Bennett the Drug Czar: An Agenda
Barnes, Fred
THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR VOL. 22, NO. 4 / APRIL 1989 Fred Barnes BENNETT THE DRUG CZAR: AN AGENDA But he will need George Bush's doughty support to implement it. W illiam Bennett is proof that...
...They can appeal Bennett's decisions directly to Bush...
...Then the Bush Administration must act unilaterally to take out the drug bosses...
...Before spending it, Bennett should review all treatment programs to determine what works best...
...If we're really fighting a war against drugs, treatment should be instantly available...
...The only person Bush had offered it to, Democratic Senator Dennis Deconcini of Arizona, said no...
...This will take a sales job by Bennett...
...The drug tycoons there are so powerful that they assassinated Colombia's top law enforcement official—with impunity...
...In his speech to the White House Conference on Drug-Free America last year, he said, "We can do more to prevent criminals in foreign nations from growing and processing illegal drugs...
...The White House conference in 1988 offered 107 recommendations for a drug-free America...
...skills Bennett displayed as education secretary—he turned a nothing job into an influential one—should serve him well as czar...
...Instead Bennett established his own think tank, the Madison Center, in plush quarters in downtown Washington...
...How could anyone win the war against narcotics...
...Go to the source...
...They shouldn't be substituted for current efforts, but taken in addition to them...
...But don't get euphoric yet...
...He told the Washington Post: "People my age, we've been through the cocaine warsand we've seen it can hurt and even kill you...
...Black Muslim patrols have routed dealers in several cities, and Bennett ought to encourage them to get active in more...
...As czar, he'll have to look askance at the well-intentioned recommendations of drug enforcers...
...First, he knows that while kowtowing to your agency's chief constituency group is applauded in Washington (unless you're secretary of defense), it merely preserves the status quo...
...Increased drug interdiction efforts are not likely to greatly affect the availability of cocaine in the United States," Rand said...
...But what if the Colombians won't go along...
...One of them was intriguing, namely that the movie ratings take a stand against drugs...
...Bennett told reporters that he was "not crushed" by Bush's decision to make the drug czar only a half-fledged member of the cabinet...
...Bennett could have...
...Only one out of every eight vessels the Coast Guard boarded, with prior information suggesting that the ships might be carrying drugs, was actually smuggling," Rand found...
...Legalization "would be a desperately wrong action in light of June 1988 data showing that 34.7 percent of 1,023 patients with automobile accident injuries treated by the Maryland Shock Trauma Center had used marijuana within four hours of being injured—more than had used alcohol...
...A survey of college students by pollster Gordon Black found only 6 percent were "occasional" users of cocaine in 1988 compared to 11 percent a year earlier...
...But drug treatment is needed...
...By sticking to her campaign year after year, she had a tremendously beneficial impact...
...The annual poll of 15,000 high school students by the National Institute of Drug Abuse began showing a decline in use of cocaine, PCP, and marijuana in the mid-1980s...
...The czar's job, remember, wasn't one that Reagan or Bush thought was a good idea in the first place...
...Maybe he should try something else...
...It makes my heart warm just thinking about it...
...The New York Times stuck to the reactionary liberal position that decriminalization of marijuana would make it easier to fight other drugs...
...Bennett also has the job of redeploying federal narcs and drug doctors...
...With luck, money, and strong backing from Bush, Bennett will succeed...
...W illiam Bennett is proof that not everyone in the Reagan Administration used his position to make a killing in the private sector after leaving government...
...But there will be a nice side effect...
...It's discouraging when drug merchants are arrested, then quickly sent back to the streets on bail...
...Bennett, by the way, has hinted that unilateral action is appropriate...
...Taking drugs, like smoking, has become a class thing...
...The world will be leery of crossing Bush for fear he'll strike again...
...So long as other officials, the bureaucracy, and the press believe that Bennett lacks Bush's solid support or that Bush just isn't interested in what Bennett is doing, Bennett will be a policy eunuch...
...Why this isn't known yet is beyond me, but it isn't...
...Ask Congress to insert a no-bail provision...
...Again he'll get resistance...
...Any movie treating drugs or drug dealers lightly or favorably should have a D attached to its rating, as in PG-13-D...
...But spending more time and money on the same programs isn't the answer...
...These agencies will surely try to thwart anything new and bold unless Bennett is seen as Bush's personal agent...
...Deny bail for drug dealers...
...Nor will reducing demand for crack here...
...It would also make the streets safer...
...Mayor Kurt Schmoke of Baltimore put his future as a statewide officeholder in jeopardy by calling for legalization...
...The problem is making testing palatable to people...
...We have seen a fundamental shift in attitudes," Bennett told a White House conference in 1988...
...Students who said drug use "scared" them rose from 72 percent to 81 percent...
...And Bennett's job is difficult to begin with...
...T hat brings us to what Bennett 1 should do as czar...
...The Rand Corporation concluded last year in a study of interdiction of drugs that assigning more military personnel to border duty won't help appreciably...
...In 1985, scare stories about drugs began to appear in the media...
...When the Times said the new drug czar should take up decriminalization, Rangel shot back that "this is the wrong message...
...Our borders are so long and porous that drugs can't be kept out, and a sizable chunk of the American population, maybe 15 percent, maybe more, craves them at almost any cost...
...So did Bennett with his campaign for drug-free schools...
...The money would pour in...
...Of course, you'd have to build more jails, but we need more jails anyway...
...Shortly after Election Day, he cordially informed George Bush that he wasn't interested in a job in Bush's new administration, cabinet-level or otherwise...
