Pubdate: Mon, 21 May 2001
Source: Daily News of Los Angeles (CA)
Copyright: 2001 Daily News of Los Angeles
Contact: http://www.DailyNews.com/contact/letters.asp
Website: http://www.DailyNews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/246
Author: Manon G. McKinnon
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/gardner.htm (Losing the War On Drugs)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Medical Marijuana)

DRUG WAR DEMANDS WALTERS' TOUGHNESS

By selecting John P. Walters to be his drug czar, President Bush has 
chosen a tough drug fighter for a tough fight.

Walters left the Office of National Drug Control Policy, where he 
served as a senior official and later as acting director, at the 
onset of the Clinton administration. His departure marked the end of 
a team and a time through which the scourge of illegal drugs had been 
drastically reduced across America.

At his departure, the measure of lifetime illicit drug use among high 
school seniors had been cut to 40.7 percent from its 1979 high of 
60.4 percent. The "party drug" ecstasy and the lethal methamphetamine 
had not yet burst upon the scene. And when, as acting drug czar, 
Walters turned his post over to the Clinton team, the drug 
legalization movement was a nonstarter.

Those were the 1980s and early 1990s -- the "Just Say No" years 
during which Walters developed successful strategies working with 
then-drug czar William Bennett. They were the years of the Reagan and 
Bush administrations, in which overall drug use in America was cut by 
60 percent -- even as other social problems were increasing -- and 
the entire country was mobilized in the fight.

Now Walters has been asked by President Bush to go back and fight the 
good fight again as director of the drug office. This time, Walters 
will need all the tenacity attributed to him to come back and right 
the corrosion of the last eight years.

That 40.7 percent of high school seniors is now 54 percent. The 
explosion in the use of ecstasy and methamphetamine is very much with 
us, taking a terrible human toll. And, to our disadvantage, the 
country has been persistently subjected to well-financed and clever 
propaganda claiming that the problem is the drug war, not the drugs.

Sad to say, members of the media, lawmakers and citizens have, in 
significant numbers, bought the pro-drug propaganda and have signed 
on to gradual drug legalization in its various forms.

Those include the eight states -- Alaska , California, Colorado, 
Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Washington -- that have legalized 
raw, smoked marijuana as "medicine," as well as the ill-advised 
needle exchanges that extend addiction and create open drug markets 
under the dubious claim of AIDS prevention.

Drug legalizers have persuaded many lawmakers that treatment alone 
must be the focus of drug policy and that "harm reduction" is the 
goal.

Ethan Nadelmann of the pro-legalization Lindesmith Center explained 
to The New York Times, "We must learn to live with drugs so they can 
cause the least possible harm and the best possible good." With such 
reasoning, Nadelmann and his allies give new life to the old slogan, 
"This is your brain on drugs."

Having had eight years to build their case unopposed, financed by the 
money of George Soros and others, it is no surprise that the drug 
legalizers do not welcome John Walters. They never speak of the human 
and economic costs that legalized drugs would inflict on all of us. 
And they don't want any interference from someone who can claim both 
the facts and the record of real drug reduction.

And so the proposed drug czar is attacked by both the legalizers, and 
by others who should know better, as the "Draco of Drugs," the "wrong 
man," and too "tough."

Their wrath is aimed at a man who understands what it takes to win: a 
strong combination of interdiction, law enforcement, education, 
prevention and, yes, effective treatment. No one policy can replace 
the other -- all are required.

In March, The Associated Press reported the results of polling by the 
Pew Research Center for People and the Press, saying, "Three-fourths 
of Americans think the nation is losing the war on drugs ... but that 
arresting drug dealers and stopping the importation of drugs should 
be the government's priorities."

Pollster Andrew Kohut said the public "is sticking with the tactics 
of the drug war." Americans remember and support a serious fight.

It has been my privilege to know John Walters during the years since 
1993. During that time, he never took his eye off America's drug 
problem. He spoke, he wrote, he testified, he consulted and he 
displayed an obvious allegiance and extraordinary knowledge of the 
issue. Now he has come back at a time when the country needs his help.

- --- Manon G. McKinnon is a former drug policy analyst at Empower 
America, a Washington policy institute where she worked on anti-drug 
issues for former federal drug czar William Bennett. Write to her at 
PO Box 3058, Arlington, VA 22203.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Josh Sutcliffe