PERSPECTIVE ON THE DRUG WAR : Make Children a ‘Defense’ Priority : As a member of the National Security Council, the drug czar could give this crisis the weight it deserves.

Of all the terrible aspects of drugs in America, perhaps the worst is their effect on young people, particularly those in the inner cities. One needn’t consider the consequences of drug use by children themselves to recognize the extent of the problem for urban youth: street crime related to drugs, a high incidence of substance abuse by parents, and the seduction of a dangerous, illegal but highly profitable “career” in the drug trade.

How to address this central aspect of drug abuse in America has been muffled in part by semantic uncertainty. The most recent outbreak of competing wordplay saw the new drug czar, retired Army general Barry McCaffrey, express in a letter to the Washington Post last month his agreement with columnist William Raspberry that “war” was an inappropriate description of the efforts of his office; McCaffrey prefers the analogy of confronting a disease in the family.

Fortunately, President Clinton has mooted the question by making the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy a member of the National Security Council.

Even with respect to children at risk, Clinton’s action is a logical extension of post-Cold War analysis, which has spawned a number of new, or newly highlighted, threats to our national security, such as environmental degradation, economic espionage and ethnic and religious conflicts.

It is not a remarkable proposition to consider the drug trade among these threats, given the damage it already has done to our people through violence and illness, and to our fortune in the form of lost human potential and monetary resources. What is refreshingly novel and salutary about this approach is the potential remedy it suggests by including children in an area of policy-making not noted for its nurturing nature.

Certain fundamental enterprises that are independent of government, such as basic research and industrial technology, have long been understood as essential to our national security. Consequently, they have received the scrutiny and support, governmental and private, customarily given to matters touching on the survival of the United States.

By contrast, we have not conceptualized children as our country’s most important national security asset, perhaps because it’s too obvious a proposition to warrant such a conscious recognition. Children’s issues, therefore, have been considered in less compelling contexts, such as education policy. In turn, policy of this sort becomes a matter of politics more than governance. The effort to abolish the Department of Education is typical, pitting partisanship against consensus-building and leadership. Similarly, the president’s and vice president’s participation in the installation of computers in California classrooms was meant to demonstrate a commitment to educating children for the future, but political reality has all but written off the many children whose lives’ circumstances are too compromised to enable them to take advantage of laptops and technical training.

The introduction of young people’s plight into the National Security Council’s agenda could change, perhaps profoundly, the way government sees children. A strategic campaign to repulse the drug enemy from the inner city could be the first use of national policies that help strengthen the grip of vulnerable children on the kind of life we all want for our own. Seeing disadvantaged children as potential assets in calculating American strength, buttressing their prospects with the same fervor traditionally mustered for patriotic causes, and putting at their disposal the powerful influence of the national security establishment could mark a sea change for the fate of some of our most needy youth.

A primary advantage of NSC exposure is the regularity with which its agenda is before the president. In addition, initiatives backed by NSC determinations are more likely to be accepted by Congress, the bureaucracy and the public.

“I am alarmed by the doubling of teenagers’ drug use in the past four years,” McCaffrey said in his letter to the Post. It matters less whether the new drug policy chief calls his campaign a “war” or one against a “disease.” With his access to the familiar forum of the NSC, it matters more whether he takes full advantage of the powers of his office to put children front and center.

Some comparison can be made to the national security emphasis on science education for young Americans after the former Soviet Union’s surprise launch of the satellite Sputnik in the late 1950s. President Kennedy’s response to the Soviet challenge was to put a man on the moon. Shouldn’t we try to give all our children the hope that each has a chance to hang the moon?