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Presidential Address on Drugs 9/5/89 [OA 6267] [8]
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This is not a textual record. This is used as an
administrative marker by the George Bush Presidential
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Record Group/Collection:
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Series:
Speech File Backup Files
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Folder Title:
Presidential Address on Drugs 9/5/89 [OA 6267] [8]
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26
19
3
2
neagan
at
a
su-
Give whiff artist Bush two cheers. Colin
cal. He's more than a soldier. He knows
perpower lunch with Mikhail Gorbachev,
Powell is a home run.
name their country. It would be cleaner if
the Middle East and Soviet players and
the reaction bemused Powell.
Lars-Erik Nelson is on vacation
Fighting
and dying in the drug war
In the killing of
the ground-floor apartment on Starr St.
profile in courage. Gertrude Russell was
said. "Not around my place." He was shot
Maria Hernan-
where the Hernandez family lived, five
in her late 60s but she was not afraid. To
dead. It was more tearing down of fences
dez of Brook-
shots were fired through a bedroom win-
fight, she sat in her window with a bucket
that stood against lawlessness.
lyn, it did not
dow. Six hours later, Maria Hernandez
of lye. "I put honey in it," she said. "If they
The promise was it would not happen
take the police
died at Wyckoff Heights Hospital.
(dealers) come in my building, I'm going to
this way. Government vowed to draw a
long to get a
When drug dealers settle into neighbor-
jam them; I'm going to jam them real
line. A "war on drugs" was promised. Now,
handle on what
EARL
hoods where business is good, nothing
good." She had put honey in the lye, she
there is a war. But instead of government
had happened.
seems to scare them away. They take over.
said, so that when she dumped in on the
mobilizing, it is the other way around. The
CALDWELL
She was a wom-
They are armed and use the guns to threat-
dealers who came around it would stick to
drug dealers are the ones who have de-
an determined
en and intimidate. They also kill. Maria
them. She got threats in late night phone
clared war. Stand against us and you die,
to stand up to drug dealers in her neigh-
Hernandez is not the first to die. Hers is
calls but that did not stop her.
they say. Unlike government, they are not
borhood of Bushwick and for that, she paid
another name on a growing list.
The women had lookouts in every build-
just mouthing words. How many ordinary
with her life.
But we saw all this coming. Bit by bit the
ing. They reported drug dealers to the po-
citizens who have stood up have been
Mrs. Hernandez and her husband, Car-
last 20 years the fences that stood against
lice 20 and 30 times a day. "We made the
killed for their courage? The list of the vic-
los, were two more of the ordinary citizens
dealing of illegal drugs have been torn
police do their job," Rita Smith said. And
tims keeps getting longer.
who have drawn the line. "Not here," they
down. By 1979, drug dealing was no longer
in time, they made a difference. However,
In Brooklyn, police believe the shots
said to drug dealers. "Not in our building;
something kept underground. Carl McCall
a price was paid. Rita Smith saw her son
fired into the Hernandez home were in-
not on our block."
was then a young state legislator. He actu-
shot in the mouth on the stoop of her build-
tended to intimidate. Carlos Hernandez
But they did more than talk. They
ally took reporters around in his Harlem
ing. It was a portent of things to come.
was to testify before a grand jury. He lost
learned that to ask drug dealers to back off
district and said, "Here it is, out in the
On Amsterdam Ave., near W. 155th St., a
his wife but he had the courage to go
means nothing. So the Hernandezes decid-
open." We have open air drug markets.
man named Wilson operated a fine restau-
ahead and testify. "I am going to keep
ed to fight. They did not go outside the law.
Talk of a war on drugs started then.
rant. A lot of people flocked to Wilson's to
fighting," he pledged.
They went to the police and had courage to
In neighborhoods, people began to fight.
eat soul food. The restaurant was a neigh-
At times, it takes ordinary citizens to
provide names and information about traf-
Maybe no group showed more courage
borhood center. It was always busy; always
stand up to make government do its job. It
ficking in their area. Maybe they were
than a bunch of women on W. 143d St. Rita
crowded. It was a perfect place for drug
is happening that way in the drug wars.
afraid but they did not back off.
Smith was the head of that block associa-
dealers to set up shop. They did exactly
But there are casualties. Now add the
The police say that early on Tuesday, in
tion. Those women were to write a true
that. "Not here," the restaurant owner
name of Maria Hernandez. She was 34.
LIGHT TAKES
THE AMERICAN PREVENTION MOVEMENT
The Grass-Roots Effort
to Prevent Drug Abuse in America
Prepared by
The National Drug Information Center of Families in Action
in cooperation with
Other Leaders of the American Prevention Movement
THE AMERICAN PREVENTION MOVEMENT
Contents
Introduction
Page 1
Philosophy and Accomplishments to Date
Page 4
Clarifying the Process:
Drug Education Does Change Behavior
Page 4
Clarifying the Message:
Prevention vs. Intervention
Page 8
Clarifying the Laws:
Teaching Children, Families and Communities
Right from Wrong
Page 10
Clarifying the Status of Alcohol and Tobacco:
Legal for Adults but Illegal for Young People
Page 13
The Role of the State Parent-Group Networks
Page 17
The Role of Youth
Page 21
The Role of the Workplace
Page 25
The Role of the Network for High-Risk Youth
Page 27
Where We Must Go From Here
Page 30
Bring Prevention Networks Together
Page 30
Create A National Drug Corps
Page 32
Set Specific Goals, Timetables
Page 38
Conclusion
Page 38
THE AMERICAN PREVENTION MOVEMENT
Sue Rusche
Executive Director
National Drug Information Center of Families in Action
Each time someone breaks the law, democracy moves
one step closer to anarchy. The American grass-roots
prevention movement is working to reverse the direction of those
steps.
1. INTRODUCTION
Sir Moses Finley of Cambridge University, in the PBS documentary
Genesis, defines democracy as "rule by the demos, or people." In response
to an alarming escalation of drug abuse among children and teenagers in the
United States throughout the 1970s, democracy reasserted itself. Ordinary
people, at first primarily parents, claimed the right to stop children from
becoming involved with drugs, despite prevailing opinion that there wasn't
much wrong with such behavior.
Genesis notes that ancient Athenians began their assemblies in the
world's first democracy by placing a curse on anyone who would deceive the
people. At the time the prevention movement began in the United States,
1
many were deceiving the people, some intentionally, some not. Those who
profited from involving children in substance abuse tried to deceive the
people by insisting that illegal drugs are relatively harmless and should be
legal. At the same time, many whose job it was to deal with drug abuse
also deceived the people, through a combination of factors: a loss of faith
in drug education, a confusion of intervention and prevention goals, a
reluctance to teach children right from wrong.
This legacy from ancient Greece, rule by the people and a refusal to
tolerate deception, is the driving force behind the American prevention
movement. In twelve years' time, the parents who have led it have
succeeded in dramatically reducing all levels of drug use among the nation's
high-school seniors. They achieved this by assuming the responsibility their
government had abandoned--that of providing drug education to children,
families and communities--until Congress saw the error of its ways and re-
created funding for drug-abuse education in 1986. They clarified the
difference between intervention, where the goal is to reduce problems
associated with use, but not necessarily use itself, and prevention, where
the goal is to prevent use from occurring at all. They derived the clarity
it took to make this distinction from their faith in the law. They not only
asserted their belief in the law, they also asserted their expectation that all
who care about children will obey or enforce the law for the express
purpose of providing children with healthy and supportive, rather than
exploitive, environments in which to grow and flourish.
Just as marijuana served as a gateway into the drug culture for
2
middle- and upper-income children (defined as those who attend school for
twelve years and are counted in the National High School Senior Survey) in
the 1970s, crack lured poor children into the drug culture a decade later.
Parents and families in communities where crack is out of control are
beginning to respond to the epidemic in much the same way middle-and
upper-income families and communities are responding, by taking on the
responsibility of educating neighbors and friends and taking action to
restore their communities to the safe, healthy and supportive places they
were before drugs invaded them.
Central to parent, family and community leaders' reliance upon the law
to accomplish this is their understanding that when citizens begin to obey
laws selectively, as is the case with so many laws surrounding drug and
alcohol abuse, democracy is imperiled. By grasping the concept that laws
are simply the rules by which we all agree to live, and by basing its
philosophy on the foundation of law, what the American prevention movement
has the potential to achieve is nothing short of re-establishing the values a
democratic society must have if it is to survive.
What follows is a description of the American prevention movement:
its philosophy and accomplishments to date, and where it must go to reach
its goal of a nation free of drugs, where all men--and women and children--
have the opportunity to pursue their potential and live with one another in
harmony.
3
THE AMERICAN PREVENTION MOVEMENT
II. PHILOSOPHY AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS TO DATE
1. Clarifying the Process:
Drug Education Does Change Behavior
In the early 1970s, drug-abuse experts came to believe, based on
research whose results some now say may have been misinterpreted, that
education does not change behavior. So powerful did this belief become,
that in 1972, at the instigation of Congress, the federal government actually
placed a moratorium on all publicly funded drug-education materials that
taught children about the harmful effects of drugs of abuse.
Social, political and commercial pressures filled the vacuum this
moratorium created. Marijuana, and other "recreational" drugs, once limited
to the counter-culture of the 60s, had become socially acceptable to the
majority of the population in the 70s. Thus, although as recently as 1962
less than two percent of the entire population of the United States had had
any experience with any illicit drug, by the latter half of the 70s, sixty
percent of the nation's high-school seniors and one-third of the nation's
younger teens had tried marijuana, and large numbers had used other illicit
drugs as well.