...A few have driven crack dealers out, but not many...
...These folks are the hardest to reach...
...If he merely does more of what's being done now to fight drug abuse, he won't accomplish much...
...They are...
...Biden and his pals in Congress are ready to pounce at the slightest sign of indifference to the drug war...
...This time, Newsweek guessed right...
...Thy other things should help him more...
...This would attract national attention and states would follow suit in their drug laws...
...Put a D in movie ratings...
...In 1987 and 1988, the old debate over legalization of marijuana started up again, only this time the result was decisive...
...Drug abuse isn't what it once was, but it remains a serious national problem...
...He should have been crushed...
...Fred Barnes is a senior editor of the New Republic...
...The President should also meet frequently with Bennett, invite him to all National Security Council and cabinet meetings, and appear in public with him...
...And he signed up for dozens of speeches at $15,000 a pop, even gave some of them...
...The D is my idea...
...They're a threat to the community and judges should be forced to treat them as such...
...He's got to be their boss, not their servant...
...The mood swing in elite opinion hasn't affected the underclass, perhaps 20 million strong...
...In fact, headway has already been made.ince the mid-1980s, drug use—cocaine, heroin, marijuana to a lesser extent—has lost its social cachet with middle-class kids and the fast-track set...
...In spite of it, Bennett phoned Bush in early December and asked for the job...
...Three weeks later it was his...
...So at Education, he didn't knuckle under to the National Education Association, which wants more of the same for teachers—pay hikes, shorter hours, no accountability...
...The idea that education is going to wean them from drugs is ridiculous in the extreme...
...If Bush balks, both he and Bennett will suffer...
...McInerney and the media followed their lead, though they'd never admit it...
...Make drug treatment available on demand...
...Bennett decided he'd be willing to give up all this when, one month into the transition, Bush still hadn't filled the new White House post of director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy—drug czar...
...There are lots of arguments, but I can't think of any attractive ones...
...If Bush doesn't take Bennett seriously, no one else will...
...It's winnable, but a real war has to be fought...
...Rangel suggested the 14 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1989 Times should be ashamed of itself for advocating decriminalization...
...On the contrary, drugs have strengthened their grip on inner cities, and not just in New York and Washington...
...In Washington, nobody was surprised at Deconcini's decision, since the drug czar is regarded as the Bush appointee least likely to succeed...
...It was imposed by Congress, and by Democrat Joseph Biden, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, more than anyone else...
...Now there's a long waiting period to get on the treatment rolls in most cities...
...Among the ways Bush could enhance Bennett's clout is to let the agencies know that Bush intends to give Bennett virtually a free hand on the budget...
...The best deterrent to drug use by the middle class is testing...
...True, Colombia will complain, world opinion will be aghast, and the United Nations will condemn Bush...
...The McInerney set just said no...
...The quality of intelligence information is too low...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1989 15...
...He's got to issue, six months after taking the post,a national drug control strategy involving the sixteen federal agencies that officially come under his wing...
...ACLU lawyers would go berserk, of course...
...Stepped-up interdiction won't put them out of business...
...But the Times couldn't persuade one of its favorite congressmen, Democrat Charles Rangel of Harlem, the chairman of the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control...
...He was also available to write op-ed pieces, magazine articles, education reports, and so on...
...What's needed are bold steps...
...Not that most of the law enforcement, education, and treatment efforts aren't reasonably effective or at least well intentioned...
...In any case, he has a lot to do...
...That would cost money...
...It's not as hard as everyone thinks to produce a decrease in drug use that's both measurable by experts and perceptible to the public...
...Next fall he must pass on the budgets of all the antidrug agencies...
...When Nancy Reagan sought a cause in 1982 in hopes of improving her image, she quickly latched on to drug abuse...
...Entire neighborhoods have fallen prey to crack dealers...
...I'm talking about a drop over several years, not the elimination of drug abuse altogether...
...If bail were automatically denied to anyone caught selling drugs or in possession of a minimum amount—an idea proposed by my colleague Mickey Kaus—it would have a remarkable deterrent effect...
...Tough law enforcement will help...
...Require more drug testing...
...Second, Bennett recognizes that the Washington wisdom about the war against drugs is wrong...
...Imagine how the ACLU would howl...
...It's not an exaggeration to say that the drug lords are a threat to America's national security, and increasingly to Europe's...
...Among older folks, says novelist Jay McInerney, 33, cocaine has become "unfashionable...
...Newsweek, which self-consciously tries to lead the pack on trendy stories, was particularly alarmist...
...Let them...
...Crack, the form of cocaine that costs no more than seeing a movie and has a bigger bang, is sparking a surge in murders among drug dealers...
...At the time, America's evil stepmother was on the cutting edge of elite opinion...
...That's the conventional view in Washington...
...The legalizers took a beating...
...The best approach would be a joint assault on them by American and Colombian forces...
...In 1986, drugs emerged as a major political issue, though not one about which conservatives and liberals (except the ACLU zealots) differed much...
...The bureaucratic and p.r...
...I've got a few suggestions for Bennett: • Get Bush on board...
...Maybe he can make the case that it's only a little invasion of privacy...
...There's both objective and subjective evidence of the change...
...About 80 percent of the cocaine in the United States comes from Colombia...
...Jay McInerney has given up cocaine, but the underclass is being ripped apart by crack...
...Bennett came out on top...
...It's really not around much anymore...
...It is to be hoped we can do this in collaboration with foreign governments—but if need be we must consider doing this by ourselves...
...The place to start is with federal drug laws...
Vol. 22 • April 1989 • No. 4
