cannabisnews.com: Drug Czar Plays Defense





Drug Czar Plays Defense
Posted by CN Staff on April 28, 2005 at 13:31:07 PT
By Paul Singer 
Source: National Journal
Washington, D.C. -- Republican and Democratic members of Congress, law enforcement officials around the country, academics who study drug policy, even former and current staff members are raising complaints about the performance of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Under the leadership of John Walters, the office is accused of retreating from its mission, abandoning key programs without consulting with Congress, and losing (or forcing out) key staff members with years of experience.
Walters "is on the verge of gutting his own office," said Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., who chairs the House Government Reform Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources. "This is a period of more turmoil than we have had since the Bush administration took over, inside ONDCP." Walters has clearly lowered the profile of the office, critics say, and in some cases, withdrawn from consultation even with the agency's allies. "Under the previous administration, as the president of a national group, we frequently met with the director and other ONDCP executive staff," said Ronald Brooks, president of the National Narcotic Officers' Associations' Coalition. "We have only had one meeting like that since Walters took over four years ago, and that meeting happened right after he took over, and we haven't had one since." "Without a dialogue, sitting in a policy office inside the Beltway, how do you make great decisions if you don't ask anybody?" Brooks asked. Thomas Riley, Walters's spokesman, vehemently denies that his boss is deflating the office, saying that any internal turmoil is a result of Walters's commitment to strong management principles: demanding accountability from staff, eliminating inefficiencies in the bureaucracy, and moving programs to other departments and agencies that are better equipped to run them. Walters declined to be interviewed for this story. "Teen drug use is down dramatically over the past three years," Riley said, citing one statistic that he says is a barometer of ONDCP's success. "Is it the function of the office to constantly go around ringing alarm bells and saying, 'Drugs are out of control! Drugs are running rampant!'? No, it isn't. It is to take the president's national drug control strategy which is issued every year, and to work with federal agencies and make sure they are following the strategy." Part of the criticism seems to emanate from Walters's personal style, which distinguishes him from his predecessors. Walters, who served as chief of staff to William Bennett, the first drug czar, and spent several years between government stints heading a national association of philanthropies, does not have the high public profile or love of the media shared by his mentor and Clinton drug czar Barry McCaffrey. Instead, he is widely viewed as a low-key policy maven with a brusque personal style. "John is an administrator and a planner and doesn't see himself,I think, in quite the same public role that I did or Barry McCaffrey did," Bennett said. "I was already the beneficiary of the nation having its attention fixed on the issue." Bennett described Walters as "very tough, very hard-driving," and said that those are good qualities for the office. "He wants to get it right; he doesn't want to get elected," Bennett said. But beyond style, Walters has initiated policy changes and management reforms that have rankled his staff and an array of interested stakeholders. The president's budget proposal for next year, which significantly reduces funding for drug assistance to state and local governments, has produced howls of protest from the officials who run these programs -- and from the members of Congress who represent them. The Rand think tank has issued a report suggesting that the nation's drug policies are badly misdirected. And a small group of current and former ONDCP employees complain that Walters has run off the office's most experienced senior staff. The agency reported to Congress last year that most of the 17 senior career employees of the Office of Demand Reduction had resigned, retired, or been transferred since 2001, including three employees, with more than 20 years of combined experience in the drug czar's office, who retired on one day in August 2003. The focal point for recent criticism of the drug czar's office has been the president's proposal to cut the budget for the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program by more than half and move the program to the Justice Department. The program provides funds to help coordinate the anti-drug efforts of law enforcement agencies in specific geographic areas. Established in 1990 in five regions -- Houston, Los Angeles, New York/New Jersey, South Florida, and the U.S./Mexico border -- with a budget of about $25 million, the anti-trafficking program has grown to encompass 28 areas that cover parts of 43 states. Its 2005 budget is $228 million. In December, ONDCP issued a report touting the successes of the high-intensity programs in each region, and included a cover letter from Walters proclaiming, "This past year, the HIDTA program continued to bring federal, state, and local law enforcement together to make a measurable difference in disrupting the market for illegal drugs." But two months later, the White House unveiled a budget request that cut the program by more than half, to $100 million for next year, and transferred it to Justice. Officials in the drug czar's