A Losing Battle

Remember the war on drugs? George Bush waving a plastic bag of crack bought across the street from the White House during a nationally televised speech? The Pentagon planning to station an aircraft carrier off the coast of Colombia to monitor suspected drug smugglers? Candidates for political office proffering urine samples and daring their opponents to do the same? The appointment of combative William J. Bennett as the nation's first drug czar, a post from which he would coordinate an all-out assault on a menace that seemed to threaten the very survival of the U.S.?

Though those events now seem like relics of a long-distant past, they all occurred in the past two years. Since last summer, however, the war on drugs has become almost an afterthought. Part of the reason is simply that public concern has been diverted by the Persian Gulf crisis and fears of a recession. But there is another sign of the issue's decline: though he sounded a call to arms soon after taking office, the President too has turned his attention elsewhere.

In recent months confident assertions that the U.S. is making great strides in kicking the habit have become conventional wisdom in the drug war's high command. When he resigned as director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy three weeks ago, Bennett proclaimed that success, while not yet achieved, was in sight. He contended that his original goal of cutting drug use in half by 1999 could be achieved five years sooner if the federal, state and local governments maintain their current efforts.

Bennett's hopeful forecast was shared by the President, who declared earlier this month, "We're on the road to victory." Federal surveys found that "casual" consumption of cocaine and marijuana had fallen, as had emergency-room admissions and deaths from drug overdoses. Federal agents believe cocaine prices have risen because of the pressure international police operations are putting on suppliers.

But how much of the optimistic talk emanating from Washington is warranted and how much of it is hype from an Administration and Congress eager to justify the expenditure of billions of dollars at a time of budget crunches, rising taxes and widespread anger at government? Those on the front line of the war on drugs -- the beleaguered law-enforcement officers, the overworked drug counselors, the terrified residents of crack-infested neighborhoods -- are far from positive that the "war" is going all that well.

What those on the front line fear most is that Washington is preparing to declare victory and walk away from a battle that it is not winning, but was not serious about waging in the first place. Some critics charge such a turnabout is conceivable only because drug abuse, which continues to rage in poor ghetto areas, has sharply declined within the white middle class. If the Federal Government were to withdraw from the field, it would not be for the first time. In 1973 Richard Nixon announced that the U.S. had "turned the corner on drug addiction." The federal antidrug effort was allowed to shrivel even as Colombia's "cocaine cowboys" were establishing their first beachhead in Miami. Some battlefield reports from the latest round: