cannabisnews.com: Bush Drug Czar Offers Contrast To Predecessor





Bush Drug Czar Offers Contrast To Predecessor
Posted by FoM on May 10, 2001 at 19:26:55 PT
CNN All Politics
Source: CNN
President Bush's appointment of John P. Walters to head the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy signals what could be a significant shift in the way national anti-drug efforts will be conducted under this new GOP administration. Walters, a protégé of William Bennett, the best-selling "values" author and commentator who ran the anti-drug office under Bush's father in the late 1980s and early 1990s, is at heart a stickler for law enforcement. 
When introduced Thursday by the president, however, he insisted he would seek to bolster drug treatment programs. His predecessor in the Clinton administration, former Gen. Barry McCaffrey, resigned just days before President Bush took office. McCaffrey favored changing the habits of repeat drug users through treatment programs and convincing children of the dangers of drugs long before they considered using. McCaffrey served five years under President Clinton. Before ascending to the Cabinet-level post, McCaffrey was known as the youngest officer to attain the rank of four-star general and was decorated veteran of the Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars. Many in Washington believed the general would bring some of his military verve to the war on drugs. Congressional Republicans in particular praised McCaffrey's appointment, seeking to strengthen anti-drug efforts when they secured control of both houses of Congress in January 1995. When he departed in January of this year, McCaffrey tallied up the Clinton administration's successes. McCaffrey said in January that federal funds to fight the distribution of drugs and adolescent drug abuse increased significantly on his watch. In a 2000 address to Congress, McCaffrey said drug abuse among the young had dropped 13 percent under the Clinton administration. Rates of drug-related crime also had dropped, he said, and interdiction efforts to seize drug shipments before they even cross U.S. borders were successful. But much work was still to be done, he said. "Serious challenges remain," McCaffrey told members of Congress in March 2000 year. "Heroin abuse is climbing back, and many kids think heroin is safe because it can now be sorted or smoked." McCaffrey believed treatment programs would go a long way toward curbing rates of drug use and often asked the Congress to provide more money for the aid of the nation's estimated 5 million drug abusers -- only a fraction of which receive help, he said. To McCaffrey there was no war on drugs. Instead, he said, drugs were a cancer on the American people that needed to be cured. McCaffrey had his critics on both sides of the drug divide. Some conservatives accused the Clinton administration of not being aggressive enough in thwarting drug distributors at their source. Liberal groups often said McCaffrey was too rigid and shortsighted in his approach. "McCaffrey took a 'father-knows-best' approach to marijuana," Graham Boyd, director of drug policy litigation for the American Civil Liberties Union, told the Los Angeles Times last fall. "He illegally censored doctors who recommend medical marijuana, and doctored TV scripts about marijuana," Graham said, referring to an awkward revelation that the anti-drug office had worked out an agreement with the major TV networks to have anti-drug messages inserted into the scripts of some popular shows. Walters himself blasted Clinton and to a lesser degree McCaffrey in 1996 when he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee as president of the group "The New Citizenship Project." "While there are many different reasons for the deterioration in America's resistance to illegal drugs, an important part of the explanation is a failure in federal policy," Walters said. "After promising to 'reinvent our drug control programs' and 'move beyond ideological debates,' [Clinton] announced a new approach to drug policy, de-emphasizing law enforcement and effecting a 'controlled shift' away from interdiction. "This ineffectual policy ... seems to have been rejected even by the president's new drug czar, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who has moved to elevate the profile of prevention programs," Walters said. When Bush introduced Walters on Thursday, he noted McCaffrey's figures on the number of "hard core" drug abusers, sticking with the 5 million figure. Bush also agreed that only about half of those were receiving any kind of treatment, and said he would later seek to boost funding for treatment options. In the meantime, Walters is thought to favor increased prison sentences for repeat offenders -- distributors more so than users -- and more lenient punishments for users charged with a first offense. But Walters, who was deputy director for awhile during Bennett's tenure as drug czar, will likely seek to build new, stronger interdiction efforts as he seeks to make life more miserable for repeat drug offenders. "We will especially protect our children from drug use. We will help the addicted find effective treatment and remain in recovery," Walters said Thursday. "We will shield our communities from the terrible human toll taken by illegal drugs. We'll stop illegal drug use and the drug trade from funding threats to democratic institutions throughout our hemisphere." Complete Title: Bush Drug Czar Offers Clear Contrast To PredecessorSource: CNN (US Web) Published: May 10, 2001Copyright: 2001 Cable News Network, Inc. Contact: cnn.feedback cnn.com Website http://www.cnn.com/ Feedback: http://cnn.com/feedback/ Related Articles:Bush Defends Choice for Drug Fight Chief http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread9666.shtmlBush Names Drug Policy Director http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread9658.shtmlBush To Name Walters as Drug Czarhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread9654.shtml 
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Comment #2 posted by Symmetric on May 11, 2001 at 09:15:11 PT:
CNN sucks
CNN reporting is for the birds. It looks like they based this story entirely on press releases from the ondcp.
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Comment #1 posted by davanita on May 10, 2001 at 20:19:29 PT:
values sell, but who's buying?
**"Walters, a protégé of William Bennett, the best-selling "values" author"what the hell is this crap!!!??? I don't need anyone to SELL me value; that is something one cannot purchase in a store or online at some BS .com estore.**"We will especially protect our children from drug use. We will help the addicted find effective treatment and remain in recovery," Walters said Thursday. the last time I checked it was the job of parents to regulate their children's lives...oh wait, too many of us leave up to the government..like government schools.my complaning on this computer does help, it raises awareness to my cause, our freedom. 
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