TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/091189/09118900.055

Text File | 1990-09-17 | 8KB | 133 lines

NATION, Page 12

COVER STORIES: Fighting Back

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