Prior to this escalation, in response to an earlier drug "epidemic" that
4
centered around heroin, Congress established the National Commission on
Marijuana and Drug Abuse, as part of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse
Prevention and Control Act of 1970, to study the problem and make
recommendations to solve it. The commission issued two reports, one on
marijuana and one on other drugs. In the first report, commissioners said
they found little scientific or medical evidence that marijuana could harm
anyone and concluded that the United States should "decriminalize," and
eventually legalize the drug. Of the two, the marijuana report is the better
remembered, largely because many who served on the commission founded the
National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) to keep the
commission's recommendations before the public and to advocate change.
At about the same time, the Ford Foundation conducted a nationwide
survey to assess what Americans' number-one concern might be. The
Foundation says it was surprised to learn from its survey that Americans
were most concerned, even then in 1970, about drug abuse. Two years
later, the Foundation established the Drug Abuse Council, a Washington
think tank whose mandate was to analyze public drug-abuse policy. The
Council drew upon both the Commission and NORML for its leadership, and
not surprisingly, echoed the recommendations of both in its final report
(The Facts About "Drug Abuse," Free Press, Macmillan, 1980), namely that
the United States should decriminalize and eventually legalize all drugs.
Throughout the 1970s, the nation began to act on these
recommendations. The use of marijuana and other drugs became widespread,
11 state legislatures decriminalized marijuana and there was a great deal of
5
talk about extending decriminalization to cocaine and other drugs as well.
The drug-related legislative and political action taking place in the
1970s stimulated the creation of the drug-paraphernalia industry, which, by
1978, was doing business in an estimated 30,000 head shops nationwide.
Drug paraphernalia toys and gadgets to enhance drug use, along with a host
of magazines and comic books that glorified drug use, provided a significant
amount of commercial pressure to engage children in the drug culture. And
engage them it did.
As an increasing number of young people became involved with
marijuana and other drugs, an increasing number of parents recognized that
marijuana had many deleterious effects on the health, learning ability and
social functioning of their children. What they were seeing in their own
children was substantiated in the medical literature, which they obtained and
read and in which they found ample, solid, evidence that contradicted the
public perception that the drug was harmless. Parents mounted an intense
effort to share that information with other parents, with children and with
all who cared about children, and in so doing, gave birth to the prevention
movement and the first of its two basic tenets that one could change
children's behavior by giving them the facts about how drugs can hurt
them. The movement was generated by Families in Action, PRIDE, the
American Council on Drug Education, the National Federation of Parents for
Drug-Free Youth and later joined by the Scott Newman Center.
Beginning with marijuana, and following with cocaine, cigarettes and
6
alcohol, as the accompanying charts show, the year that use of a given
drug peaked among high-school seniors was the same year that the fewest
seniors believed that drug could hurt them. Every year since the peak
year of use for any given drug, the more seniors who perceive a specific
drug will hurt them, the fewer seniors use that drug.
7
PERCEPTION OF HARM vs USE OF MARIJUANA,
HIGH SCHOOL SENIORS, 1978, 1988
77%
59%
47%
37%
35%
18%
11%
3%
1978
1988
1978
1988
1978
1988
1978
BELIEVE REGULAR
1988
EVER USED
USED IN
USE IS HARMFUL
USE DAILY
PAST 30 DAYS
SOURCE: 1988 NATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR SURVEY, NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON DRUG ABUSE
PERCEPTION OF HARM vs USE OF COCAINE,
HIGH SCHOOL SENIORS, 1985, 1988
89%
79%
17%
12%
7%
3%
0.4%
0.2%
1985
1988
1985
1988
1985
1988
1985
1988
BELIEVE REGULAR
EVER USED
USED IN
USE DAILY
USE IS HARMFUL
PAST 30 DAYS
SOURCE: 1988 NATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR SURVEY, NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON DRUG ABUSE
PERCEPTION OF HARM vs USE OF ALCOHOL,
HIGH SCHOOL SENIORS, 1979, 1988
93%
92%
72%
64%
43%
35%
7%
4%
1979
1988
1979
1988
1979
1988
1979
1988
BELIEVE 5 OR MORE
EVER USED
USED IN PAST
USE DAILY
DRINKS ONCE OR TWICE/
30 DAYS
WEEKEND HARMFUL
SOURCE: 1988 NATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR SURVEY, NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON DRUG USE
PERCEPTION OF HARM VS USE OF CIGARETTES,
HIGH SCHOOL SENIORS, 1976, 1988
75%
68%
66%
56%
39%
29%
19%
11%
1976
1988
1976
1988
1976
1988
1976
1988
BELIEVE 1 OR MORE
EVER USED
USED IN PAST
USE DAILY
PACKS/DAY HARMFUL
30 DAYS
SOURCE: 1988 NATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR SURVEY, NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON DRUG ABUSE
2. Clarifying the Message:
Prevention Vs. Intervention
The second, and perhaps even more significant, tenet of the
prevention movement grew out of the confusion that resulted when drug-
abuse experts tried to prevent drug abuse using intervention, rather than
prevention, strategies. Traditional intervention strategies seek to reduce
the problems associated with drug use, rather than to prevent it from
occurring at all, and by definition, target an audience consisting of people
who already use drugs. 1 But, in spite of the terrifying escalation of drug
use among American adolescents in the 70s, not all children used drugs. In
fact, the majority did not. Therefore, the goal of prevention had to be to
prevent use from occurring at all, rather than reducing problems associated
with use once it began.
In contrast with prevention strategies, intervention strategies often
condone behavior that conflicts with the law. When the prevention movement
began, the majority of drug-education materials available to children
contained intervention messages with the goal of reducing, rather than
preventing, drug use. Throughout the 1970s, stated goals in materials in
school and public libraries, government publications and school curricula
were to reduce the problems associated with drug use by teaching students
how to use these drugs "responsibly." A popular high-school text book, for
1
This is not to be confused with the treatment intervention goal that
seeks to teach families how to intervene in a family member's chemical
dependency and restore that person to a life free of dependency through
drug-free treatment.
8
example, Responsible Drug and Alcohol Use by Ruth C. Engs, listed these
hints for the responsible use of marijuana:
1. Smoke with friends.
2. Use a bong.
3. Don't drop ashes or you'll burn holes in your clothes.
In Chocolate to Morphine: Understanding Mind-Active Drugs, co-author
Andrew Weil, M.D., explained there is no such thing as a bad drug, just
"bad relationships" with drugs. Our goal in drug education, Weil insisted,
must be to teach young people how to have "good relationships" with drugs
such as marijuana, cocaine, PCP, LSD, and a host of others.
Nowhere in any of these materials was there information that
possessing, using or selling drugs is against the law. The prevention
movement not only clarified this issue, but reversed the logic imbedded in
the 1970s attitude from "drugs don't hurt people and should be legal" to
"drugs are illegal because they hurt people." With this reversal, the
prevention movement based its strategy on the twin precepts of teaching the
health and legal consequences of drug use.
9
3. Clarifying the Laws:
Teaching Children--and Families
and Communities--Right from Wrong
In addition to the educational task they took on, parents learned that
they had to work on several fronts at once. They set out to inoculate their
children from becoming involved with drugs by educating them about the
harmful effects of those drugs. But they soon recognized that they would
also have to inoculate their families, other families, and even communities
against the plague of drug abuse. Vaccinating communities against drug
abuse consists of an ongoing process that first identifies a problem and then
brings neighbors and friends together to find a solution for it. Once a
particular problem is solved, several more emerge and the process is
repeated.
The genius of the American prevention movement is that it based the
process of preventing drug abuse on the foundation of the law. In some
cases, that process involved parents educating each other about existing
laws. Parent leaders might point out to parents at a P.T.A. or community
meeting the legal risks someone's teenager takes when he or she gives or
sells drugs to other kids. Or they might discuss the legal liabilities to
which parents expose themselves when they allow teenage parties to take
place in their homes where drugs and alcohol are present. Parents come to
realize that, instead of bailing them out, they must let their children suffer
the consequences of breaking the law so that a renewed spirit of respect for
the law spreads throughout the community.
10
In other cases, the process involved bringing pressure upon
authorities to enforce laws, and ensuring officials that they will support
them, rather than attack them, for doing this. In the early days of the
movement, for example, parents often lobbied school officials to set and
enforce limits about drugs and alcohol that complied with, rather than
violated, laws. Others worked with police, prosecutors and judges to
strengthen enforcement of laws that kids were breaking while authorities
looked the other way. Many established drug watches in Neighborhood
Watch programs to assist police in apprehending drug dealers.
In still other cases, the process involved passing new laws.
The rallying force that drove the creation of the prevention movement was a
universal revulsion parents felt towards head shops, which served as drug-
abuse learning centers for children. If drugs are illegal, parents reasoned,
why should implements that enhance their use be legal? Parents in state
after state lobbied local and state officials to pass laws banning the sale of
drug paraphernalia. The success they achieved in this effort emboldened
parents to lobby for other laws to bring constraints against the exploitation
of children and, subsequently, of adults.
In addition to the significant reduction in drug use among the nation's
high-school seniors discussed above, parent prevention leaders stopped
further efforts to decriminalize marijuana. The 11 states that decriminalized
the drug did so between 1972 and 1978; no state has decriminalized since
then, and some are actually "recriminalizing" the drug. Just this month,
11
for example, Oregon, one of the first states to decriminalize marijuana,
increased the penalty for possession of an ounce or less of marijuana to a
maximum fine of $1,000 and a mandatory minimum of $500. Moreover,
parents' efforts have ended most serious discussion about legalization as the
answer to the nation's drug problem, at least for the time being. Public
opposition to legalization has risen significantly over the past decade as
measured by Gallup polls. Fully 90 percent of the public now oppose
legalization. Although drug paraphernalia to enhance the use of crack is
still sold, albeit in far fewer outlets, the major part of the drug
paraphernalia industry is virtually extinct. Thousands of local communities,
as well as some 45 states, have passed laws outlawing its sale. In response
to legal challenges to these statutes from the drug paraphernalia industry in
several federal district and appellate courts, the Supreme Court upheld the
laws as constitutional in the early 1980s.
