From: Jim Rosenfield <[j n r] at [igc.apc.org]>
Newsgroups: talk.politics.drugs
Date: 20 Oct 93 09:24 PDT
Subject: AP Story on "New Drug Policy"

From: Jim Rosenfield <jnr>
Subject: AP Story on "New Drug Policy"

APn  10/20 1139  Drug Plan

Copyright, 1993. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

By CAROLYN SKORNECK
 Associated Press Writer
   WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Clinton administration's interim drug
plan targets hard-core addiction that is fueling violence
throughout the nation, the top drug policy official said today.
   The plan, released at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing
today, "shifts the focus to the most challenging and difficult
part of the drug problem -- reducing drug use and its consequences
by hard-core users, especially those in our inner cities, among
the disadvantaged, and among the criminal justice population," Lee
Brown, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy,
said in a prepared statement.
   "Hard core drug use fuels the overall demand for drugs and is
the primary cause for so much of the disruption we see in our
social landscape today," Brown said.
   He gave no estimate of how much the proposals would cost. The
plan does not call for any across-the-board reductions in law
enforcement efforts to pay for them.
   Democrats in the past have complained that previous Republican
administrations wrongly devoted 70 percent of the anti-drug budget
to law enforcement and international efforts, leaving only 30
percent for reducing the demand for drugs through education and
treatment.
   The Clinton administration strategy relies on passage of the
crime bill and its plan to fund 50,000 community police officers
over the next few years, as well as the Brady Bill gun control
measure, and President Clinton's health care plan, which would
fund drug treatment.
   The strategy would reduce interdiction efforts in favor of
promoting additional crackdowns within drug-producing countries,
something criticized by former drug director William Bennett, who
led president Bush's war on drugs for two years.
   Even the nomenclature is changing in the Clinton
administration, which is rejecting the notion of a "war on drugs."
   "The strategy rejects the use of `war' analogies to discuss our
nation's drug abuse policy," Brown said. "You cannot succeed in
this effort by declaring `war' on our own citizens."
   Those hoping that the Clinton administration would reconsider
legalizing drugs will be disappointed by the plan.
   "The administration is without any reservation opposed to the
legalization, decriminalization or medicalization of illegal
drugs," Brown said, crediting laws against drug use for the
declines in drug use that have occurred.
   Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., whose House Government Operations
Committee helped create the drug policy office four years ago,
praised the plan as "a step in the right direction towards
reallocating the priorities to treatment and education -- if the
funding matches the stated priorities."
   It "finally targets the hard-core drug users who account for 70
percent of the drugs consumed," he said.
   But Conyers criticized the plan for its continued support of
efforts to prevent importation of drugs.
   "The General Accounting Office testified before my committee
just last week that our multibillion-dollar interdiction efforts
have not led to any reduction in the estimated flow of cocaine
onto American streets," he said in a statement.
   Conyers said he believed the National Security Council had
reached a similar conclusion, "yet the strategy provides for
continued support of interdiction without even acknowledging such
major critical evaluations."