office have repeatedly defended the cut, saying that the program was "unable to demonstrate results" under the new White House performance assessment system. The president's proposed drug budget also eliminates "Safe and Drug-Free Schools" grants; cuts ONDCP's technology assistance to state and local law enforcement; proposes flat funding for the national anti-drug media campaign; and cuts the administrative budget for ONDCP by $2 million, a 10 percent decrease that officials say reflects lower overhead. State officials who run the high-intensity programs -- so alarmed by the White House budget proposal that they reached into their own pockets to create a new association to fight the cuts -- said they have plenty of results to boast about, and that ONDCP had been working with state officials to develop new performance measures. Tom Gorman, president of the new National HIDTA Directors Association, said that the measurement system indicates that the program "disrupted or dismantled" 509 international, 711 multistate, and 1,110 local drug-trafficking organizations, and that it dismantled "51 percent of the methamphetamine manufacturing operations in the nation" last year. But ONDCP did not have this information, Gorman said, because "Director Walters still hasn't asked for the results of this new performance measurement system." Walters testified in February that the anti-trafficking program had lost its focus by expanding from five to 28 communities, and that moving the program to the Justice Department was the best way to sharpen its focus. The program is meant to coordinate law enforcement activities, which is the Justice Department's area of expertise, government officials argue. Souder said that the biggest concern about the proposal to cut the anti-trafficking program is that ONDCP apparently consulted with no one outside the White House, despite the cut's potential to significantly affect anti-drug programs around the country. "It's the arrogance of it which upset me so much," Souder said. "They didn't talk to anybody." This is a recurring complaint about Walters's management of ONDCP -- that the office is not big on communicating with outside parties, even though its primary statutory mission is to coordinate the drug policies of all federal agencies. John Carnevale, a longtime drug policy aide who served on the Bush transition team for ONDCP, said, "The interagency process that ONDCP is charged by statute with leading has completely broken down." In responses to questions posed by Congress last year, ONDCP acknowledged that it had suspended regular meetings of the "demand reduction working group," a twice-yearly meeting of senior political appointees from the federal agencies involved in anti-drug efforts. An upcoming congressional report reviewed by National Journal expresses a broader concern that "ONDCP has not been exercising the kind of active leadership, oversight, and coordination of executive branch drug-control efforts envisioned by Congress in 1998." The FBI, the Coast Guard, and other agencies involved in anti-drug efforts are under enormous pressure to shift resources to anti-terrorism activities, the report warns, and that pressure "requires a strong and effective response from ONDCP. That response has not yet been nearly strong or effective enough." Riley says these charges are simply wrong. For example, ONDCP coordinated production of a controversial TV advertisement during the 2005 Super Bowl, linking casual drug use to terrorist activities that are funded by drug profits. Those ads required "an unprecedented effort of interagency coordination," Riley said. "There has never been another series of ads, I am certain, of any kind, that have required as much interagency coordination as those ads. We involved almost every agency that could even tangentially touch on the issue of terror, showed them early drafts of the scripts, drafts of the ads, cleared them through the National Security Council and through all the other agencies -- and frankly, no other agency would have been able to put something like that together." ONDCP has also led government efforts to fight steroid abuse, Riley said, worked with the Education Department to promote student drug testing, and convened an interagency group to consider ways to boost the role of medical professionals in diagnosing and treating drug abuse. One of the administration's signature programs, the "Access to Recovery" initiative that Bush announced in 2003 to provide drug users with vouchers for treatment, is an ONDCP effort conceived by Walters and funded at $100 million a year. The initiative, which also allows increased involvement by faith-based treatment providers, has required a tremendous amount of interagency coordination, according to Riley. Stephenie Colston, a senior adviser at the Health and Human Services Department's Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, said her agency maintains close contact with ONDCP and other federal agencies on specific projects, sometimes through informal communication and sometimes through meetings. The public-affairs and press staffs of the various agencies have a weekly conference call to coordinate activities, for example. But Colston said that no regular interagency strategy meetings have taken place in the two and a half years she has been at her agency. "In terms of a formal convened meeting, I can't think of one," she said. But "it doesn't mean we don't communicate regularly." Several former staffers and some current ones, mostly speaking on background, argue that interagency coordination has become more difficult because many of the