Parent prevention groups have lobbied for thousands of other local,
state and federal laws as well, including laws to raise the drinking age to
21, to revoke young peoples' drivers' licenses if they are convicted of a
drug or alcohol offense until they reach age 18, to reduce drunk driving, to
increase funding for prevention and treatment of chemical dependency, to
ban smoking areas from public schools where all students in most states are
too young to legally purchase cigarettes. The list of new laws sought by
parents is endless, as is the unceasing effort parent-group leaders make to
educate fellow citizens about the need to obey the laws and at the same time
pressure officials to enforce them.
12
4. Clarifying the Status of Alcohol and Tobacco:
Legal for Adults but Illegal for Young People
A peculiar fact about drug abuse is that, dreadful as our current
drug-abuse problem is, the nation's two legal (for adults) drugs, alcohol
and tobacco, kill far more people (100,000 alcohol-related deaths and 350,000
tobacco-related deaths each year) than all illegal drugs combined. Alcohol
alone is the leading cause of death of Americans teenagers and is responsible
for so many premature deaths among young people that theirs is the only
age group (15-24) whose life span is actually decreasing, while the life
spans of all other age groups increase. While it is true that alcohol-related
automobile crashes are the leading cause of death among teenagers, nearly
as many teenagers suffer alcohol-related deaths that do not occur in cars--
deaths from alcohol overdoses, drownings, falls from high places, etc. One
study in the San Francisco area, in fact, shows that these alcohol-related
deaths exceed drunk-driving deaths among teenagers.
The nation has done a good job of raising awareness about drunk-
driving deaths among people of all ages, one-fourth of the total number of
alcohol-related deaths, but has virtually ignored the other three-fourths of
alcohol-related deaths that don't take place in automobiles. A major reason
why this is so is that, as with the drug-education materials of the 1970s and
early 80s, the alcohol-education materials and programs of today are based
once again on intervention rather than prevention strategies and, like their
predecessors, contain a preponderance of "responsible use" messages. As is
the case with drugs, today's alcohol-intervention strategies and messages,
13
when applied to teenagers, also condone behavior that violates the law.
Perhaps one of the clearest examples of this is Students Against
Drunk Driving (SADD) and the SADD Contract, which has long been a
source of controversy throughout the nation. The drinking age in every
state is 21, making it against the law for anyone younger to purchase or
possess alcohol. In Georgia, for example, purchase or possession is a
misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail and/or up to $1,000 in
fines. The SADD Contract requires teenagers to promise their parents not
that they won't drink period, as the law requires, but that they won't drink
and drive. The promise not to drink and drive offers no protection to
young people who, as noted above, die alcohol-related deaths that do not
take place in cars. Furthermore, teenagers perceive the SADD message to
mean that it is okay to drink, as long as they don't drink and drive.
Over the years prevention leaders have taken part in several meetings
sponsored by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to persuade
SADD's founder, Bob Anastas, to modify the SADD contract to bring it in
compliance with the law. Anastas finally agreed to change the contract
pending approval of his board, which refused to change it. SADD's board
of directors is made up primarily of representatives of the alcohol industry,
which also funds SADD (Anheuser-Busch, the Wine Institute, DISCUS, the
Beer Institute, etc.). That SADD consistently refuses to clarify the
distinction between underage young people and adults should not be
surprising, since the alcohol industry in its advertising, marketing and
educational efforts also consistently refuses to do so. We hear much from
14
the industry about responsible drinking, but nothing from the industry
about the fact that this message is totally inappropriate for underage young
people for whom drinking itself (except in the home in the presence of mom
and dad) is an unlawful, and therefore irresponsible, act.
Just how committed the alcohol industry is to bringing the responsible-
use message to underage people is illustrated in testimony before Congress
June 15, 1989, by James C. Sanders, president of the Beer Institute:
"Brewers continue to be heavily involved in public education campaigns
to promote responsible consumption, such as "Know When to Say
When," sponsored by Anheuser-Busch; "Alcohol Information from
Miller;" "Alcohol, Drugs and You," sponsored by Aldolph Coors
Company and "Friends Don't Let Friends Drive Drunk," sponsored by
the Licensed Beverage Information Council. Stroh Brewing Company
and the National Beer Wholesalers Association have developed curricula
for primary and secondary schools." (Emphasis added.)
Sadly, the alcohol industry's public-education effort, including
curricula it designs for school children, fails to distinguish between
underage and legal drinkers and promotes responsible consumption to an age
group that is not only too young to legally consume the industry's product,
but is suffering an excessive amount of premature and unnecessary death as
a result.
For quite some time, the prevention movement has striven to make the
15
distinction that industry refuses to make. It is a cornerstone in all
prevention strategies. Parents and communities object whenever this
distinction is missing from alcohol prevention and education programs. As
with their ongoing effort to clarify and reinforce their expectation that all
concerned will obey and enforce the drug laws, so too are parent leaders
bringing pressure on communities to obey and enforce the alcohol laws,
particularly when it comes to illegal use by and sales to those under the
legal drinking age.
16
THE AMERICAN PREVENTION MOVEMENT
111. THE ROLE OF the STATE PARENT-GROUP NETWORKS
Daisy Sledge
Advisory Board Member
National Drug Information Center of Families in Action
Former Board Member
National Federation of Parents for Drug-Free Youth
In the beginning of the American prevention movement, the first
parent groups to form usually did so in capitals of states where they could
influence legislators, work to ban drug paraphernalia sales, and lobby for
other legislation. Because this initial activity gave each group a great deal
of visibility in the press, people in other parts of their states called for
help in forming similar family and community-action groups locally. In
helping others organize, in sharing information and in lobbying for
prevention with state legislators and state agencies, the early parent groups
gradually assumed the role of "networking" concerned parents, families and
communities throughout each state. The state networks are the heart of
the American Prevention Network and constitute the vitality of the movement.
We interviewed seven key state parent-group networks
(Texans War on Drugs, Tennessee Families in Action, Florida Informed
Parents, Drug Resource and Education Alliance of Mississippi,
17
New Jersey Federation for Drug-Free Youth, Michigan Communities in Action
for Drug-Free Youth, and Illinois Drug Education Alliance) to assemble this
profile of the common goals and objectives each network shares and to
provide an idea of the kinds of services they offer. With the exception of
Texans War on Drugs, which has enjoyed a stable financial base from its
beginnings, thanks to the insight of then-Governor Clements who initiated
financing for the group and to the generosity of H. Ross Perot who matched
initial funding with a private gift of his own, most of the state networks
accomplish all that they achieve on a strictly volunteer basis.
All of these networks share the following goals and objectives:
1. Educate youth, families and communities about the harmful effects
of drugs.
2.
Emphasize that alcohol is an addictive drug and is illegal for
those under age 21.
3.
Stress that tobacco is an addictive drug and is illegal for those
under 18 in a majority of states.
4. Establish a no-use message for every illegal drug.
5. Equip families and communities with technical skills to prevent illegal
drug use in their homes, communities and schools.
6.
Network with political, business, and religious leaders, social and
professional organizations, educators, law enforcement officials, the judicial
system, and others.
7.
Refer family members for support, counseling, and treatment as
needed.
18
Services each state network offers include:
1. Provide training and technical assistance to parents and families to
teach them how to form parent and community groups throughout the state.
2. Conduct annual statewide conferences to share ideas through
workshops and networking to provide additional information and training.
3. Stimulate formation of youth groups and coordinate their efforts
statewide.
4. Evaluate communities within the state to determine extent of and
need for parent and youth prevention group organization.
5. Publish statewide newsletter.
6. Generate and monitor legislation within their state.
7. Monitor activities of state agencies and when possible coordinate
activities with each agency.
8. Encourage coalition building.
9. Sponsor throughout their state programs and projects generated by
local, state and national parent and youth prevention leaders and groups,
such as Project Graduation, Red Ribbon, Safe Homes, etc.
10. Establish and support intra-state regional training directors to
further network their state.
11. Serve as statewide resources for information and referral, when
possible by operating a toll-free statewide telephone referral service.
12. Network local, state and national legislative issues between and
within state networks.
13. Generate, support, and coordinate formulation of policy issues
with national organizations such as the National Drug Information Center of
Families in Action.
19
14. Coordinate with state drug czars in those states that have
established them.
20
THE AMERICAN PREVENTION MOVEMENT
IV. THE ROLE OF YOUTH
Bobby Heard
Youth Coordinator
Texas War on Drugs
and
Beth Schecter
Executive Director
Center for Human Development
Former Program Director
Just Say No Foundation
The mid 1980s saw a shift in the way the prevention of alcohol and
other drug problems was approached. Up until that time activities were
school-based and teacher- or adult-run. Programs focused on effective
education and self-esteem improvement as a way to build a young person's
resistance to drug use. As the field expanded and research began to show
that children needed specific, present-oriented resistance skills, programs
began to reflect this by incorporating refusal skills into their curricula.
But, of course, this was found to not be enough. It became evident that
drug and alcohol use was a community problem and not one that could be
solved by working only with the individual.
In addition, as students became more and more aware of the dangers
21
of substance abuse and the impact it was having on their schools,
communities, families and friends, they began to speak out, to be heard, to
take a stand against drugs. One of the most momentous events took place
in early 1985 when a 9-year old student in Oakland, California, asked her
classmates if they would like to form an anti-drug club. These children
lived in a community where drug use and dealing were rampant, where
drug-related shootings were commonplace, where fourth graders were using.
