Pubdate: Tue, 17 Oct 2000
Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA)
Copyright: 2000 San Jose Mercury News
Contact:  750 Ridder Park Drive, San Jose, CA 95190
Fax: (408) 271-3792
Website: http://www.sjmercury.com/
Author: ERIC LICHTBLAU

DRUG CZAR MCCAFFREY TO STEP DOWN IN JANUARY

MANY THOUGHT HE WOULD STAY ON IN NEW ADMINISTRATION

WASHINGTON -- 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 advisers over the last year or so, and his 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 and do some college-level teaching and that he wants to 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
work against 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 that he plans to leave his post 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 percent 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 non-profit group advocating
the removal of criminal penalties for drugs.

Among a number of controversial positions he has taken, McCaffrey angered
liberal groups by blocking federal funding of needle-exchange programs for
intravenous drug users, opposing the medicinal use of marijuana and pushing
a multimillion-dollar media campaign aimed at sprinkling anti-drug messages
into television shows.
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