Choosing Los Angeles for his first foray into the nation’s urban centers to push the Clinton Administration’s new drug-control strategy, White House drug chief Lee P. Brown on Saturday told audiences of civic leaders, civil libertarians and residents of crack-infested neighborhoods that rehabilitation and education are the keys to curbing the menace of drug abuse.

The Clinton approach “rejects the use of war analogies to discuss our nation’s drug abuse policy,” Brown said to spontaneous applause at a town meeting co-hosted by the ACLU Foundation of Southern California. “You cannot succeed in this effort by declaring war on our own citizens.”

Later in the day, Brown told parents and teachers at an elementary school in the poverty-stricken Pico-Union neighborhood west of Downtown “that to break the cycle of drug use, we must look at the drug problem not only as a problem for the criminal justice system but also as a public health problem.”

Brown praised the mainly immigrant students at the Leo Politi Elementary School and their parents and teachers for a series of daily marches they have held since May to drive away dealers who were peddling drugs directly across the street from the school’s front entrance.

School officials say the marches--including one held to greet Brown on Saturday--have helped reduce drug dealing by as much as 80% in the immediate vicinity of the 2-year-old school. However, the problem has by no means been eradicated.

Even as Brown spoke inside the auditorium, with a detail of LAPD officers standing guard outside, a drug dealer openly hawked bags of marijuana to passing motorists a block away.

What did the lanky, twenty-ish dealer think of the President’s drug policies? “Not much,” he replied as he waved a sandwich bag containing the drug.

At both appearances--as well as three others, in the San Fernando Valley, South-Central Los Angeles and on the 54th floor of a Bunker Hill office tower--Brown received a far warmer reception than he had last week before the Senate Judiciary Committee, when he unveiled the President’s new interim narcotics control strategy. There, Democratic and Republican senators alike blasted the Administration for providing few details about how the program would be funded or carried out.

In his whirlwind tour of Los Angeles, the director of the White House Office of Drug Control Policy remained heavy on broad goals but light on specifics.

“I have nothing to bring you--I have no checks,” he conceded during luncheon remarks to a group of public officials and leaders of the Los Angeles Alliance for a Drug Free Community at the City Club atop the Wells Fargo Bank Tower.

Such questions were on the minds of many who otherwise offered praise for the new approach, which concludes that past efforts to interdict drugs headed for the United States have been insufficient.

“Our state now spends about 50% of its funds for prevention and treatment and 50% for law enforcement,” Ernest Bradford, deputy director of the California Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs, said in a brief interview. “We’re hoping the national government will (also) move from (its past policy of) placing 70% in law enforcement.”

“We’d like to see them put their money where their mouth is,” said Southern California ACLU executive director Ramona Ripston before Brown’s keynote address to the ACLU-hosted forum at the Los Angeles Theater Center.

That a national drug czar would even consider speaking before the ACLU appears to signify a marked change in Washington, some at the forum noted.

“It’s a big difference from the time when we had a President elected by bashing card-carrying members of the ACLU,” said Atlantic Records Vice President Danny Goldberg, who serves as president of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California. “I doubt he agrees with everything we stand for, but it’s a tremendous acknowledgment that at least we’re part of the dialogue.”

Indeed, Brown drew blank stares from many in the crowd at the forum co-hosted by the Nation magazine when he emphatically declared that the Clinton Administration “is, without any reservation, opposed to legalization of illegal drugs.”

In impoverished neighborhoods, legalization of such deadly narcotics as crack cocaine “would be the moral equivalent of genocide,” Brown continued.

In a day of polite to enthusiastic receptions, perhaps the toughest time that Brown had Saturday was during a photo opportunity while visiting a group of 40 teen-agers removing graffiti from the walls of a clothing manufacturing company in South-Central Los Angeles. As Brown and City Councilwoman Rita Walters picked up paint rollers to help the youths cover the graffiti, Walters mistakenly smeared the left pant leg of Brown’s dark blue-checked suit with gray paint.

“I hope it’s water-based,” he quipped.

Brown, the former commissioner of the police departments in New York and Houston, said he was seeking to make a point on Saturday by appearing before diverse groups, ranging from police and drug treatment professionals to the ACLU forum, where other speakers were to include actor Dennis Hopper and attorney Marvin Krakow, who specializes in using the state Constitution to challenge employee drug testing.

“All segments of our society must be involved in this effort,” Brown said.

In his appearance before the Senate committee Wednesday, Brown had been attacked for having no estimates for the cost of drug treatment under the Administration’s proposed health care plan. Senators also called into question the President’s commitment to fighting drugs, considering that the office Brown heads has been slashed from 146 positions to 25 and that the Administration went along with a cut of nearly $200 million for drug treatment and education this year.

On Saturday, he emphasized repeatedly that the Administration’s strategy would focus on education, treatment and prevention, and would shift the emphasis from casual drug users to hard-core abusers, a move that would require major increases in treatment programs.

He struck a chord across Los Angeles with another element of the plan--an emphasis on community policing.

Although he did not specify how the government intends to pay for such programs--whose price tag he estimated at $750 million--Brown’s comments were generally well-received at a Van Nuys breakfast with politicians, police officials and leaders of homeowners groups.

“Community policing helps the residents of drug-infested communities to reclaim their parks, playgrounds, and streets, and to make them safe once again for our citizens, and especially for our children,” Brown said.

Parents at the Politi school who helped organize the marches during the summer agreed that a mutual focus on local policing and anti-drug education is an important means of fighting drugs.

“We have a big problem with drugs--it’s like we’re afraid to come out on the street because of the dealers,” said Jovita Carrillo, 35. “They have no respect, if you have children or not.

“For me, Mr. Brown is a big hope for our future,” said Carrillo, a mother of two who grew up in Mexico. “I hope it’s not only talk.”

Times staff writer Renee Tawa contributed to this report.