senior staff at ONDCP who maintained those informal relationships have been reassigned, pushed into retirement, or demoted since Walters took office in December 2001. John Gregrich, a former official who joined ONDCP in 1991 and left in 2003, said that Walters began "harassing" career employees with a series of petty conduct complaints -- about showing up late for meetings, taking a long lunch hour -- to justify punishing them or to simply make retirement an attractive option. Gregrich, who at one point served as acting deputy director for demand reduction, says he was ultimately told by his political bosses to stop communicating with other agencies and was denied permission to participate in professional conferences. "In essence," Gregrich said, "it was, 'Sit on your hands in your office while we figure out how you are failing to perform.' " Gregrich was also caught up in the turmoil over Andrea Barthwell, a physician appointed by Walters to head the Demand Reduction Office. In a March 2003 investigation of a hostile workplace complaint that Gregrich filed against Barthwell, an investigator appointed by ONDCP concluded, "The management method currently being employed has created an atmosphere of intimidation." Office managers misplaced documents, then blamed staff for failing to submit them; employees were reprimanded for failing to carry out conflicting orders; and Barthwell made inappropriate and vulgar comments to her subordinates, the investigator reported. Barthwell remained in her position at ONDCP until July 2004, when she launched an unsuccessful campaign for the U.S. Senate in Illinois. Barthwell's spokesman said she apologized for her inappropriate comments, attended sensitivity training, and considered the matter resolved. Most senior aides in Barthwell's office departed, and Barthwell has not been replaced. "There has been a flushing of the Demand Reduction Office," said a Democratic congressional staff member. A Republican Hill aide says that with the loss of the expertise of senior career staff, "there has been a problematic lack of depth" in ONDCP. Gregrich questions how Walters could allow such a poor management situation to continue for so long. Riley argues that the criticism is largely coming from disgruntled former employees. "We have had a lot of vigor in putting the strategic management of human capital into an agency that didn't really do very much of that in the past -- through performance plans, through measurable and accountable performance goals which were not there before. This has created a lot of tension among people who might not have benefited from such levels of accountability," he said. "In any organization, whether it is a government organization or private-sector organization, where people come in and want to be serious about imposing accountability in the personnel system, you are going to have people who are going to be disgruntled." Walters defended his management and his budget at a February hearing. "This isn't about how many bureaucrats it takes to do the job," he said. "It's about the kind of job we can do for the country, and if we can be more efficient. Nobody's gutting my office. Nobody's forcing me to take fewer people. I'm suggesting that we can consolidate and focus our energies ... [and become] more effective in the future with fewer people." But a recent Rand study suggests that the nation's drug policies are too heavily weighted toward enforcement rather than prevention, a trend that is becoming more pronounced under Walters. Including the anti-drug efforts of the Defense Department, the Homeland Security Department, and others, the president's budget targets only about 13 percent of federal anti-drug spending to prevention; interdiction and enforcement get much larger shares. The Rand study calls that imbalance bad policy. "If enforcement were able to produce greater progress toward drug policy goals [such as reduced use or reduced availability of drugs] per dollar spent on it, it might justify the emphasis," Rand concluded. "The best available evidence suggests, however, that that is not the case." Riley argues that the ultimate measure of success is the reduction in drug use that has occurred during Walter's tenure. In 2002, Bush issued a drug strategy that set a goal of a 10 percent reduction in teen and adult drug use within two years and a 25 percent reduction within five years. Statistics released by ONDCP in December 2004 showed a 17 percent reduction in teen drug use over three years, "exceeding the president's goal and bringing drug use to its lowest levels since the early 1990s," the office proclaimed. But Carnevale and other critics argue that Walters should not get the credit for that achievement. "Drug use is down, but what does that have to do with Mr. Walters?" Carnevale asked. "He is just the beneficiary of a trend that began in 1996. The trend was going up until 1996, and it took a sharp turn down in 1996 and has been trending downward ever since." Note: If you can name the current drug czar, you are probably mad at him. Source: National Journal (US) Author: Paul Singer Published: April 23, 2005Copyright: 2005 National Journal Group Inc Website: http://nationaljournal.com/njweekly/ Contact: http://nationaljournal.com/help/feedback.htm CannabisNews -- Justice Archiveshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/list/justice.shtml
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Comment #17 posted by John Tyler on April 30, 2005 at 06:53:37 PT
Drug Czars
Isn’t this ironic? Here we have one of the most rabid of the Drug Czars and at the same time one of the most incompetent.
