GOP Cuts Hurt War on Drugs, White House Official Says : Congress: Full funding of administration’s program would have led to 5% drop in narcotics use annually, Lee Brown says.

Lee P. Brown, director of the White House Office of Drug Control Policy, declared Thursday that drug use in the United States would drop 5% a year if Republicans in Congress had not slashed the budget for treating addicts and drug education.

The failure of Congress to fund the entire amount that the Clinton administration sought for drug education, prevention and treatment programs has been his greatest disappointment in office, said Brown, who is leaving in January to take a teaching post at Rice University in Houston.

“If we had gotten that money, I am telling you we would be able to reduce drug abuse by 5% every year,” Brown said at a press conference.

“Just imagine what that would mean to cutting violent street crime, to rebuilding shattered communities and shattered lives,” he said.

The House has cut about $1 billion from the $14.6 billion that the administration sought to carry out its drug strategy in fiscal 1996, concentrating its cuts on treatment and education programs. The Senate also has made substantial cuts in drug programs.

Under the House budget, for example, the Safe and Drug Free Schools program would be reduced 60% from $500 million to $200 million, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration would have about $400 million less than the $1.4 billion requested, according to a Brown spokesman.

“What has enraged me in recent months has been the new congressional leadership’s attempts to destroy the president’s intelligent, comprehensive approach to fighting drugs,” Brown said.

He argued that the proposed budget cuts would result in “unnecessary suffering and even deaths.”

Brown brushed aside criticism from Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), who have argued that the administration’s drug strategy is in complete disarray and that it overemphasized treating hard-core drug users.

In fact, Brown credited the Clinton administration’s pressure on Colombia for that nation’s tough action against the Cali drug cartel.

He cited President Clinton’s decision to decertify Colombia, Peru and Bolivia from receiving U.S. international development funds or backing for international loans because of their failure to take effective action against drugs in 1994--a move softened by granting them a national interest waiver that allowed the support to continue.

U.S. officials had told the governments of those three countries, where cocaine growing and processing flourish, that their actions to fight drugs would be reviewed in six months and that the U.S. position on assistance and loans would be reconsidered. That review has been done and Brown said U.S. officials are “pleased with the results.”

“It was kind of like putting them on probation,” Brown said.

He said that one of his greatest satisfactions was “the hammer blow dealt to the hierarchy of the Cali drug cartel,” noting that six of its seven top officials have been arrested.

Brown said it is critical that the Colombian government prosecute the arrested leaders and punish them appropriately.

In claiming success for the administration’s drug strategy, Brown lumped together the Clinton administration’s years with those of former Presidents George Bush and Ronald Reagan.

He noted, for example, that the numbers for regular, monthly cocaine use has dropped from 5.3 million Americans 10 years ago to a little more than 1 million in 1994, according to the Household Survey of Drug Use. Adult use of illicit drugs dropped by more than 50% in 1994 from the total 10 years earlier.

Countering these declines, however, is the persistent climb in teen-age drug use, Brown noted. He blamed the increase on the news media for nearly abandoning coverage of the drug issue.

“The disappearance of the message from the media left a vacuum which was quickly filled by music, movies and TV shows glamorizing drugs, drug users and drug dealers,” Brown said.

“Tragically, drugs became ‘cool’ again in the minds of millions of our children,” he said, “because neither their parents, their schools nor their churches were powerful enough to combat the steady beat of the media messages of ‘hip’ self-destruction.”