Bush's Drug War Strategy: Escalate It

It can't get worse. That's what many scientists, health advocates and drug war reformers thought while doing battle with hyperactive drug crusader General Barry McCaffrey, the head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy in the Clinton administration. McCaffrey took a fierce stance that helped produce skyrocketing arrests for drug possession, steady militarization of the drug battle and short shrift for treatment. The bellicose nature of the Clinton drug effort was sometimes difficult to understand, since the drug warrior image was a tad out of step with the overall tone of the Clinton-Gore administration.

No matter what Clinton's motivations, collateral damage from his policies was extensive: the seven-month-old shot from the skies over Peru; the teenagers caught smoking reefer and denied a college loan; Patrick Dorismond, killed on the streets of New York because he took umbrage at a quota-driven cop gripped by the equation: black man on the streets = drugs; or the nearly half million nonviolent drug offenders locked up for years or decades. There's so much more. The impact was immense.

But any hope for relief, for a respite from the toll of the Clinton years, was hopelessly naïve. Make no mistake, the drug war is about to get worse under Bush, maybe a whole lot worse. But at least some of the underlying rationale is becoming clearer. In fact, as the Bush administration's troika of backward generals -- Ashcroft, Walters and Hutchinson -- take command of the drug war, new revelations are exposing just how corporate-run and profitable the drug war has become.

Money Changes Everything

One huge private company in particular is in the drug war up to its neck. According to National Defense (a trade publication for defense contractors), DynCorp, a $1.4 billion a year, 20,000-employee government contractor based in Reston, Virginia, "supports drug war operations at both the front and back ends -- from airborne crop-dusting in Colombia to asset forfeiture experts who work at 385 Justice Department sites in the United States." That's right, South America's favorite mercenaries help the feds seize property here at home.

Money, of course, explains much of what moves the drug war. Various levels of government will spend some $38 billion to snuff out drugs this year: on cops and clinicians, lawyers and the Coast Guard, for advocacy and treatment. Endless resources have been invested, and yet the fires burn still brighter.

States Kevin Zeese, president of Common Sense for Drug Policy (CSDP), "The US is experiencing record overdose deaths, record mentions of drugs in emergency rooms, rapid spread of HIV/AIDS and a 50 percent increase in adolescent drug use since 1990. This failure is happening at the same time that police are being successful in achieving their goals -- record drug arrests, high levels of drug seizures and drug eradication, and the largest prison population in world history."

There you have it: simultaneous victory and defeat. It's a strategy that recalls Vietnam War claims of having to burn the village in order to save it.

The Bush Team

The Senate will soon have hearings on the nomination as drug czar of John P. Walters, a man with both feet planted firmly in the past. The nation can take small comfort that Walters was reportedly not Bush's first choice for the job. And no wonder, considering his views.

Doug McVay, research director of CSDP, said: "He is very much a lock-em-up sort of drug warrior. He supports tough sentencing, questions the value of treatment, dislikes drug courts as too soft, attacks medical marijuana, opposes syringe exchange and strongly supports the use of the military in drug interdiction [in Latin America]."

Reformers may hope that Walters is so extreme that he'll be merely a figurehead meant to mollify Bush's right flank. But probably not. The Great Delegator gives his cabinet members a long leash, and Walters' views are echoed by Bush's choice to head the DEA, former congressman Asa Hutchinson, who rose to prominence as one of the House managers of Clinton's impeachment.