Pubdate: Wed, 18 Sep 2002
Source: Reason Online (US)
Copyright: 2002 The Reason Foundation
Contact:  http://www.reason.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/359
Author: Jacob Sullum
Note: Jacob Sullum is a Reason senior editor. He is the author of a book on 
the morality of drug use, forthcoming in June from Tarcher/Putnam.

Editors' Links

THE DRUG CZAR MUST ABDICATE

According to survey data released this month, past-month use of illegal 
drugs increased from 6.3 percent in 2001 to 7.1 percent last year. These 
numbers can mean only one thing: It's payback time.

"Drug use has gone up significantly during the first full year of the Bush 
Administration," crows Bob Weiner, spokesman for the Office of National 
Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) for most of the Clinton years. The headline 
over the press release reads, "Survey: Bush Reversing Drug Use Reductions."

Weiner says "the new administration needs to quit laying blame and start 
supporting successful Clinton era bipartisan drug programs such as the 
National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign." He bravely insists that a 
"comprehensive strategy" of "education, prevention, treatment, law 
enforcement, and foreign policy initiatives must continue to be funded in 
full."

Weiner can be faulted for the lameness of his proposals: more money for 
anti-drug ads that demonstrably don't work, along with everything else the 
government is already doing to stop people from ingesting politically 
incorrect substances. But in his eagerness to blame George W. Bush for an 
upward blip in drug use that almost certainly had nothing to do with the 
president's policies, Weiner is simply aping the behavior of Republicans 
who accused Clinton of being soft on drugs.

One of the earliest and most persistent critics of Clinton's alleged 
surrender in the war on drugs-marked, oddly enough, by record levels of 
spending and arrests-was John P. Walters, the ONDCP's current director. 
Walters, who was the office's acting director when Clinton took over in 
1993, left in a huff that February, after the president decided to cut his 
staff, and immediately began attacking the new administration in op-ed 
pieces and interviews.

In a series of op-ed pieces published by The Washington Times in 1995, 
Walters and his former boss, Bush I drug czar William J. Bennett, accused 
Clinton of abandoning the crusade for a drug-free America. "President 
Clinton has shown little concern about the carnage drugs cause," they 
wrote. "There is no visible effort by the Clinton Administration to prevent 
the complete disintegration of foreign supply control....The Clinton 
Administration has made [the ONDCP] largely irrelevant."

Walters and Bennett claimed "the results of the administration's 
indifference are now in. And they are not good." Specifically, they cited 
an increase in drug use by teenagers between 1993 and 1994, which they 
described as "the dangerous resurgence of drugs that has occurred during 
President Clinton's watch"

The latest survey results indicate that drug use by teenagers has risen by 
12 percent during President Bush's watch. Isn't it time for John Walters to 
resign in disgust?
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