cannabisnews.com: McCaffrey Says He Will Leave White House Post 





McCaffrey Says He Will Leave White House Post 
Posted by FoM on October 16, 2000 at 15:52:49 PT
By Anjetta McQueen, Associated Press
Source: Boston Globe
Barry McCaffrey, the military strategist and commander who has directed the nation's war on drugs for nearly five years, plans to leave in early January. He says he's considering teaching offers, including a return to West Point. ''I'm enormously proud of what we've done,'' McCaffrey said Monday in an interview. ''We had exploding rates of adolescent drug use and we've reduced it.'' His resignation as director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy is effective Jan. 6, two weeks before President Clinton leaves office. 
By law, McCaffrey's term is indefinite. He said announcing his intentions now gives the presidential hopefuls a clean slate to shape their policies on drug abuse. ''It's important for me to put up the notion that my name's off the table,'' he said. McCaffrey, a retired Army general, has been President Clinton's director of national drug control policy since 1996 and previously was head of the U.S. Southern Command. In the mid-1970s, he was an associate professor at West Point, teaching courses in American government and national security. ''In the nearly five years Gen. McCaffrey has led our war on drugs, we have made significant progress both at home and abroad,'' President Clinton said in a statement Monday from emergency peace talks in Egypt. Critics who include Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush have said the Clinton administration consistently undermined McCaffrey's efforts to control drug abuse. McCaffrey dismissed that notion and any suggestion that's he's leaving out of frustration. He said that federal funds to fight drugs have increased and that adolescent drug abuse has fallen since he was appointed: ''We've taken important strides in addressing a problem that costs our society 52,000 deaths and more than $100 billion a year.'' The White House job was created in 1988 by Congress to reduce the number of illegal drug users especially among youth. The office coordinates efforts among federal agencies and state and local law enforcement officers and health officials. When McCaffrey assumed the helm, he brought a military background that raised hopes the office would gain purpose and focus, and be less political. Some of his critics said Monday that his policies have been harsh and costly. ''His fight against medical marijuana has caused untold pain and suffering among the seriously ill,'' said Chuck Thomas, spokesman for the Washington-based Marijuana Policy Project, which seeks to decriminalize the drug. McCaffrey's also backed rigorous drug-testing programs in sports and a plan in which the office once reviewed television scripts for anti-drug messages before the shows aired. Recently McCaffrey had been overseeing a controversial $1.3 billion U.S. aid package to Colombia that includes combat helicopters, weapons and training by the elite U.S. Special Forces to stanch the flow of drugs out of the country. On the Net: Office of National Drug Control Policy: http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/index.html Washington (AP) Source: Boston GlobeAuthor: Anjetta McQueen, Associated PressPublished: October 16, 2000© Copyright 2000 Globe Newspaper CompanyRelated Articles & Web Site:Marijuana Policy Projecthttp://www.mpp.org/McCaffrey Will Resign From Drug Czar Post http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread7361.shtmlMcCaffrey To Leave White House Job http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread7358.shtml
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Comment #15 posted by Sledhead on October 18, 2000 at 14:22:05 PT
My "letter to the editor"
Sent to:letters cjonline.comviewpoints chron.comletters knews.comletters uniontrib.comletter globe.comletters sjmercury.comchronletters sfgate.comletters latimes.comletters limanews.comletters washpost.comletters nytimes.comletters denver-rmn.comletters duluthnews.comTo the editor:Barry McCaffrey remains to the bitter end of his tenure as America'sdrug czar, a consummate bureaucrat.McCaffrey's idea of success is based entirely on the growth of hisbudget, staff, and political profile, with little else to show for theeffort, but questionable statistics concocted by another burgeoningbureaucracy, the Department of Health and Human Services, which has acommon financial stake in the same distorted conclusions. Never oncedoes either consider the harm wreaked on society by their misguidedpolicies.The bureaucracies report a decline in drug use among only one categoryof Americans. Adolescents. If only it were true. Seems anotherrecent study concludes our teens lie, cheat, and go to school drunk inrecord numbers. It you believe the latter, which I do, how could onepossibly accept the former.It's high time Americans reconsider our current drug policy and thosewe choose to define it. The truth is, Barry McCaffrey and hispolicies have caused havoc, both here and abroad.America now has the dubious distinction of housing, in its jails andprisons, more of our citizens than any country in the world, many ofthem non-violent drug offenders. A new record of over 700,000 arrestsfor the possession of marijuana during the fourth year of "CzarBarry's" reign.McCaffrey's involved us in a Latin American quagmire in Colombia thatguarantees to cost us billions of taxpayer's dollars and countlessinnocent lives and who knows how it might end.Law-abiding citizens are gunned down almost weekly, on our streets andin their homes, by drug enforcement agents, all while continuing "CzarBarry's" quixotic pursuit of the impossible, a drug free America.This is Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey's legacy and I dare him to deny it.A disastrous failure by any measure.Be that as it may, we can begin anew. There is another way. Weshould start by appointing someone who has actually studied theworld's drug policies and understands the history of drug prohibitionin America. No vested interest, no pie-in-the-sky rhetoric, nogovernment sponsored propaganda campaigns, no more corrupt lawenforcement and government officials, and no more distorted data. Justopen, honest, public debate, with harm reduction as our goal.Now that's a drug policy America requires and deserves, so let's geton with it and end this deadly charade called the War On Drugs.
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Comment #14 posted by kaptinemo on October 18, 2000 at 04:40:31 PT:
Unfortunately, I suspect that 4D will be right
McDonough is just the sort of purblind, my-mind-is-made-up sort that seems to populate the office. And he's almost certainly McC's choice for a replacement. Add to the fact that he's got financial stake in maintaining the WoSD (He's part owner of the company that developed the Fusarium Fungus into a biowar weapon) and he'll be a shoe-in for the job. Query: Is Barry a 'silent partner' in McDonough's company? I'd like to look at Barry's portfolio, which was supposed to be held in a blind trust for the entire period of his 'service'. (To whom? To us? Or the corporations who he contracted for their services?) It would not surprise me in the least if Barry leaves office a *very, very* wealthy man because of his 'investments' in the WoSD.
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Comment #13 posted by dddd on October 17, 2000 at 19:09:22 PT
biz-czar
FoM,I'm with you.Arianna Huffington. Unfortunatly,we will end up with some similar mentally deranged demagogue like McDonough.There are many waiting in line for the title of "czar".Whoever it is,it's not gonna be anyone nice or good..........dddd
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Comment #12 posted by FoM on October 17, 2000 at 08:46:07 PT
My Picks
Hi Sledhead,Besides our in house Doctor as a choice I can think of a few names.Arianna Huffington - Got to have one woman - sorry!Dr. Lester GrinspoonKevin ZeeseI would love Governor Gary Johnson to be our next drug czar. He has all the qualities I want in someone who is responsible for our drug laws and he listens and learns and is humble but confident.
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Comment #11 posted by Antianti on October 17, 2000 at 08:46:01 PT:
Good Riddance to the Army General
I hope the Democrats don't continue to posture "tough on drugs". What we need in the office is a doctor. I nominate Dr. Russo. 
Campaign for the Restoration and Regulation of Hemp
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Comment #10 posted by Sledhead on October 17, 2000 at 08:18:23 PT
Pick the next "czar"
Hopefully everyone's had a chance to read about McCaf's retirement.Whether this is a positive or a negative remains to be seen. It couldturn out to be a worse situation than we face now, you just neverknow. Who will be the next "czar"? Can we help them decide? Inominate Gov. Gary Johnson, Joseph D. McNamara, Eric Sterling, EthanA. Nadelmann, Jack Herer, Ralph Nader or all of the above as acommittee.Help pick the next "czar" or suffer the consequences.Write those letters....
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Comment #9 posted by FoM on October 17, 2000 at 07:48:37 PT
A Sinking Feeling
I just had a sinking feeling and I thought I'd post it. Would they consider Colin Powell? That scares me. Just my 2 cents.
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Comment #8 posted by Green Rider on October 16, 2000 at 23:45:58 PT
oh - crap
Yea,Glad to see the guy take a hike.The only problem, who is next?? 