The children had been inspired by then First Lady Nancy Reagan who
uttered the slogan "Just Say No." The children officially launched the Just
Say No movement which has since spread to all fifty states with over 15,000
Just Say No Clubs for kids 7-14.
The power and effectiveness of the Just Say No movement and its
subsequent program corresponded with research findings that were being
presented to the public. These findings suggested that association with
alcohol and drug-using peers was one of the strongest predictors of
adolescent alcohol and other drug use. It also became clear that adolescents
use alcohol and other drugs for a variety of reasons, including the need to
be accepted by their peers and the need to identify with their peer groups.
A 1983 Weekly Reader survey of 500,000 elementary and junior high age
children found that 4th through 6th graders cited "fitting in with other
kids" as one of the main reasons young people start using drugs and
alcohol. Children also reported the misnomer that they believe there was
widespread experimentation among their peers although there was not. The
strong peer influences and ensuing pressures experienced by non-using
youth eventually led to a sort of youthful rebellion on the part of young
22
children whose battle cry became "no drugs for me" or "Just Say No."
Teenagers also became involved in the new rebellion against drugs.
Teens as a group were being blamed for much of the drug problems in the
country. To counter this "lost generation" notion that seemed to be
spreading, teens who felt strongly about not using substances began letting
themselves be heard. They began forming Just Say No Clubs in the schools
for the younger kids and even themselves. They began meeting with other
teens throughout the country who believed in non-use through programs
such as Youth to Youth and Reach America. They stepped forward as
leaders of Just Say No Clubs and teen role models for younger kids in
programs such as Youth Educator and Quest. Teens took full responsibility
for helping young kids stay off drugs and see a better way to live.
In a 1987 Weekly Reader survey of 500,000 mostly 2nd through 6th
graders, respondents felt that teaching younger kids about the dangers of
drug use was one of the most effective anti-drug measures. Later studies
continued to show the influence teens could have over younger kids. A
1988 Rand study showed that the use of teenage role models who do not use
drugs and who disapprove of doing so addresses the findings of social
learning theory that states: 1) young people learn through direct modeling,
and 2) adolescent beliefs, attitudes and behaviors are reinforced by social
approval or disapproval. In addition, the Rand study revealed that older
teen leaders were perceived as more credible teachers of prevention
information than in some cases, teachers, and in all cases, college students.
Older teens were identified as having had considerable experience coping
23
with social pressure, yet were similar enough to younger students to seem
familiar and to be trusted.
The power of teens and young adults as role-models and teachers in
the prevention of alcohol and other drug problems cannot be underestimated.
Throughout the country teens have proven themselves over and over again
to be leaders and organizers of communities in the war on drugs. In Texas
for example, youth conferences are held annually which attract thousands of
junior high and high school teens wishing to remain drug free. Teens can
play a major role in raising awareness of the issues and working towards
political change to impact the problem. Young people can also be active
participants in improving the quality of life in their community by planning
and running service and helping projects.
The power of youth is formidable in this country and if any anti-drug
effort is to succeed, youth must be involved from its inception, through its
implementation, and up to its completion.
24
THE AMERICAN PREVENTION MOVEMENT
V. THE ROLE OF THE WORKPLACE
Lee Dogoloff
Executive Director
American Council on Drug Education
The workplace plays a critical role in the prevention of drug abuse in
America. Some statistics might help to put this issue in focus. According
to the most recent data available from the 1985 National Survey of American
Households, the vast majority of drug users are between the ages of 20 and
40. In addition 70 percent of those in that range are employed and 83
percent are white. Thus, several things become clear. If we are going to
reduce the demand for drugs, we must focus efforts on this group. In
addition, since this group is the prime age of most parents in our society,
there are profound implications for the role these drug-using parents play in
prevention efforts aimed at their children.
The workplace is an ideal setting to address drug-abuse prevention.
This needs to be done in several ways. First, workplace policy must be
clear in its message of no drug use. The federal government can be very
helpful in this regard in promulgating regulations similar to those of the
Departments of Defense and Transportation in promoting a drug-free
workplace. Although most of the Fortune 500 companies have already
addressed this issue, the advent of government regulation and expectation
25
has enabled lots of second and third tier companies to do likewise. This is
already causing a number of companies, who otherwise might not have done
so, to focus attention on this issue and to not only formulate policies to
encourage a drug-free workplace, but also education, prevention and
treatment programs as well.
The workplace also has an important role to play in education and
prevention activities. Just as children are captive audiences at school, so
are parents and adults at work. The workplace has an established history
of providing programs which enhance the health of workers, programs such
as smoking cessation, stress reduction and others. Drug-abuse prevention
is a natural follow-on to these programs. It is important to recognize the
difficulty that working parents have in mustering either the time or the
energy to attend community meetings in the evening. Therefore, the
workplace becomes the obvious location to convey to parents information
about drug and alcohol use, their negative health consequences, and
techniques for discussing and addressing these issues. A number of
companies have adopted such programs, which include such things as making
video tapes available on a free-loan basis for families to view in the privacy
of their homes, distributing monthly brochures on various topics associated
with drug and alcohol use, and supplementing those brochures with noon-
time seminars for interested employees. Over the next few years these
activities should be expanded, as they are critical in our quest for a drug-
free America.
26
THE AMERICAN PREVENTION MOVEMENT
VI. THE ROLE OF THE NETWORK SERVING HIGH-RISK YOUTH
Phil Oliver-Diaz
Executive Director
Children at Risk Project
Rockland County, New York
Founding Board Member
National Association of Children of Alcoholics
Founding Board Member
National Association of Native American Children of Alcoholics
In 1986, in the first Omnibus Drug Act, Congress created the Office
for Substance Abuse Prevention (OSAP). This single agency has had the
most dramatic impact of any federal agency on developing initiatives for the
nation's high-risk youth. OSAP's greatest strength is that it supports
community-based, nonmedically-oriented, demonstration projects. The $26
million Congress appropriated for these projects is, to our knowledge, the
only federal funding thus far that puts some of the money needed to fight
the war on drugs into the hands of the people, instead of medical colleges
and universities.
OSAP is underfunded and has too small a staff to do the job it can
do. It is the sole arm of the federal human-services system that hears the
27
needs of the parent movement and the minority community, even if its effort
is meager, when compared to the need, at this point. OSAP needs to be
enhanced.
With the $26 million it had for demonstration grants, OSAP funded 131
demonstration projects nationwide for high-risk youth. That some 850
proposals were submitted for these grant funds is a testament to how great
the need is for financial assistance to prevent drug abuse among high-risk
youth. These projects started up in early FY88. Most focused on minority
children, who, along with children of alcoholics, make up the most
significant portion of high-risk youth. In December, 1988, as an outgrowth
of OSAP's high-risk youth initiative, grantees formed the National Network
for High-Risk Youth and Families. This new national network is a coalition
of programs serving high-risk youth, again, many of which are children of
color, and other interested organizations, such as Families in Action, the
National Federation of Parents for Drug-Free Youth and others. This was
perhaps the first time that the minority community had come together with
the parent movement to plan ways to prevent drug abuse among all the
nation's youth. We need to do more of this.
For too long we have separated the needs of high-risk youth, who are
usually considered to be Black, Hispanic, and Native American, from the
needs of dominant-culture White kids and their families, and vice versa.
The Network brings these groups together in a common forum. We need
more opportunities to bring them together so that we can create both a
common bond and a common approach to help all of the nation's children and
28
their families, taking into account ethnic diversity, but creating one overall
plan.
Just as all politics is local, all real social change is also local. The
war on drugs must be fought block by block, family by family, community
by community if it is to be won. Families create values and families can re-
create the moral center of the nation. We need national leadership to help
accomplish this.
29
THE AMERICAN PREVENTION NETWORK
VII. WHERE WE MUST GO FROM HERE
Sue Rusche
1. Bring All Parent, Youth and Community Prevention Groups
Together Into One Network
Until Congress allocated funding to serve high-risk youth, the
American prevention movement had been primarily White, primarily middle-
and upper-income, and primarily female. There is a good reason for this:
these women were among the few left in society who could survive financially
while working 16-hour days, seven days a week without pay. (Please notice
the past tense.) The plain fact is that poor people, and increasingly
middle-income people, cannot afford to make the kind of full-time commitment
it takes to prevent drug abuse in their communities without some form of
financial support.
In the preceding section, Phil Oliver-Diaz speaks eloquently to the
need to bring together all people who are working to prevent drug abuse.
In practical reality, however, this is not likely to happen, nor will the
prevention movement achieve all that it has the potential to achieve, unless
it receives the financial support required to sustain the kind of full-time
effort it takes to plan, train, coordinate and spread the prevention effort to
all communities.
30
In a very real sense, the troops that have been fighting the battles of
the nation's drug war are the parents, youth and families who are trying to
rid their communities of drugs. Yet, this is the first war our nation has
fought with troops that are neither trained, fed, financed nor supported in
any of the ways nations traditionally prepare their armies to fight wars.
These troops not only serve as warriors without pay, uniforms, shelter,
arms or rations, but in the midst of the battle, they must also interrupt the
fight to raise money to replenish supplies. The truth is that the drug war
needs male as well as female, and low-income and well as middle- and upper-
income, warriors, if it truly means to win.
One way to accomplish the goals of broadening and financing the
prevention movement is to link family- and community-based prevention
efforts to some form of national service. Preliminary thoughts for such a
plan follow.
31
2. Create A National Drug Corps
We propose the creation of a National Drug Corps to empower families
to prevent drug abuse by providing them with training, resources and
support to reduce the demand for drugs. Modeled after the Peace Corps, a
National Drug Corps would provide mothers, fathers, young people and
others with an opportunity to give two years of service to their country.
Drug Corps volunteers would be trained in the successful drug-abuse
prevention techniques developed over the past several years by the family-
based, drug-free parent and youth groups. After basic training, Drug
Corps volunteers would be returned home to prevent drug abuse in their
families and communities, block by block.
