The National Drug Strategy:
Escalation of the War on Drugs

John Angell

Drug Plan Details

     The plan is built on several premises concerning the use and control of drugs in the United States: (1) society has been too permissive of drug use, and the federal government should fund programs to "galvanize public opinion to make it clear that illegal use of drugs is wrong and harmful;" (2) management of drug control efforts should be centralized in the Office of National Drug Control Policy; (3) the capacity of national, state and local criminal justice officials and agencies to destroy illegal drug businesses and to punish drug users must be substantially expanded; (4) federal principles of accountability should be applied to state and local anti-drug efforts; (5) drug control efforts should be focused on priority areas such as cocaine; (6) the availability and effectiveness of drug treatment should be improved, and both incentives and civil commitment programs should be instituted to get drug dependent users into treatment; and (7) the eligibility of foreign countries, states, localities and citizens for federal funds and assistance should be dependent upon compliance with federal drug policies. The planned strategy entails waging the drug war on several fronts. These include: (1) Criminal Justice; (2) Drug Treatment; (3) Education, Community Action, and the Workplace; (4) International; (5) Interdiction; (6) Research; and (7) Intelligence.

     Criminal Justice. The priorities in the criminal justice area are on increasing (1) the predictability and severity of the sanctions for drug use or distribution, (2) the ease of implementation of sanctions, and (3) the means of achieving implementation of the sanctions. Among specific proposals for enhancing domestic criminal justice operations are the addition of federal, state, and local law enforcement officers, prosecutors, judges, courtrooms, jails, prisons, bootcamps, and mandatory drug testing within the system. The federal government would expect states to implement legislation and take actions to revoke driver's licenses of first-time drug users, evict drug users and dealers from government-subsidized housing, and ensure "vigorous prosecution of and increased fines for all misdemeanor state drug offenses." Federal law enforcement personnel evaluation methods would be changed to reward and advance drug agency personnel who cooperate with other drug enforcement employees "within and across various agencies." Federal criminal justice funds would be denied, under the strategy, to states which failed to adopt drug testing programs for their justice systems.

     Treatment. The treatment strategy focuses on (1) increasing the range of treatment and the number of spaces available for people needing treatment, (2) providing outreach programs and early treatment for pregnant women who use drugs, (3) expanding state and private insurance coverage to provide for drug treatment, (4) developing and implementing civil commitment procedures for forcing unwilling drug users into treatment, and (5) improving information collection and research, especially in the areas of cocaine dependency and treatment and psychiatric and drug problems. Submission of state plans for resource allocation and systematic improvements in state and local treatment systems will be conditions for receipt of federal treatment funds.

     Education, Community Action, and Workplace. The education, community action and workplace strategy includes requiring educational institutions, under threat of loss of federal funds, to implement policies and programs for drug use prevention and punishment. Federal agencies will be forced to implement rules ensuring a drug-free federal workforce, and drug-free workplace policies will be expected or required of "the private sector and state and local government, including clear penalties for drug use, and drug testing where appropriate." Federal support is proposed for programs, which educational institutions and the media will use to "make it clear that the illegal use of drugs is wrong and harmful."

     International. The interna-tional strategy includes proposals to deter and incapacitate international production and trafficking organizations responsible for bringing drugs into the United States. Its priority is on providing law enforcement, military, and economic assistance to the three Andean cocaine-producing countries in order to isolate major coca-growing areas, to block delivery of chemicals used for cocaine processing, to destroy cocaine hydrochloride processing labs, and to dismantle the trafficking organizations. Joint Intelligence Collection Centers will be created in the Caribbean Basin to facilitate the disruption and dismantlement efforts.
     The strategy for interdiction should, according to the report, concentrate both on drug seizures and on "creating serious personal and financial risk for trafficking organizations and their top level personnel." Included among the proposed strategies are: (1) development of a comprehensive information-based approach to federal air, maritime, land and port-of-entry interdiction which would include enhanced computerized information systems and undercover and intelligence systems; (2) improvement of methods for deterring air smugglers and apprehending money couriers, and of container inspection techniques; and (3) enhancement of border systems, operations and activities through provision of "automatic exclusion authority and general arrest authority to Immigration and Naturalization officers, expanded use of drug detection dogs, anti-vehicle barriers and container inspections, and improved detection systems and secure communications systems."

