Clinton’s Drug Czar Will Resign

Barry R. McCaffrey, the impassioned but often controversial architect of the Clinton administration’s drug policies for the last five years, announced Monday that he will step down from his White House post in January, two weeks before a new president is inaugurated.

The move surprised some of the retired Army general’s associates in Washington, who believed that McCaffrey might seek to continue as director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy after a new government takes office in January.

McCaffrey mentioned to colleagues that he could “stay on in either administration,” according to an associate in the anti-drug effort. “He said that a dozen times,” the associate said.

McCaffrey had cultivated a relationship with Texas Gov. George W. Bush and his advisors over the last year or so and his tough, law-and-order image make him potentially attractive to whichever party wins the White House next month.

But instead, McCaffrey said in an interview, he intends to write a book on drugs, do some college-level teaching--probably at West Point--and leave the next administration with a “clean slate to move forward” with its own drug policy.

“There’s still a lot of work to be done,” McCaffrey said. “The bottom line is, this is not a war; it’s a cancer affecting American communities, and it will be resolved by patiently building coalitions in our communities” to combat drugs.

McCaffrey, 57, is the third Cabinet-level official in recent months to opt for an exit before the Jan. 20 inauguration, as top officials and lower-level political appointees scramble to figure out their post-election plans.

McCaffrey said he plans to leave his post on Jan. 6. He is considering an offer to teach government policy at West Point beginning Jan. 23. Officials said they do not expect an interim successor to be named.

Among the chief priorities for his White House successor, McCaffrey said, should be the expansion of drug treatment in health insurance plans and the escalation of anti-doping measures for young athletes experimenting with steroids and other drugs.

McCaffrey said that one of his proudest achievements is a 21% decline in adolescent drug use in the last two years, as measured by the government in a household survey. That drop-off, he said, reflects the success of combining toughened drug interdiction and enforcement with broadened and better-funded access to drug treatment programs.

But McCaffrey’s critics in the drug reform community challenge both his statistics and his strategies, saying that his bully-pulpit approach to the job has set back the nation’s drug policy amid an escalation in the use of such drugs as methamphetamine and ecstasy.

“We’re happy to see him go, that’s for sure. But it’s also sad to see all the havoc that he’s left in the process,” said Chuck Thomas, spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, a nonprofit group advocating decriminalization.

McCaffrey angered liberal groups with a number of controversial positions. He blocked federal funding of needle-exchange programs for intravenous-drug users, opposed the medicinal use of marijuana and pushed a multimillion-dollar media campaign aimed at sprinkling--and in some cases editing--anti-drug messages into television shows.

“McCaffrey took a father-knows-best approach to marijuana. He illegally censored doctors who recommend medical marijuana and doctored TV scripts about marijuana,” said Graham Boyd, director of drug policy litigation for the American Civil Liberties Union, which sued McCaffrey to block implementation of his policies on medicinal marijuana.

“Rather than coerced orthodoxy, we need honest discussions in America” to find ways of stemming the tide of drug use, Boyd said. “Nobody thinks our current policies are working.”