Key to the success of the prevention movement has been that families
themselves have taken charge and worked for change. The National Drug
Corps would build on this concept of self-determination for families and on
the initial gains family-based prevention groups have achieved in reducing
drug abuse among adolescents thus far. The goals, objectives and a few
examples of activities a National Drug Corps might carry out are listed
below:
Strengthen Families
1. Improve parenting skills. A way to achieve the goal of
strengthening families by improving parenting skills might be patterned after
programs many churches offer to assist immigrant families who arrive in this
country unable to speak English and unfamiliar with American culture.
32
Church families "adopt" immigrant families, teach them English, show them
how to shop in American stores, help them find jobs and housing, help
enroll the children in school and, in general, nurture these families until
they can manage on their own. The National Drug Corps would encourage
churches to expand this concept by asking families in their congregations to
"adopt" American families who are disadvantaged by poverty, illiteracy,
racial discrimination and drug dependence and to nurture them until these
families are able to manage on their own.
2. Develop alternatives to drugs for children. The Atlanta chapter
of the organization, 100 Black Men, adopted an eighth-grade class in an
inner-city Atlanta school. Each member of the organization serves as a
mentor to a particular student in the class and has promised to send that
student to college if he or she graduates from high school. At the end of
the first year of the project, the drop-out rate had decreased, academic
grades had improved and drug abuse had declined or stopped. The National
Drug Corps would ask organizations such as 100 Black Men to train other
service organizations to expand this effort.
3. Develop alternatives to drugs for adults. A black businessman in
Los Angeles who owns a pipe-fitting company hired members of a violent
gang to protect equipment his company had to leave out over several nights
in a neighborhood the gang controlled. When the job was completed, gang
members asked the businessman to train and hire them permanently, because
they were "tired of earning dirty money" through drug-dealing. As a
result, several young men have left the gang and work at honest jobs. The
Drug Corps would ask such business people to train other businesses to
expand this effort.
33
Involve Communities in Supporting Families
1. Empower families to exercise responsibilities of citizenship. Law
enforcement officers are training citizens in Neighborhood Watch groups to
look out for and report drug-dealing. Families learn they have a
responsibility not only to report law-breaking, but to testify against law-
breakers as well. Parent groups teach that to protect children, parents
must obey the law themselves and teach children to do the same. This
applies to laws that not only prohibit drug use, dealing and trafficking, but
that also prohibit alcohol and tobacco sales to minors, that prohibit driving
under the influence, that require banks to report deposits larger than
$10,000, etc. The National Drug Corps would build on the growing
awareness among families that a democracy whose citizens routinely violate
the law is a democracy that has lost its freedom and would call on family-
based prevention groups to train Drug Corps volunteers to expand
prevention.
2. Maximize existing resources in communities by fostering
coordination and filling gaps. Private treatment centers in one city are
forming a consortium to consolidate empty beds each has and will make them
available to the state to provide treatment to patients currently on waiting
lists. The National Drug Corps would significantly increase funding for
treatment, and, in addition, would model the approach being developed by
the consortium to maximize use and minimize waste.
3. Target training and resources to special needs of individual
communities. The Alkalai Lake Indian Band in British Columbia, which went
from 100 percent alcoholism to 95 percent sobriety in the span of a few
34
years, renovates the houses of fellow tribespeople who enter treatment
during the time they are hospitalized. The National Drug Corps would model
this solution to assist drug-dependent people who are homeless or who live
in substandard housing while they seek treatment to become drug-free. It
would also ask the Alkalai Lake Indian Band to provide training to Native
Americans, and others, who wish to model the Band's astonishing success at
ridding itself of chemical dependency.
Create a Public/Private/Voluntary Partnership
1. Develop a long-range programmatic and financing plan. Involve
the three segments of the Partnership in the planning process.
2. Coordinate efforts. Establish a series of mechanisms under which
the public sector, private sector and voluntary agencies can contribute
targeted resources to accomplish specific objectives and activities.
3. Pool financial resources. Establish a system of federal challenge
grants that can be matched by state and local governments and by national,
state and local businesses, foundations and nonprofit service organizations to
finance, the National Drug Corps.
4. Utilize untapped financial resources. Current forfeiture laws place
significant funds derived from the seizure and sale of assets of convicted
drug smugglers into federal, state and local treasuries. The National Drug
Corps would urge legislation that would empower the seizure of all assets
purchased with illicit drug profits, would vastly increase fines against banks
that fail to report deposits larger than $10,000, would increase taxes on
alcohol and tobacco products, and would designate those funds for drug
prevention and education, treatment and law enforcement. As drug abuse is
35
reduced, amounts of designated revenues to fight drug abuse would be
reduced proportionately.
5. Obtain federal funds from these resources to initiate the National
Drug Corps.
Reduce Costs of Assisting Dsyfunctional Families
1. Conduct a comprehensive review of the total costs borne by
public, private and voluntary service-delivery systems (criminal-justice,
social, health, and addiction services) that are the consequence of drug
abuse in the family.
2. Work with all levels of government and the private sector to
determine how to make systems changes that will meet families' needs and
effect savings in the delivery of human services.
3. Initiate short-term and long-term evaluations of the outcomes and
consequences of implementing the National Drug Corps.
36
3. Set specific goals and timetables
No end of any sort can be achieved without setting both short- and
long-range goals and objectives, and attaching them to a realistic timetable.
We urge Director Bennett to assemble a group of demand- and supply-
reduction authorities from both the public and private sector to set goals
and objectives and to establish a timetable to wage the nation's war on
drugs.
37
THE AMERICAN PREVENTION MOVEMENT
VIII. CONCLUSION
As we approach the last decade of this century, the United States has
an unprecedented opportunity to rid itself, once and for all, of the scourge
of drug abuse. Many of the mechanisms are in place to achieve this goal.
Wave after wave of ordinary people--mothers, fathers, children,
grandparents, aunts, uncles, sisters, brothers are rising up to reclaim
their communities. They are taking ownership of the problem. They are
taking responsibility for solving it. In the process, without consciously
understanding that they are doing so, they are exercising the
responsibilities of citizenship in the best and truest sense of the word.
With national leadership, coordination and support to provide training
and sustenance, the prevention effort can be extended to every community
in the nation. Together we can strengthen families. We can strengthen
communities. We can strengthen our democracy.
We can win the war on drugs.
38
CLOSE HOLD
DRAFT: August 11, 1989
NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL STRATEGY
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
INTRODUCTION
Most Americans believe that illegal drugs represent the
gravest present threat to our national well-being. The evidence
reinforces this concern:
Crime: Fear of drugs and attendant crime are at an all-time
high. Rates of drug-related homicide continue to rise --
sometimes alarmingly -- in cities across the country.
Health: The number of drug-related emergency hospital
admissions increased by 121 percent between 1985 and 1988, as
many as 200,000 babies are born each year to mothers who use
drugs, and intravenous drug use is now the single largest source
of new AIDS virus infections.
The Economy: A U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimate puts annual
gross drug sales at $110 billion -- more than our total gross
agricultural income, and more than double the profits enjoyed by
the Fortune 500 companies combined.
Overseas: In many foreign nations the drug trade and drug-
inspired violence and corruption are causing serious social,
economic, and political disruption. Trafficking threatens
stability and democratic institutions.
However, there is also some positive news. Recently, the
National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) released the results of
its National Household Survey on Drug Abuse -- the first such
national study of drug use since 1985. The survey found the
number of Americans using any illegal drug on a "current" basis
(i.e., at least once in the 30-day period preceding the survey)
has dropped 37 percent: from 23 million in 1985 to 14.5 million
last year.
The survey tells us that, despite the persistent widespread
availability of illegal drugs, millions of Americans who once
used them regularly appear to have given them up altogether.
This and other surveys indicate that many others -- young people
for the most part -- have been successfully induced not to try
drugs in the first place.
But the NIDA survey also found that "frequent" use of
cocaine in any form (i.e., the number of respondents who report
ingesting the drug one or more times each week) is up a shocking
33 percent since 1985. One word probably explains much of the
intensifying drug-related chaos that we see every day: crack.
2
There are really two drug wars to be fought. The first and
easiest is against "casual" use of drugs, and that is being won.
The other, much more difficult war is against addiction to
cocaine, by far the most common dangerous drug of abuse. On
this second front, increasingly located in our cities, the war is
being lost -- badly.
To win the drug war it is important first to come to terms
with the drug problem in its essence: drug use itself must be
reduced. Next, it is necessary to be scrupulously honest about
the difficulties that are faced and set reasonable goals and
objectives. Finally, there must be created something that has
never existed before: a comprehensive, fully integrated national
drug control strategy -- a strategy with particular emphasis on
attacking the use of crack cocaine.
The draft Strategy (hereinafter "Strategy") lays out a
coordinated plan of attack involving all basic anti-drug
initiatives and agencies. Following the Introduction, seven
chapters examine the "fronts" on which the drug war must be
waged: Criminal Justice; Treatment; Education, Community Action,
and the Workplace; International Policies; Interdiction;
Research; and Intelligence. Each chapter is preceded by a
summary of the recommendations contained therein.
Several Appendices are included with the Strategy.
Quantified goals and measures of success, as required by Section
1005 (b) of the Act, are set forth in Appendix A. Also included
are implementation plans (Appendix B), recommended State anti-
drug legislation (Appendix C), Federal designations of high-
intensity drug trafficking areas (Appendix D), a plan for
improved automatic data processing and management among Federal
drug agencies (Appendix E), and a list of individuals consulted
in writing the Strategy (Appendix F).
Several fundamental themes underlie the Strategy, including:
--
society has been too permissive of drug use;
-- better coordination and management of government
efforts is needed;
--
State and local governments should adopt Federal
principles of accountability as a model in developing
their anti-drug strategies; and
efforts should focus heavily on certain aspects of the
problem, such as cocaine.
What follows is a summary of the key elements of the
National Drug Control Strategy.
3
I. CRIMINAL JUSTICE
Overview
The absence of a significant risk of punishment for illegal
drug activity is perhaps the single greatest hindrance to drug
reduction efforts. More predictable, severe sanctions provided
by the criminal justice system will be one of the most powerful
forms of drug prevention. They will make it increasingly
difficult to engage in any drug activity with impunity.
In order to be an effective deterrent, the criminal justice
system must expand to accommodate more people at every point,
from arrest through prosecution, release, and final supervision.
This means more law enforcement officers, prosecutors, judges,
courtrooms, and jails.
Recommendations
Increase Federal funding to States and localities for
street-level law enforcement.
Provide Federal funding to States for planning, developing,
and implementing alternative sentencing programs for non-
violent drug offenders, including house arrest and boot
camps.
Increase Federal funding for Federal law enforcement
activities, including courts, prisons, prosecutors, and law
enforcement officers. Additional resources will be targeted
for Federal money laundering investigations.
Tighten bail, probation, parole and sentencing practices.
Require drug testing of prisoners, parolees and arrestees.
Expand programs to eradicate the domestic marijuana crop.
Provide funding through the Department of Housing and Urban
Development to improve security systems for public housing
projects.
Encourage States to prosecute vigorously all misdemeanor
drug offenses.
Strongly encourage States to adopt policies revoking the
drivers licenses of those convicted of a drug offense and
recommend model drivers license revocation legislation to
the States.
4
Coordinate the efforts of Federal law enforcement agencies
through a senior level interagency coordinating group and
use interagency and intra-agency cooperation as a criteria
for employee career advancement evaluations.
II. TREATMENT
Overview
Effective treatment is an important part of the overall
strategy to reduce drug use. Millions of Americans need help to
stop using drugs. Responsible and compassionate public policy
requires that our nation's drug treatment capacity be increased.
Recommendations
Expand the availability of drug treatment by increasing
treatment capacity and the range of treatment methods
available.
Expand and improve Federal information collecting and
research to increase the data on effective programs,
especially those targeted to cocaine and crack dependency.
Hold treatment programs receiving Federal funds accountable
for their effectiveness.
Improve the efficacy of drug treatment by encouraging
treatment facilities to coordinate among themselves so that
resources match community needs and drug users are referred
to the most appropriate treatment modality.
Encourage treatment facilities to coordinate better with
health and social service agencies so that drug-dependent
persons who need additional services are better served.
Explore ways to increase the use of "civil commitment" as a
means of bringing more drug-dependent persons into the
treatment system.
Expand outreach and treatment efforts for pregnant women and
newborn babies, a special population of drug users.
Encourage States and private insurance companies to cover
outpatient and other less intensive forms of treatment for
drug use. Conduct a thorough review of Federal policy to
determine whether changes in Federal coverage are necessary.
5
III. EDUCATION, COMMUNITY ACTION AND THE WORKPLACE
Overview
The principal goal of prevention is to see that Americans,
especially children, never start taking drugs. Prevention begins
at the local level: at homes, in schools, and in the community.
The Federal government should galvanize public opinion to
make it clear that illegal use of drugs is wrong and harmful.
This includes support for community drug prevention efforts.
Activities should be targeted at youth; in addition, individuals,
parents, and employers must become involved in drug prevention
and education.
Recommendations
Require schools, colleges and universities to develop and
implement drug prevention programs and policies as a
condition of eligibility for Federal education funds.
Promote the development of model alternative schools for
youths with drug problems through current Federal assistance
to local education agencies.
Provide Federal support for community-wide drug prevention
efforts.
Provide Federal support to develop anti-drug, media outreach
activities that deal with the danger of crack and drug-
impaired pregnancies.
Create a national program to mobilize volunteer efforts to
prevent the use of illegal drugs.
Ensure a drug-free Federal workforce by aggressively
implementing workplace plans under Executive Order 12564.
Promote drug-free workplace policies in the private sector
and in State and local governments, including drug testing
where appropriate.
Establish a senior-level Federal interagency committee to
coordinate Federal demand-reduction efforts.
6
IV. INTERNATIONAL
Overview
The international drug trade poses a serious threat to the
welfare, economy, and national security of the United States.
The principal foreign drug threats are cocaine, heroin, and
marijuana. Programs are needed to deter and incapacitate
international production and the trafficking organizations
responsible for bringing these drugs into the U.S. Other
nations must be motivated to engage their resources and efforts
to defeat international narcotics trafficking.
Recommendations
Develop a comprehensive, sustained multi-year assistance
effort involving economic, military, and law enforcement
support to the governments of coca-producing (cocaine)
nations.
Convince other countries to exert influence on opium-growing
(heroin) nations.
Strengthen foreign law enforcement and eradication programs
for coca, opium, and marijuana. Persuade countries to
reduce processing and distribution, and improve U.S. border
interdiction.
Attack international trafficking by focusing on the
financial aspects of the trade. Support international
agreements to criminalize and punish money laundering.
Impose stringent controls and press for international
agreements on the export of precursor chemicals used in the
production of illegal drugs.
Strengthen the process of certifying drug control efforts by
the major drug producing and transit countries.
V. INTERDICTION
Overview
Effective interdiction is critical in the effort to reduce
the flow of drugs. Interdicting illegal drug shipments and
intercepting other resources is an important method of attacking
the drug trade at home and abroad. Interdiction should focus
not only on drug seizures, but also on creating serious personal
7
and financial risk for trafficking organizations and their top
level personnel.
Recommendations
Develop comprehensive agency-wide information-based
approaches to interdiction and better manage our
interdiction planning and coordination.
Target high value shipments and high level drug
traffickers.
Maintain and improve operations aimed at apprehending
money couriers and shipments.
Review policies and enforcement programs to deter
general aviation pilots transporting illicit drugs near
or into the U.S.
Continue the policy of interdicting maritime vessels
transporting illicit drugs to the United States by
both unilateral U.S. maritime operations and joint
operations with source and transit countries.
Enhance border control systems, operations, and
activities.
VI. RESEARCH
Overview
The quality of information, research, and technological
capabilities available to implement drug control policies and
programs must be improved. A more up-to-date and flexible data
base is needed to refine and target drug control efforts.
Technology must be developed and adapted to aid in law
enforcement. More medical research is also needed into the
causes of and treatment for drug addiction.
Recommendations
Establish a Drug Control Research and Development Committee
under the auspices of the Office of National Drug Control
Policy to set research policies and priorities, coordinate
data collection, and assist agencies in acquiring
technologies to suppress the flow of illegal drugs.
8
Increase basic and clinical research into drug use and
addiction.
Encourage the development of new technologies and innovative
adaptations of existing technologies for use against illegal
drugs.
Develop an information base about programs that are
effective in controlling drug abuse by supporting public and
private evaluation efforts in law enforcement, drug
prevention and treatment.
Archive and disseminate information, as well as the results
of research and evaluation through a central clearinghouse
that combines information on prevention, treatment, criminal
justice, and research.
Evaluate federally-funded programs to determine their
effectiveness and to direct resources appropriately.
VII. INTELLIGENCE
Overview
The war against drugs cannot be fought without comprehensive
collection, analysis, and dissemination of critical information
on drug production and trafficking. To target the traffickers'
most vulnerable points, more information about the enemy must be
obtained.
Recommendations
Increase intelligence efforts to target the infrastructure
of trafficking organizations and their allied enterprises,
particularly money laundering.
Improve automation and information systems to allow
swifter, better, and more cost-effective criminal
justice actions.
Disseminate finished intelligence products among all
agencies with a need to know, including Federal,
State, and local agencies.
Develop plans for center to unite U.S. drug-related
analytical capabilities, and to improve existing
intelligence capabilities.
9
GOALS AND OBJECTIVES (APPENDIX A)
Overview
The Strategy includes comprehensive, research-based, long-
range goals for reducing drug use as well as short-term
measurable objectives. There are ten goals for reducing drug use
in two stages of measurement: during the next two years and over
the next ten years. Specific percentage reductions are proposed
in the ten categories, including overall drug use, use of
specific drugs, use by certain age groups, and overall supply
reductions.
Recommendations
One of the fundamental recommendations calls for a
reduction in the number of persons reporting any use of illegal
drugs in the past month. The ten-year goal is a reduction of 50
percent and the two-year goal is a reduction of 10 percent.
BUDGET RECOMMENDATIONS (APPENDIX B)
Overview
The federal government's drug control budget should
accurately reflect priorities articulated in the President's
National Drug Control Strategy.
Recommendations
Key funding priorities for fiscal year 1990:
Increase assistance to State and local law enforcement;
Build more Federal prisons, expand Federal and State courts
and correctional systems, and add more prosecutors;
Expand resources for treatment and prevention programs;
Initiate a major anti-drug campaign in the source countries;
Establish order in the nation's public housing projects;
Step up efforts against money laundering operations;
Provide sufficient resources to operate and maintain our
border interdiction system at its present level.
10
The following priorities will be added in 1991 and 1992:
Expand inter-agency drug task force operations;
Augment drug intelligence capabilities;
Strengthen the Border Patrol along the Southwest border;
Reduce the amount of marijuana cultivated on American soil.