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Comment #7 posted by nl5x on October 16, 2000 at 20:45:08 PT
thats not true and thats not all
 Free ride:"Earlier this year, White House chief of staff John Podesta ordered the drug czar to disconnect "cookies" programs used to track youths who visited the drug czar's anti-drug Web sites."That’s not true, or at the least very misleading.The ad campaign worked in much the same way as other advertising that is linked to Web search engines. When Web users typed in certain key words relating to drugs (on public search engines i.e. Yahoo, lycos, etc.), a banner ad would pop up on the screen (note: as soon as a banner pops up a cookie is automatically dropped on your hard drive without you having to click on it or anything)(correct me if I am wrong) inviting them to click on www.freevibe.com, an anti-drug site run by the drug control office. If people clicked on the site, a cookie was dropped onto their hard drives. The cookie's code allows the advertiser to see how the user entered the site, and what (other offsite/public or private) pages were entered once there.http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6131.shtmlhttp://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread6199.shtml“ Fury also was provoked by disclosures that the drug office paid Hollywood producers to put anti-drug messages in TV scripts.”That’s not all:The ONDCP, which is overseen by Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, an officer in President Clinton's Cabinet, did not review the articles before they were published. But the office did allow the six magazines -- U.S. News & World Report, Sporting News, Family Circle, Seventeen, Parade and USA Weekend -- to submit their editorial content to qualify as a substitute for advertising pages owed the government under single-year advertising contracts. Executives at all six magazines have confirmed the relationship with the drug office in interviews with Salon. The ONDCP refused to comment on this and all other mattersOne of the writers whose story was submitted to the White House drug office for valuation stated, "This is a clear violation of journalistic ethics. It's really egregious." Besides the six magazines listed above, 20 others captured $11,935,000 of the drug-control office's ad budget in 1999. These included Essence ($124,000); Ladies' Home Journal ($148,000); Newsweek ($207,000); Reader's Digest ($1,392,000); Teen ($199,000); TV Guide ($232,000) and Vibe ($106,000). A number of Time Warner publications also participated, including Sports Illustrated ($1,385,000); Time ($1,344,000); People ($743,000); People En Espanol ($160,000); Life ($111,000); and Family Life ($74,000). To date, Salon has obtained no evidence that any of these publications sought to swap editorial content for drug-czar financial credits. Overall, the drug office's five-year, roughly billion-dollar ad buy enriched a wide range of media. Television, both local and network, got well over $80 million in fiscal year 1999; radio got more than $10 million; billboards, transit and the like got over $5 million, and in-school efforts got a similar amount. Print, both newspapers and magazines, received some $17 mill-on, with about $10 million of that going to magazines, as detailed above. At U.S. News & World Report, which is owned by real-estate magnate Mortimer Zuckerman and has a weekly circulation of 2,205,000, the drug office bought a total of $652,000 in ads last year. Other related linkshttp://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1059/a03.htmlFIGHTING "CHEECH & CHONG" MEDICINEhttp://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n043/a09.htmlDRUG MONEY How The White House Secretly Hooked Network TV On Its Anti-Drug Message
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Comment #6 posted by freedom fighter on October 16, 2000 at 19:46:26 PT
Barry's nose has gotten even longer!
''I'm enormously proud of what we've done,'' McCaffrey said Monday in an interview. ''We had exploding rates of adolescent drug use and we've reduced it.'' 
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Comment #5 posted by MedGreen on October 16, 2000 at 19:43:00 PT
better days ahead
I'm interested in the timing of McCaffrey's resignation. He could have just ridden out the rest of Clinton's term, but instead he sacrificed a two-week paycheck to announce just a few weeks before the Presidential election (and the day before the third Gore-Bush debate) that he won't be a part of the next administration, whoever's it might be.With the amount of flak McCaffrey's and his office has taken, his job would have been in serious jeopardy anyway, but I wonder if perhaps Gore's people made him "an offer he couldn't refuse." Barry is serious baggage ... his "resignation" might be an effort by Gore to reassure us that things will be different if he's elected.Now if only Jim Lehrer would ask the candidates tomorrow night what qualities they would look for in a "drug czar" ... naaaaahh -- I won't be holding my breath.