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Comment #16 posted by ron on April 30, 2005 at 00:57:19 PT
Caesar was a monster
He invaded Gaul with an army of disciplined thugs. They terrorized the population, and shipped many back to Italy as slaves.Resistance groups arose in response to his terror tactics. Caesar's legions of trained killers finally cornered the hard core of Gaulish patriots in a fortress. Four thousand surrendered after a prolonged siege.Caesar cut off both hands of the entire group. His doctors nursed them back to health after this outrage. Then he ordered small groups of these handless vets be sent to every village throughout the country. He knew how to send a message.Calling Walters the Drug Czar seems fitting. You have to be cruel and ruthless to do his job.
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Comment #15 posted by AgaetisByrjun on April 29, 2005 at 10:43:55 PT
slight mistake
The Cyrillic might be Царь and not Цсарь (it probably is). Either way, it's pronounced something like "tsar(y)", all as one syllable.
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Comment #14 posted by AgaetisByrjun on April 29, 2005 at 10:41:31 PT
Czar
There's a lot more to the Drug Czar's title than you might think.Julius Cæsar -- pronounced, in classical Latin, something like "Yoolyus Kaisar" -- set the stage for the Roman Empire, and his nephew Octavian, the first Roman Emperor, assumed the name Augustus Cæsar upon assuming the purple. Rome eventually dwindled to nothing in the next 500 years, but the "kaisar" remained (the (proper) English pronunciation "seizer" is completely inaccurate).First, the Pope crowned Charlemagne Roman Emperor in A.D. 800. The next thousand years of German rulers called themselves Cæsar -- or Kaiser -- even though they had nothing at all to do with Rome.In the east, the Muscovite rulers declared Moscow "the Third Rome" (after Rome and Constantinople) and so took the self-proclaimed title Цсарь, as if it somehow gave them legitimacy over the Roman legacy.Czars and Kaisers are nothing but pretenders and usurpers: and they have since the very beginning. Their pretensions to glory and their absolute rule allowed themselves to call themselves the successors to Rome, even as their own power dwindled to nothing.
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Comment #13 posted by OverwhelmSam on April 29, 2005 at 05:10:51 PT
Good! Pressure Is Coming To Bear On LE.
Outstanding. Obviously, Souder's corporate constituients are putting pressure on Souder to stop the demise of the drug war. Law Enforcement Officials across the country are so bogged down with busting everyday people for something as frivolous as a little bag of pot, and so many people are busted for usually nothing more than simple possession, that our courts and District Attorneys are fed up with prosecuting such a minor offense that doesn't even rise to the level of a public nuisance. Overwhelm Uncle Sam
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Comment #12 posted by Hope on April 28, 2005 at 21:19:17 PT
Agog, E_Johnson, Shishaldin
Agog, Souder being upset at arrogance struck me as ironic also. I guess he doesn't want anyone being more arrogant than he.E_Johnson...comment #1 is a very apt description of their ongoing debacle. A Gravy Train Wreck, in fact.Shishaldin, that Czar business has always been a curiosity to me. Could it be, that instead of the arrogance and dictatorialness it always seemed to imply, that it was really just a forewarning of a doomed position? I hope so.Cannabis prohibition is so strange and uncalled for. To persecute and prosecute people for using it will one day be universally recognized as the freakish tragedy that, in fact, it is. 
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Comment #11 posted by siege on April 28, 2005 at 19:13:19 PT
O T  track device in  kids
We have a revolution going on here in this County in Tn. In May,05 they are going to start puting surgically: implant's into kids forehead so they can ((track)) them and there is going to be a lot of them taken out of the public schools here before it happens.. They said it is for the good of the community.... the grand kids have been pulled out of school and will be home schooled..
To hel* with the Antichrist BUSH and his B S...
This is to know where they (are), and (mechanisms for drug control) and (Medical records) The way I see it is the early stage of the Antichrist..
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Comment #10 posted by Agog on April 28, 2005 at 17:41:57 PT
They Sent in the Clowns...Carnevale et.al.
I'm glad I wasn't drinking anything when I read..."It's the arrogance of it which upset me so much," Souder said. "They didn't talk to anybody." Souder talking about other's arrogance... PUUHHHLEEZZ!!!!!They get what they deserve a slow terribly uncomfortable bureacratic demise. R/Agog
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Comment #9 posted by stoner spirit on April 28, 2005 at 17:29:15 PT:
I guess the revolution is starting in slow mo
Just shut down the O.N.D.C.P., good gods! They will not last for long, hopefully. The government is going to hell, sooner or later. But then again, the revolution hasn't really started at all. Damet!, I was hoping it would start sooner, Hahahahahahahahahaha.
