TIME: Almanac 1995

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<text id=89TT2377> <link 93TG0088> <link 93TG0007> <link 90TT0176> <link 89TT2448> <link 89TT2193> <title> Sep. 11, 1989: Fighting Back </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989 Sep. 11, 1989 The Lonely War:Drugs </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> NATION, Page 12 COVER STORIES: Fighting Back </hdr><body> Bush declares another war on drugs, but it may not help much By George J. Church Every President, it seems, must have his own war on drugs, declared with maximum fanfare and solemn oaths that this time, this time the nation really will defeat the scourge of narcotics abuse. And never mind that the necessity for a new crusade tacitly testifies to the failure of all previous ones. Thus, when George Bush goes on camera Tuesday for his first prime-time address to the nation from the Oval Office, he almost certainly will not remind his viewers that three years earlier Ronald and Nancy Reagan, in a rare joint TV appearance, kicked off a similar campaign. Instead, Bush will outline his own strategy for reducing cocaine and heroin abuse and summon the citizenry to an all-out effort to confront what many people tell pollsters they consider the worst danger threatening American life. Unhappily, however, there is no guarantee that Bush's offensive will be any more successful than Reagan's, which was all but forgotten a year after it was launched (as Bush ought to remember, since he was assigned a leading role in it). The new program does move -- a few inches -- in the right direction by shifting emphasis from expensive and ineffective attempts at cutting off the supply of cocaine and other illegal drugs from abroad to reducing demand for them at home. But in part it seems to be aimed at the wrong target: several measures are designed to cut casual use of cocaine by the middle class, although such use is already declining sharply. Worse, Bush, like Reagan, is trying to fight a war on the cheap. The money he proposes to spend is almost laughably inadequate compared with the size of the problem. This will leave many angry Americans little choice but to take action on their own to try to fill the vacuum left by federal, state and local law-enforcement agencies. But quite by accident, the timing is superb. Sept. 5, a date picked some weeks ago, happens to come after three weeks during which a virtual civil war between drug barons and the government of Colombia has been highlighted on America's TV news programs every night. The upsurge of drug-connected violence in an already unbelievably violent country has refocused American attention on illegal drugs as few other developments could. The policy is a typical Bush mixture of old programs -- some under new labels -- and modest innovations, well balanced politically. Most of it is the work of William Bennett, Bush's national director of drug-control policy. Bennett lost some battles in the final stages of drafting. He had proposed permitting U.S. military pilots to aggressively force down private planes suspected of flying drugs into the U.S.; Bush would not buy that idea. Bennett also wanted to press states to suspend the driver's licenses of even casual drug users, by withholding federal highway funds from any states that refused to do so. Bush decided against the penalty; states are merely to be "encouraged" to suspend driver's licenses. Some other last-minute changes were possible too; at least a dozen drafts and redrafts of Bush's speech circulated among aides last week. But all indications were that the policy would remain substantially the one that Bennett drew up and that has been leaking out piecemeal for weeks. To fight casual drug use, the Administration will recommend that states "prosecute vigorously all misdemeanor drug offenses" as well as felonies. Recognizing, however, that such enforcement would swamp already overcrowded prisons and jails, the program would provide modest federal funding for alternative-sentencing programs, including house arrest and boot camps, for nonviolent drug offenders. The stress on combatting casual drug use might seem illogical, since the eight-page White House summary of the policy cites on its first page recent research indicating that such use has fallen 37% since 1985. But Bennett insists that it is necessary to break the impression, set largely by middle-class occasional drug users, that smoking or snorting cocaine is socially acceptable and even daringly glamorous -- an idea that some experts believe is already far out of date. Administration officials readily concede that by far the bigger part of the problem is addiction, especially to crack cocaine, in poor neighborhoods, which has been rising even as casual use declines. But the parts of the program targeted on this front are modest. Washington will promote expansion of pilot programs that take addicts out of drug-infested neighborhoods and treat them in residential facilities that also help them to find jobs, get schooling and give them social support. Bush would also increase funding for treatment programs generally, with emphasis on caring for pregnant women and newborn babies at risk from drugs. The White House would further require schools, colleges and universities to implement drug-prevention programs as a condition for receiving federal money. Administration officials cite the dramatic change in public attitudes toward cigarette smoking and drunk driving over the past ten years as an example of what education can accomplish. The program calls for stricter punishment too. It would increase federal funds for "street-level law enforcement"; tighten bail, probation, parole and sentencing practices; and require drug testing of prisoners, parolees and people who are arrested and charged with drug-related crimes. Overseas, Bush would triple, to about $300 million, drug-fighting aid to the governments of Colombia, Peru and Bolivia (this does not include the emergency aid already extended to Colombia). But funding for efforts to intercept drugs coming into the U.S. would be cut slightly, $80 million out of roughly $1.5 billion, and the money would be transferred to other programs. The big joke is that Bush proposes to do all this with pitifully little money. The Administration will tout a $7.8 billion program. But only about $1 billion will be new money, including $600 million for education and treatment. Almost $6 billion consists of funds the Government is already spending, and another $1 billion-odd constitutes double counting of cash for building federal prisons and hiring federal agents and prosecutors that Bush has already asked for as part of his anticrime program. Congressional critics protest that the money is nowhere near enough. Bush proposes, for example, to put up about $900 million for drug treatment, a 25% increase over the amount he originally requested for fiscal 1990. But that would do little more than restore deep cuts made over the eight years of the Reagan Administration. Congressional Democrats estimate that fully funding treatment programs for children under 16, youths currently in the juvenile justice system and pregnant addicts would cost $3.9 billion, or four times as much as the Administration plans to spend for all types of treatment. Combatting the social and economic conditions in the ghettos, which foster drug addiction, as some Administration officials contend must be done eventually, would require nothing less than a new war on poverty. But middle-class public opinion would not favor spending tens of billions for that purpose. Bush's program may be all that is politically possible now, and it does contain some worthwhile ideas. But it falls far, far short of what a true war on drugs would require. --Dan Goodgame/Kennebunkport and Steven Holmes/Washington </body></article> </text>