     Research. Research and development to improve the "quality of information, research, and technology available to implement drug control policies and programs" will be funded by the federal government. A Drug Control Research and Development Committee involving directors of research and evaluation and technology advisors to all appropriate drug supply and demand reduction agencies will be created to recommend research and development policies and procedures to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, to review and coordinate research and evaluation activities, and to assist agencies in effectively acquiring and using new technologies to prevent and treat drug use, and to detect and suppress the flow of illegal drugs. Not only are research systems, including data collection and analysis techniques, identified for improvements, but attention is also given to the need for developing new medical technology and procedures and new methods for information dissemination.

      Intelligence. This final front of the national drug strategy focuses on (1) money laundering; (2) automated law enforcement, prosecution and interdiction-related drug information systems; (3) intelligence sharing by federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies; and (4) an intelligence center to unite U.S. drug-related analytical capabilities and improve intelligence capabilities.

Anticipated Results

     The goals established for the plan include a 10 per cent reduction in drug abuse indicators within two years and a drop of 50 per cent within ten years. However, the expected impact on cocaine addiction is substantially lower. The goal related to frequent cocaine use is to reduce the rate of increase by 75 per cent in two years.

Federal Funding Plans

     The admnistration's funding priorities would increase assistance to state and local law enforcement; expand resources for treatment and prevention programs; initiate a major anti-drug campaign in source countries; establish order in public housing projects; build more federal prisons; expand federal and state court and correctional systems; add federal prosecutors; step up efforts against money laundering operations; expand research, data collection and information sharing; and maintain the current level of border interdiction effort.
     Funding administration priorities necessitates increasing the President's earlier anti-drug budget by an additional $716,000,000 to a total of approximately $7,900,000,000 in FY 1990. (See Figure 2.) Fifty-seven million dollars would be added to the Coast Guard budget; the DEA would receive a $5,000,000 increase to fund state and local task forces; the funding for Organized Drug Enforcement Task Forces would be increased by $19,000,000; an additional $11,000,000 would be earmarked for money laundering investigations; federal courts would receive an additional $41,000,000; the funds for marijuana eradication efforts would be increased by $5,000,000; and an additional $654,000,000 would be added to federal prison construction.

     The plan would increase the federal funds available for state and local law enforcement grants from the FY 1989 level of $150,000,000 to $350,000,000 in FY 1990. In addition, standards for evaluation would be strengthened, and the budget for improving data bases, information systems, and evaluation of drug law enforcement and demonstration projects would be increased from the FY 1989 level of $192,000,000 to $251,000,000 in FY 1990.
     In accordance with the President's commitment to fund the plan without new taxes, the increases were to be offset by cutting $604,000,000 from federal aid already earmarked for state and local governments and $147,000,000 from federal programs. Under this funding strategy several states, including Alaska, California, Florida, and Texas, would actually suffer a decrease in the amount of financial assistance they would otherwise receive from the federal government. In exchange for $1,300,000 in Drug Control assistance, Alaska would lose $3,500,000 in Economic Development and Juvenile Justice funds ? a net loss of $2,200,000.
     Even at this level of federal funding, it is probable that, in addition to making constitutional and legislative reforms, state and local governments would find it necessary to provide an additional $5,000,000,000 to $10,000,000,000 to implement the administration's strategies fully.

Congressional Action

     Congress has proceeded to deal with the plan in a fashion apparently consistent with the public mood. In early November, agreement was reached to add $3,200,000,000 for law enforcement and drug treatment to the existing appropriations, thereby increasing the funding requested by the administration from $7,900,000,000 to $8,800,000,000, or $900,000,000 more than requested. Based on 1986, the most recent year for which financial information has been compiled, $8.8 billion is equivalent to approximately one-third of all tax money spent by federal, state, and local levels of government on police operations and services. (See Figure 1.) In other words, the funding for this plan represents about $143 per four-person household in the United States.
     The Congressional agreement contained in H.R. 2991 and H.R. 3015 ? both of which have been passed and were sent to the President's desk by mid-November ? not only provides funding for the federal criminal justice facilities requested by the President, it contains $100,000,000 more than the President requested for law enforcement grants. Fifty million dollars of the increased funding has been set aside for discretionary grants for neighborhood-level policing projects such as Operation Siege in Houston, Texas and Knock and Talk in Anchorage. Funds will also be provided for programs similar to the DARE program of the Los Angeles Police Department, which assigns police officers to elementary schools to instruct children in resisting peer pressure. The 50 per cent state and local match for obtaining such funds will be maintained, although consideration was given to raising the match to 75 per cent.
     Rather than accepting the President's request to eliminate the Juvenile Justice and Economic Development funding entirely, Congress increased the Juvenile Justice grants available to state and local governments by $8,000,000 to $73,000,000 and left the Economic Development funds intact for FY 1990. The money required for the drug plan will be obtained by cutting governmental programs, except entitlements such as Social Security, by .43 per cent.
     The compromise budget package sent to the President did not include non-appropriation measures which must be passed by the Congress. Among these is the repeal of a provision in previous anti-drug legislation which prevents some local law enforcement agencies from sharing the proceeds of federal asset forfeitures. At least five different House committees are working on bills which will address such programmatic issues and facilitate implementation of the drug strategy. Based on the actions taken to date, proposals to require states to implement universal drug testing throughout the justice system and to initiate strict sanctions, such as mandatory driver's license suspension, car forfeiture, and employer notification against first-time users as a condition of federal funding, probably will not be supported by the Congress. In addition, following a plea from former combat pilot and astronaut Senator John Glenn, the Senate voted 48 to 52 to reject statutory authorization for drug enforcers to shoot down aircraft suspected of drug smuggling. (William Bennett, the Drug Czar, had indicated before the vote that such authority would put drug enforcers on an equal footing with inner-city police who, he believed, had the power to fire on fleeing vehicles.) In addition, Senate bill 5.1711, which would authorize over 1500 additional FBI agents, DEA officers and U.S. attorneys, has not been passed by the House.

