Moral Poverty and Body Counts

John Walters is a veteran of drug policy shambles. As the deputy director under former drug czar William Bennett, he helped craft drug war policies that have shattered millions of lives, wasted billions of dollars and exacerbated America's drug crisis. He's a hard-core ideologue who misrepresents the facts and spouts tough-on-crime rhetoric.

In other words, John Walters is the Bush administration's perfect choice to be the next drug czar.

If Walters wins confirmation as the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), as he is expected to do, don't expect many concrete changes. Like the recently departed drug czar, General Barry McCaffrey, Walters is dedicated to more drug testing and zero-tolerance regimens, misrepresenting drugs as "an affliction mostly of the young," and funneling ever more cash to public relations, interdiction, police, prisons and -- if Walters has his way -- churches.

But unlike McCaffrey -- a dutiful soldier, but one who bumbled when off script -- Walters has a sophisticated understanding of drug issues and articulates them skillfully. This, combined with his unyielding ideology, makes him more dangerous than his predecessor.

ONDCP's goals, established in Bennett's 1989 National Drug Control Strategy when Walters was his deputy director, specifically targeted drug "use itself," not abuse or addiction. Policies stigmatized and punished "casual users ... because it is their kind of drug use that is most contagious." Conversely, the Strategy de-emphasized treating addiction because drug addicts are "a mess" who "make the worst possible advertisement for new drug use."

Bennett's strategy of neglecting drug abusers while punishing casual users worked exactly as designed. In the 1980s and early 1990s, arrests and imprisonments for drug law violations skyrocketed, self-reported drug use fell and drug abuse exploded. Federal Drug Abuse Warning Network reports showed overdoses and hospitalizations skyrocketing, especially for those drugs most targeted by the drug war. In 1980, when Reagan took office, 28,000 Americans were hospitalized for abuse of heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine. In 1992, when Bush left office, the number was 175,000. In 2000, the latest figures available, 250,000 were hospitalized.

Normally, such a monumental policy disaster would invoke calls for fundamental reform from the highest levels, especially after voters in a dozen states have signaled their support for reform. However, because drug abuse is financially and politically profitable for drug war interests, the czar's only permissible role is promoting tougher policies and further escalation. Walters' record reveals the consummate doubletalk skills necessary to fulfill the office's task of redefining disaster as success while simultaneously warning that worse disaster looms.

Walters' claims of success, like McCaffrey's, rest upon limited portions of indexes of drug abuse and rely heavily on the most unreliable measure, self-reporting use surveys. From 1979 to 1992, the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse reported, the percentage of people who said (truthfully or not) that they used illicit drugs in the past month dropped from 16 percent to 5 percent among teenagers and from 14 percent to 6 percent among adults. In a 1996 Heritage Foundation critique of Clinton drug policies, Walters credited "strong presidential leadership" for "a decade of consistent progress during the Reagan and Bush Administrations" that "helped rescue much of a generation." Yet, in President Clinton's first term, "the United States is losing -- some would say surrendering -- in the prolonged struggle against illegal drugs." Drug use is rising, and "the number of cocaine- and heroin-related emergency room admissions has jumped to historic levels" driven by falling prices and "increased availability of such relatively cheap drugs."