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Comment #4 posted by max on October 16, 2000 at 18:40:56 PT:
hooray hooray
DING DONG THE NAZI PRICK IS GONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
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Comment #3 posted by EdC on October 16, 2000 at 18:12:26 PT:
McCaffrey out to stud
I wish he would take that idiot Mica with him.
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Comment #2 posted by FoM on October 16, 2000 at 16:52:04 PT:
Here's a Related Article
Drug Czar To Step DownSource: Denver Rocky Mountain News (CO)Author: Lance GayPublished: October 16, 2000Scripps Howard News ServiceCopyright: 2000 Denver Publishing Co.Contact: letters denver-rmn.com Address: 400 W. Colfax, Denver, CO 80204Website: http://www.denver-rmn.com/Washington - The White House's high-profile drug czar Barry McCaffrey announced Monday he's quitting, leaving behind a controversial $1 billion anti-drug advertising campaign that congressional critics say had little impact on curbing drug abuse in the United States.McCaffrey, a retired U.S. Army general, said in a surprise statement that he will leave office Jan. 6 and look for a job in the private sector."I am extremely grateful for the leadership and support of this administration and its steadfast support of the goals and programs that constitute the national drug control strategy," he said.Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush blasted the Clinton administration for not supporting McCaffrey's drug war, and said Clinton's approach to drug abuse was "without urgency, without energy and without success."But McCaffrey used his resignation statement to praise President Clinton for the support he gave the drug office. The federal government launched the largest public-health communications campaign during his four-year stint, McCaffrey said, adding that it will continue to drive down drug use by the country's 68 million children.Bill Bennett, drug czar in the Bush administration, applauded McCaffrey's efforts, saying he is "a good and honorable man in an administration that didn't act, lead or seem to care about the war on drugs."McCaffrey's critics said the expensive propaganda campaigns aren't working, and the $1 billion should instead be redirected to after-school programs and other activities that have demonstrated they can keep kids away from drugs."We're more awash in drugs than ever before," said Kevin Zeese, director of Common Sense for Drug Control.Zeese credited McCaffrey with focusing public attention on drug abuse, but criticized the drug czar for opposing needle exchange programs and medical marijuana voter initiatives.He said he would give McCaffrey a grade of C. "I would give him a somewhat higher grade for being right on rhetoric, but a lower grade because we are less healthy, and less safe."Recent statistics released by McCaffrey's office show that overall drug abuse has grown from 6.4 percent in 1997 to 7 percent in 1999. The statistics show that marijuana and crack use is declining, but that use of designer drugs, methamphetamine and ecstasy is soaring.McCaffrey's anti-drug advertising campaign, designed with the help of commercial advertising agencies, is aimed at changing youth attitudes about drugs with Web sites and commercials.But the campaign created controversies of its own. Earlier this year, White House chief of staff John Podesta ordered the drug czar to disconnect "cookies" programs used to track youths who visited the drug czar's anti-drug Web sites. Fury also was provoked by disclosures that the drug office paid Hollywood producers to put anti-drug messages in TV scripts.More recently, the General Accounting Office's elite special investigations unit, which handles criminal issues, disclosed it is looking at allegations of overbilling, contract fraud and financial mismanagement involving a $175 million contract the New York advertising firm Ogilvy & Mather has with the drug office. The GAO said the investigation is continuing.Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., chairman of a House Government Reform drug subcommittee overseeing the anti-drug campaign, warned the drug office that the controversies are eroding support for the effort in Congress, and that lawmakers want to see concrete results.William Raub, an adviser to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said three youth surveys show that while drug abuse has been leveling off over the last three years, it still is higher than the low-point of 1991.On the Net: http://www.theantidrug.com http://www.csdp.org
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Comment #1 posted by MikeEEEEE on October 16, 2000 at 16:37:55 PT
Not Suprised
It's better he resign than be fired, but he goosed this cow for a few years, the drug war certainly paid off for him. I doubt he'll be missed, ha ha.
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