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Comment #8 posted by mayan on April 28, 2005 at 17:13:39 PT
The Last Slice
The president's budget proposal for next year, which significantly reduces funding for drug assistance to state and local governments, has produced howls of protest from the officials who run these programs -- and from the members of Congress who represent them.The states are hurting as well! It's going to be interesting watching all these drug warriors fighting over the last slice of the drug war pie! Greed is eating itself. 
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Comment #7 posted by cloud7 on April 28, 2005 at 17:11:54 PT
Hilarious
"What do you expect from an American government agency that uses the title for a 19th century Russian monarch for it's head of staff?"
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Comment #6 posted by Shishaldin on April 28, 2005 at 16:42:12 PT
What do you expect?
What do you expect from an American government agency that uses the title for a 19th century Russian monarch for it's head of staff?ONDCP: Taking one GIANT leap backwards, again and again and again and again and again...
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Comment #5 posted by Sam Adams on April 28, 2005 at 16:07:38 PT
Pretty funny
What do they expect? They've hired an executive & whole boatload of people to do a job that can never be done! What kind of management style do they want? What does it matter?  If any element of the ONDCP was held up to business standards of success it would be closed immediately, they'll never succeed. Is "interagency cooperation" really required for a few ludicrous TV commercials with 30 seconds of voiceover? There's is so much bloat in the federal government it's crazy. Fire them all! Shut down the ONDCP immediately for god's sake. And merge the other 25 LEO agencies into one while you're at it.And how about the good Dr. Barthwell, eh? She's got a real nasty mouth, apparently. If you really think about it, the ONDCP must be a crazy place to work. There isn't much else like it in the US or Europe. One would have to look in Nazi Germany or behind the Iron Curtain of the 50s-80s to find something similar. I can't imagine going to work everday in a place where everyone knew they would fail at their mission, and fail miserably. While being led by someone who just wants to get out of the job as soon as possible. 
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Comment #4 posted by b4daylight on April 28, 2005 at 15:44:04 PT
the truth
an investigator appointed by ONDCP concluded, "The management method currently being employed has created an atmosphere of intimidation."Well why not this what they do to the public they serve.just to be picky shall we"Drug use is down, but what does that have to do with Mr. Walters?" Carnevale asked.So prescription use is way up, We have people using all sorts of over the counter drugs, we got people drinking enough pop to mak those companies billions of caffine dollars, we got people drinking alcohol, people smoking ciggerettes, ,people abusing the car (that killed 42,00 people just last year), and enough big macs were sold to bloat the masses..The point here is we live in a drug world simply stating a drug is bad for tends to lead a belief that these above are ok to abuse because they are not illegal, or because Walters is not addressing real issue that all drugs are bad for you.. 
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Comment #3 posted by global_warming on April 28, 2005 at 15:26:35 PT
Mixed Up
"Souder said that the biggest concern about the proposal to cut the anti-trafficking program is that ONDCP apparently consulted with no one outside the White House, despite the cut's potential to significantly affect anti-drug programs around the country."When old Mark Souder is complaining, you have to wonder what is going on, that old snake handler, maybe is starting to wake up.This article is a real confusing piece, Paul Singer and the National Review. I can imagine that someday, the blood/wine of the Christ, taken from a silver chalice will be considered drug abuse, and the chalice drug paraphernalia.The final breakdown, seems to me, that the fat cat druggy warriors, are not getting a raise...too bad, maybe this world is waking up and ready to say, enough is enough.In the end, every child of the Souders and all the drug warriors children and grand children, will become victims and criminals under this evil mindset of prohibitionist that has taken control of our world.gw
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Comment #2 posted by runderwo on April 28, 2005 at 14:15:58 PT
Demand reduction
I've never heard of that office before. The name is interesting, because it seems to suggest that somebody is realizing that the war on drugs is a problem that must be solved on the demand side because attacking the supply side is just an expensive game of whack-a-mole. But I wonder how they are working to reduce demand. Through education and treatment, reducing the glamor and rebellious attraction of hard drug use? Or by imprisoning as many nonviolent drug users as possible?
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Comment #1 posted by E_Johnson on April 28, 2005 at 13:53:54 PT
A slow motion train wreck
The Greedy Express is colliding with the Wall of Public Exhaustion.
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