Specific Amounts
A $2 billion increase in drug funding, from $5.6 billion in 1989
to $7.6 billion in 1990. Major changes over FY 1989 are:
State and Local law enforcement assistance
+$ 200 million
Treatment and Prevention programs
+$ 565 million
Federal Prisons, Prosecutors and Courts
+$ 790 million
Resources for interdiction would be reduced
slightly to help offset the above increases
-$ 80 million
Still under review by the NSC:
[International initiatives
+$ 290 million]
HIGH INTENSITY DRUG TRAFFICKING AREAS
The 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Act authorizes the Director of the
Office of National Drug Control Policy to designate specified
areas of the United States as "high intensity drug trafficking
areas, " for purposes of targeted Federal assistance. Such
designations will be made in a subsequent Strategy, after
consulting with the Attorney General and appropriate governors.
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
September 6, 1989
MEMORANDUM TO AGENCY PUBLIC AFFAIRS DIRECTORS
FROM: CHRISS WINSTON
cw
DEPUTY ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT FOR COMMUNICATIONS
SUBJECT: THE NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL STRATEGY
Last night President Bush gave an address to the nation
announcing his strategy for the war on drugs. Enclosed in this
week's package, you will find the President's speech, as well as
the National Drug Control Strategy book, the executive summary,
and fact sheet. You also will find suggested talking points on
the drug strategy.
If you have any questions, please contact Holly Williamson (456-
2245).
FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY
September 5, 1989
TALKING POINTS
Revised
NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL STRATEGY
On September 5, President Bush announced the
Administration's National Drug Control Strategy.
Comprehensive Strategy: This is the first such national
strategy to end the evil of drug use and drug trafficking, a
fully integrated approach that is an assault on every front.
The President's strategy addresses all the elements
necessary to an effective strategy: school and drug
prevention programs, our treatment system, our laws and
criminal justice system, and our foreign policy.
Coordinated Approach: Jurisdictional and "turf" problems
have slowed past anti-drug efforts. Therefore, President
Bush has emphasized the need for a coordinated national
effort. This means federal, state and local levels must
work together. At the federal level, with the leadership of
the Director of National Drug Control Policy, William
Bennett, strong interagency cooperation has already
resulted.
Bipartisan Consensus: Americans agree that the gravest
domestic threat facing the country today is drugs. The
President is looking to the leadership in Congress for
bipartisan support in the implementation of his strategy,
and is looking to the grass-roots support of America's
communities in the fight against drugs.
Call to Action: President Bush is issuing an urgent call to
action to all Americans to support this national strategy.
He challenges every citizen to make a personal commitment to
help in the fight against drug abuse.
The evidence suggests that the drug problem is a grave threat:
Good and Bad News: The National Institute on Drug Abuse's
recently released national survey of drug use (the first
since 1985) indicates that number of Americans using any
illegal drug on a "current" basis has dropped 37 percent.
That means that almost nine million Americans have given up
"casual" drug use. Among the more than eight million people
who used cocaine at all in the past year, almost one million
of them used it once a week or more. So while overall
cocaine use is down, habitual cocaine use has almost
doubled.
2
Crime: Fear of drugs and attendant crime are at an all-time
high. Rates of drug-related homicide continue to rise --
sometimes alarmingly -- in cities around the country.
Health: The number of drug-related emergency hospital
admissions increased by 121 percent between 1985 and 1988,
and hundreds of thousands of babies are born each year to
mothers who use drugs.
The Economy: A U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimate puts annual
gross drug sales at $100 billion -- more than our total
gross agricultural income, and more than double the profits
enjoyed by the Fortune 500 companies combined.
Overseas: In many foreign nations, the drug trade and the
violence and corruption that go with it are causing serious
social, economic, and political disruption. Trafficking
threatens stability and democratic institutions.
The National Drug Control Strategy:
Enforcement: The Administration's enforcement strategy is
based upon this principle: If you sell drugs, you will be
caught; when caught you will be prosecuted; and if
convicted, you will do time.
--
The criminal justice system will be enlarged across the
board, at the local, state and federal levels.
:
The Administration is requesting a $1.4 billion
increase in drug-related federal spending on law
enforcement, including a 133 percent increase -- or
$200 million -- in federal assistance to state and
local law enforcement.
--
President Bush is seeking $50 million through the
Department of Housing and Urban Development to restore
order in hard-hit public housing projects by kicking
dealers out for good.
International Interdiction: The international drug trade
poses a serious threat to the welfare, economy and national
security of the United States.
--
$1.5 billion dollars will be requested for interdiction
efforts, especially for continued support of our Coast
Guard and Customs agents to stop drugs at our borders.
--
$260 million in military and law enforcement assistance
for next year will be sought for Colombia, Bolivia and
Peru, the first part of a five-year, $2 billion program
to fight drug producers, traffickers and smugglers.
3
--
President Bush is seeking a drug summit with affected
Western Hemisphere nations, to coordinate an Inter-
American strategy against the cartels.
--
The President will also negotiate international
agreements to track drug money and punish money
laundering.
Treatment: Experts believe that there are two million
American drug users who can be helped by well-designed,
existing programs, yet only 40 percent of them are actually
getting the help they need.
--
A 53 percent increase, of $321 million, will be sought
in Federal spending on drug treatment programs that
work.
--
The federal government will work with states to better
coordinate the drug treatment system, and will
encourage employers to establish Employee Assistance
Programs that cover drug use.
--
Research will be expanded in the search for improved
methods to break cocaine and crack addiction, and
treatment efforts will be targeted on expectant mothers
and crack babies.
Education and Prevention: We must stop drug abuse before it
starts.
--
Education and prevention programs in schools and
communities will be increased by $233 million.
--
The President called on every school, college,
university, and workplace to adopt tough, fair anti-
drug policies.
--
President Bush will be addressing American
schoolchildren in a special televised address, to
discuss the war on drugs.
# # #
PUSHED HARDER -
BipARTSANShip
American people tires PARTISAN Approach-
August 11, 1989
NOTE TO
The Director
John Walters
Reggie Walton
Herbert Kleber
Stan Morris
David Tell
Terry Pell
Frances Norris
Don Hamilton
Chuck Wexler
Ted Grabowsky
Arthur Houghton
Daniel Casse
Pete Wehner
John Armstrong
Frank Kalder
Gabi Lupo
Dan Schecter
Attached is a draft copy of the National Drug Control Strategy
containing all parts except Chapter IV and Chapter V. This copy
went to the President for his review over the weekend.
Please keep this close hold -- do not discuss or share with
persons outside ONDCP. Again, thanks for all of your help.
ame
Bruce Carnes
Attachment
August 11, 1989*
INTRODUCTION
In late July of this year, the Federal government's National
Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) released the results of its ninth
periodic Household Survey -- the first such comprehensive,
national study of drug use patterns since 1985. Much of the news
in NIDA's report was dramatic and startling. The estimated
number of Americans using any illegal drug on a "current" basis
(in other words, at least once in the 30-day period preceding the
survey) has dropped 37 percent: from 23 million in 1985 to 14.5
million last year. Current use of the two most common illegal
substances -- marijuana and cocaine -- is down 36 and 48 percent
respectively.
This is all good news -- very good news. But it is also, at
first glance, difficult to square with commonsense perceptions.
Most Americans remain firmly convinced that drugs represent the
gravest present threat to our national well-being -- and with
good reason. Because a wealth of other, up-to-date evidence
suggests that our drug problem is getting worse, not better.
Crime. Fear of drugs and attendant crime are at an all-time
high. Rates of drug-related homicide continue to rise --
sometimes alarmingly -- in cities across the country. Felony
DRAFT
American competitiveness. One study reports that on-the-job drug
use alone costs American industry and business $60 billion a year
in lost productivity and drug-related accidents.
Overseas. In Southeast and West Asia, South and Central
America, and the Caribbean, drug exporting networks and domestic
drug use are causing serious social, economic, and political
disruptions. Intense drug-inspired violence or official
corruption have plagued a number of Latin American countries for
years; in more than one of them, drug cartel operations and
associated local insurgencies are a real and present danger to
democratic institutions, national economies, and basic civil
order. In Pakistan, the number of heroin addicts has more than
tripled in the past four years alone. And so, because our
national security directly depends on regional stability
throughout the Americas and across the globe, drugs have become a
major concern of U.S. foreign policy.
Availability. Finally, undeniably, the fact remains that
here in the United States, in every State -- in our cities, in
our suburbs, in our rural communities -- drugs are potent, drugs
are cheap, and drugs are available to almost anyone who wants
them.
Insofar as this crisis is the product of individual choices
to take or refuse drugs, it has been -- and continues to be -- a
crisis of national character, affecting and affected by the
DRAFT
5
For all its welcome good news, the NIDA Household Survey
also brings us terrible proof that our current drug epidemic has
far from run its course. Estimated "frequent" use of cocaine in
any form (measured by the number of survey respondents who report
ingesting that drug one or more times each week, and calculated
as a percentage of the total cocaine-using population) has
doubled since 1985. Not coincidentally, 1985 was the first year
in which crack became an almost ubiquitous feature of American
inner-city life. It is an inexpensive, extremely potent, fast-
acting derivative of cocaine with a limited-duration "high" that
encourages compulsive use. It is, in fact, the most dangerous
and quickly addictive drug known to man.
Crack is responsible for the fact that vast patches of the
American urban landscape are rapidly deteriorating beyond
effective control by civil authorities. Crack is responsible for
the explosion in recent drug-related medical emergencies -- a 28-
fold increase in hospital admissions involving smoked cocaine
since 1984. Crack use is increasingly responsible for the
continued marketing success enjoyed by a huge international
cocaine trafficking industry, with all its consequential evils.
And crack use is spreading -- like a plague.
We seem to be witnessing a common and tragic phenomenon of
drug-use epidemiology. Interest in a given illegal substance
often begins first among a particular -- usually elite -- segment
of the population. It is next picked up and spread more broadly
DRAFT
7
continues to involve drugs of every sort. No effective anti-drug
campaign can ignore our current epidemic's full complexity.
