For example, just before his appointment in 1996, he told the Heritage Foundation how much he supported interdiction (perhaps unsurprising, given that he was former commander of U.S. forces in Latin America). In a speech, he said that drugs aren't "a tough problem like AIDS or racism or poverty." His reasoning? "We know where the drugs are grown, we know how the international money laundering system works. We know a lot of the names of the people who are involved and we are after them."

After he became drug czar, McCaffrey suddenly became a supporter of addiction treatment. In an interview with Bill Moyers, conducted in 1997, he said: "We're spending $17 billion a year to lock up 1.6 million Americans. We're willing to pay $23,000 a head to keep them in a cell. We've got to develop the political will to spend the money needed not only on prevention programs but on effective drug treatment in the criminal justice system and follow-up care."

McCaffrey even questioned the idea of a war on drugs. "If it's a war, then how come we didn't win it?" he asks Moyers, adding, "Who's the enemy? Where's the general to give us a top-down concept to lead us out of this morass? And eventually, do we achieve total victory? I think the metaphor starts to break down. In some ways it may be more useful to view it as a cancer affecting American society."

While McCaffrey never suggested giving up on interdiction or punishment, he and other administration officials frequently and consistently gave lip service to the idea that policy should focus on demand, rather than supply reduction. This was never reflected in budgetary priorities, however, and the Newsweek story gives one indication why.

Defense contractor Lockheed Martin recently paid for a poll, conducted by Democratic pollster Mark Mellman, which showed that a majority of the public believes that drug use is rising and that Democrats, not Republicans, are likely to get the blame. The poll was made available to the Clinton Administration and to Congress.

Lockheed Martin makes aircraft used in operations against drug smugglers, and one way for the Democrats to appear as tough on drugs as the Republicans, it suggested, was to send military advisors and equipment into Colombia to try to cut off the supply. According to Newsweek, Lockheed Martin gave $1.8 million to various campaigns to support its efforts.

Other major lobbyists for the $1.3 billion aid package include Occidental Petroleum, which is heavily invested in Colombia; and the Colombian government, which hired an important Washington law firm to press its case. Helicopter manufacturers, who stood to gain heavily since much of the $1.3 billion proposed would be spent on these vehicles, gave members of Congress free rides and demonstrations as well as major campaign contributions.

However, not one study has ever shown that interdiction has any effect on the drug supply in the long run. It occasionally causes short term interruptions as smugglers route around the area of enforcement intensity, but, as McCaffrey's recently released annual report from the Office of National Drug Control Policy shows, the prices of cocaine and heroin have steadily fallen despite a 62 percent budget increase in spending on law enforcement and interdiction since 1993.

While occasional teen drug use has decreased, rates of regular use (daily and weekly) are at or near the record highs measured in the late '70s and early '80s, when the entire federal drug control budget was just $1.5 billion. Between then and now, drug-related deaths doubled, while the drug control budget increased 1,300 percent. And yet, McCaffrey told Congress, "For those who say this is a war, we are winning."

Polling on drug issues generally reveals strange results. For example, the Journal of the American Medical Association printed an analysis of surveys on drug policy from 1978-1997. It found that, typically, 94 percent of the public believed that the drug problem was not under control, 78 percent believed that anti-drug efforts are failing and 58 percent did not believe that the drug problem has improved despite massive budget increases.

Nonetheless, 66 percent were willing to pay more taxes to continue the same policies. The options receiving the most support were longer prison sentences (favored by 84 percent), more prevention education (favored by 93 percent) and increased police funding (87 percent). The Lockheed-financed poll shows similar results here.

However, polling on drug policy shows extraordinary sensitivity to the wording of questions. For example, 48 percent in the JAMA study supported "U.S. aid to farmers in foreign countries not to grow drug crops," but only 14 percent supported "aid to foreign governments to fight drug traffickers."

Once respondents are told that a Rand study found that $1 spent on treatment was worth $7 spent on incarceration or interdiction, support for treatment increases. But the Lockheed poll, like previous polls, found little support for treatment when no other information was given. Only 23 percent said that it was the most important way to deal with the drug problem, while 38 percent said that keeping drugs out of the country was. This, despite almost overwhelming support and evidence for the effectiveness of treatment amongst policy experts and in research, and almost none for the efficacy of supply-reduction efforts.

What this shows is that an uninformed public will support policies that lobbyists, politicians and others sell them. Journalists bear some responsibility for this state of affairs. By not providing accurate information about the effectiveness of various policy options - and by refusing to be skeptical about most anti-drug initiatives - they ensure that drug policy continues to be based on politics, not science.

Maia Szalavitz is a contributing editor to NewsWatch.

Published: March 28, 2000
Copyright: www.NewsWatch.org

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The Other Drug War - Michael Isikoff & Gregory Vistica
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