Cities to Get Bigger Role in Nation’s War on Drugs

The White House on Thursday announced a campaign to shift more of the nation’s drug-fighting efforts to its 25 largest cities.

The plan follows a report this month that showed federal resources once committed to the nation’s war on drugs have been diverted to the war on terrorism.

In that report to a congressional committee, the General Accounting Office said that nearly half the FBI agents that once handled drug cases are now assigned to terrorism cases, and that the government is on a pace to open only one-third of the number of drug investigations this year, compared with 2000.

In announcing the move toward greater local control of drug-fighting efforts, John P. Walters, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, did not mention any strain on resources. Rather, he emphasized the need for improved cooperation among enforcement and drug treatment agencies.

“People are not as effective as they could be because they operate in isolation,” Walters said at a news conference Thursday. “The tools to manage at the local level need to be strengthened.”

Walters says a major stimulus for the campaign is that urban areas are “a big focus of the problem.”

His office’s statistics show that the top 25 cities are the sites of 40% of all drug-induced deaths and drug-related arrests.

Assuming a role that he described as “a convener,” Walters said he would visit each of the 25 cities and attempt to better coordinate various drug-related programs.

“We’re going to tie our staff directly with people in these 25 cities, working on supply-and-demand issues, and we’re going to sustain that,” Walters said.

The California cities in the program are Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and Sacramento.

Walters’ responsibilities involve coordination of international and domestic anti-drug efforts of federal agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI, and the relations between federal agencies and their state and local counterparts.

He said in a telephone interview that the DEA is seeking additional funding over the next fiscal year to increase its staff by 400 positions. And “we’re trying to make sure there is movement of federal personnel to the more important and far-reaching cases.”

The GAO found that the number of FBI field agent positions committed to drug crimes had fallen from about 1,400 in late 2001 to just more than 800 currently. New drug-related investigations dropped from 1,825 in 2000 to 944 in 2002; only 310 cases have been opened in the first half of this year.

The new campaign “is one way of making up the hole of shifting law enforcement away from drugs,” said Rep. Harold Rogers (R-Ky.), a senior member of the House Appropriations subcommittee on commerce, justice and state, which heard the GAO testimony.

Walters acknowledged that the localization of the effort to curb drug use would require money from already budget-strapped cities and counties.

Los Angeles reflects the national trend of increases in drug-related emergencies as the city has seen rises of up to 50% in emergency room mentions of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine.

And while Los Angeles has shown reductions in drug-related deaths and arrests, it leads the nation in the percentage of high school students who say they have used cocaine and inhalants.

Capt. Bruce E. Crosley, who heads the Los Angeles Police Department’s narcotics division, said: “We do interact a lot with federal and state authorities, but we can always improve. More information is better. In any type of intelligence and law enforcement, there is a tendency to hold on to information rather than share it. I welcome any improvement in communication and exchange in information.”