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 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."