Response to Plan

     Although the most immediate overall Congressional reaction centered on the efficacy and funding implications of the plan, the strategy received criticism from a number of sources. In light of the downward trend in frequent cocaine and marijuana use reported by high school students over the past 10 years (Figure 3) and negative public opinion concerning drug use, some legislators were quick to point out that the modest drug use reduction goals established by the plan are likely to be realized whether or not the administration's proposed strategies are implemented. Others express concern with the exclusion of the drug alcohol from the plan's priorities, since alcohol use among youth is not dropping significantly and the total health and social costs of alcohol addiction seem to be thousands of times higher than those of drug abuse.

     Other objections have been registered. In an open letter to William Bennett published in The Wall Street Journal, conservative economist Milton Friedman wrote:

This plea comes from the bottom of my heart. Every friend of freedom, and I know you are one, must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence. A country in which shooting down unidentified planes "on suspicion" can be seriously considered as a drug war tactic is not the kind of United States that either you or I want to hand on to future generations.

     George Shultz, Secretary of State during the Reagan administration, joined conservative William Buckley in expressing apprehension about merely putting more money into expanding traditional interdiction, eradication and enforcement strategies and suggested instead an examination of forms of controlled legalization of drugs. Similarly, Financial World, in a cover story ? "Drugs: The Case For Legalization" (October 3, 1989) ? states, "Everyone knows America is losing the war on drugs. What nobody wants to face is the logical alternative: Legalizing drugs." The Congressional funding approach has also brought criticism from representatives of organizations such as the National League of Cities where fear exists that the cuts will reduce other important federally funded programs like Head Start.
     Nevertheless, if a Washington Post-ABC News Poll conducted shortly after the public presentation of the plan is accurate, 82 per cent of Americans approve of the President's proposals and 74 per cent are concerned that the plan does not go "far enough in attacking the real causes of the drug problem."
     In light of the controversy already surrounding some existing federal drug enforcement programs, such as the "zero tolerance" program (which has been attacked by the Alaska delegation because of seizures of fishing boats found to have small amounts of marijuana on board), and questions about the effectiveness and possibly counterproductive impact of other proposed programs, it seems certain many of the administration's specific proposals will be substantially modified in the coming months. The Congress will probably place greater emphasis than the administration on educational and prevention programs designed to continue the downward trends in drug use. In addition, Congressional insistence on sound research to ensure reliable evidence about the impact of each strategy and program funded by federal money will likely be stronger than in the administration plan.

Conclusion

     If dramatically expanding the criminal justice system, further centralizing responsibility and control over the nation's anti-drug efforts, and providing greater authority and resources to anti-drug enforcement and programs will reduce American drug problems, implementation of the administration's proposals should demonstrate it. If, on the other hand, as many members of both the conservative and liberal intellectual communities predict, the emphasis on cocaine and marijuana interdiction results in a reduced supply, increased corruption in the criminal justice system, higher drug prices, and substantial substitutions of alternative drugs such as methamphetamines (like easily manufactured "ice" and "speed") for cocaine and marijuana, we may very well see a shift toward more public acceptance of a policy of controlled legalization of drugs in the United States.

     John Angell is a professor with the Justice Center at UAA.

     Copies of the document "National Drug Control Strategy" referred to in the preceding article may be obtained through the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 20402-9325.