Nevertheless, the epidemiological trend is unmistakable. We
are now fighting two drug wars, not just one. The first and
easiest is against "casual" use of drugs by many Americans, and
we are winning it. The other, much more difficult war is against
addiction to cocaine, by far the most common dangerous drug of
abuse. And on this second front, increasingly located in our
cities, we are losing -- badly.
Few American communities can afford to assume they are
immune to cocaine. The drug black market has proved itself
remarkably flexible and creative. Crack is an innovation in
cocaine retailing that takes uncanny advantage of the nation's
changing drug use patterns. And because it is so horribly
seductive and "new," it threatens to reverse the current trend
and send a fresh wave of cocaine use back out of our cities and
into the country at large. Indeed, to some extent at least, it
is happening already: almost every week, our newspapers report a
new first sighting of crack -- in the rural South or in some
midwestern suburb, for example.
What's more, as we guard against crack's spread, we must
begin to prepare ourselves for what may well come after it.
Almost every stimulant epidemic in history has ignited a sedative
epidemic in its wake, as users begin employing chemical "downs"
DRAFT
9
recently through heavy emphasis on interdiction of imported drugs
at our borders.
Conceived largely as an end in itself, each of these
national initiatives has succeeded -- in a limited but worthy
sphere. We have had, in slow succession, more law enforcement,
more education and treatment, and more interdiction. But through
it all, undeniably, our national drug problem has persisted.
Until late July, convincing evidence of dramatic forward progress
was painfully scarce. Indeed, until late July, most evidence
continued to suggest that the United States was at best only just
beginning to recover from the worst epidemic of illegal drug use
in its history -- more severe than the heroin scare of the late
1960s and early 1970s; far more severe, in fact, than any ever
experienced by an industrialized nation.
The new Household Survey changes our picture of the drug
problem a bit, making it more precise and comprehensible. But it
does not change the lesson that must be learned from all our many
years of experience in the fight. That lesson is clear and
simple: no single tactic -- pursued alone or to the detriment of
other possible and valuable initiatives -- can work to contain or
reduce drug use. No single tactic can justly claim credit for
recent reductions in most use of most drugs by most Americans.
And no single tactic will now get us out of our appalling,
deepening crisis of cocaine addiction.
DRAFT
11
consideration to the advocacy of wholesale drug legalization.
Legalization's proponents generally say something like this:
Enforcing our many laws against drugs is a terribly expensive and
difficult business. Were we to repeal those laws, drug-related
crime would vanish, and the time and money saved in reduced law
enforcement could be more effectively spent on health care for
addicts, and on preventive instruction for the rest of us.
Exactly how under this scenario we could convincingly warn
potential new users about the evils of drugs -- having just made
them legally acceptable -- is not entirely clear. Nor is it
clear how an already overburdened treatment system could possibly
respond to what candid legalization proponents themselves admit
would probably be a sharply increased rate of overall drug use.
The cost of drugs -- measured in purchase price, the time it
takes to search them out, and the risks involved due to
unreliable "quality" and legal sanction -- is a key predictor of
drug use. Cheaper, easier-to-get, and "better" legalized drugs
would likely mean more drug users and more frequent drug use.
And would legalization actually reduce crime? Crimes
committed by addicts to pay for their habits might theoretically
decline a bit. But since addicts use drugs -- especially cocaine
-- as often as they can, less expensive drugs might just as well
mean more frequent purchases and a still-constant need for cash-
producing burglaries and robberies. What's more, since cocaine
use is known to produce dangerous behavioral side-effects --
DRAFT
13
teeth of a crisis -- especially one which has for so long
appeared to spiral wildly out of control -- we naturally look for
villains. We need not look far; there are plenty of them.
Anyone who sells drugs -- and (to a great if poorly understood
extent) anyone who uses them -- is involved in an international
criminal enterprise that is killing thousands of Americans each
year. For the worst and most brutal drug gangsters, the death
penalty is an appropriate sentence of honest justice. And for
the multitude of crimes associated with trafficking and use, many
of the other tough and coherently punitive anti-drug measures
proposed in recent years have their place and should be employed.
We should be tough on drugs -- much tougher than we are now.
Our badly imbalanced criminal justice system, already groaning
under the weight of current drug cases, should be rationalized
and significantly expanded. But we cannot afford to delude
ourselves that drug use is an exclusively criminal issue.
Whatever else it does, drug use degrades human character, and a
purposeful, self-governing society ignores its people's character
at great peril. Drug users make inattentive parents, bad
neighbors, poor students, and unreliable employees -- quite apart
from their common involvement in criminal activity. Legal
sanctions may help to deter drug use, and they can be used to
direct some drug users to needed treatment. But locking up
millions of drug users will not by itself make them healthy and
responsible citizens.
DRAFT
15
agencies is almost inevitable. The real miracle is that
intramural rivalries have been so relatively restrained and
insignificant.
No doubt Federal, State, and local drug enforcement can and
should be made tougher, more extensive, more efficient. This
report offers a number of major proposals to accomplish just
that. But, again, stronger and better coordinated drug
enforcement alone is not the answer. It is a means to an end.
It should not become the end itself.
We must be tough. We must be humane. And we must pursue
change -- in some cases, sweeping change. But before it can
begin, we must get smart about the drug problem -- smarter than
we have been in the past.
First, we must come to terms with the drug problem in its
essence: use itself. Worthy efforts to alleviate the symptoms
of epidemic drug abuse -- crime and disease, for example -- must
continue unabated. But a largely ad-hoc attack on the holes in
our dike can have only an indirect and minimal effect on the
flood itself. By the same token, we must avoid the easy
temptation to blame our troubles first on those chronic problems
of social environment -- like poverty and racism -- which help to
breed and spread the contagion of drug use. We have been
fighting such social ills for decades; that fight, too, must
continue unabated. But we need not -- and cannot -- sit back and
DRAFT
17
have never taken an illegal drug. And government has a solemn
obligation to keep those Americans -- and their children after
them -- safe and secure from the poison of drug trafficking and
drug use.
But government also has an obligation to tell the truth and
act accordingly. There is no quick fix or magic bullet for
individual dissipation, and policymakers should not pretend that
we are on the verge of discovering one for drugs. The continued
search for a single "answer" to our troubles with drugs -- in law
enforcement, in education and treatment, in border interdiction,
or somewhere else -- is a bad idea. We have bounced back and
forth in emphasis this way for too long. It has not worked well.
And it will hold us back in the near- and long-term future, by
diverting our attention from new and serious work that can and
must be done right now.
The United States has a broad array of tools at its
disposal, in government and out, each of which -- in proper
combination with the others -- can and does have a significant
effect on the shape and size of our drug problem. We must use
them all. We must have what we have never had before: a
comprehensive, fully integrated national drug control strategy.
It must proceed from a proper understanding of all that we do and
do not know about drugs. It must take calm and intelligent
measure of the strengths and limitations of specific available
drug control initiatives. And it must then begin to intensify
DRA
19
dealers and users are carried out -- all of which should help us
decide how further to contain, prevent, treat, and reduce the
prevalence of drug use nationwide.
Drug use usually starts early, in the first few years of
adolescence. But notwithstanding popular mythology about
shadowy, raincoated pushers corrupting young innocents on school
playgrounds, children almost never purchase their first drug
experience. Generally speaking, drug dealers still make most of
their money from known, regular customers, and they still -- all
things being equal -- prefer to avoid the risk of selling their
wares to strangers, however young. Similarly, new and novice
users themselves are typically reluctant to accept an unfamiliar
substance from an unfamiliar face. In fact, young people rarely
make any independent effort to seek out drugs for the first time.
They don't have to; use ordinarily begins through simple personal
contact with other users. Where drugs are concerned, as with so
much else, young people respond most immediately and directly to
the blandishments of peer pressure. And so first use invariably
involves the free and enthusiastic offer of a drug by a friend.
This friend -- or "carrier," in epidemiological terms -- is
seldom a hard-core addict. In the terminal stage of an
uninterrupted drug use career, the addict is almost completely
present-minded -- preoccupied with finding and taking his drug;
other planning and organizational skills have largely deserted
him. He very often cannot maintain anything resembling a normal
DRAFT
21
always lead to addiction; again, we have no accurate way to
predict its eventual trajectory.
These facts about drug use phenomenology are both a problem
and an advantage for any intelligent national drug control
campaign. Unfortunately, they mean that those specifically
addict-directed efforts of law enforcement and treatment --
though urgently required for neighborhood safety and reasons of
simple compassion -- will remain difficult, time-consuming, and
labor intensive, and will promise to reduce the number of
American drug users only, for the most part, on a one-by-one,
case-by-case basis. They also mean that non-addicted casual and
regular use remains a grave issue of national concern, despite
NIDA's report of recent dramatic declines in its prevalence.
Non-addicted users still comprise the vast bulk of our drug-
involved population. There are many millions of them. And each
represents a potential agent of infection for the non-users in
his personal ambit.
But there is good news, too. Though compared to addiction,
non-addicted drug behavior is the more common and contagious
form, it is also more susceptible to change and improvement. The
same general techniques employed to slow and mixed effect with
addicts may achieve markedly better results with non-addicts.
Casual and regular drug users are much more easily induced to
enter treatment, for example, and they are much more likely to
reduce or cease their use as a result of it.
DRAFT
23
Supply reduction, by these lights, involves overseas crop
eradication and associated foreign policy initiatives;
interdiction of foreign-manufactured drugs at our national
borders; and domestic law enforcement. For its part in this
calculus, demand reduction is thought to involve medical or other
treatment for current drug users; education about the dangers of
drugs and techniques to resist them; and various
interdisciplinary, community-based prevention efforts. Demand
reduction, then, is understood to be primarily "therapeutic," and
seeks to help those in trouble -- or those likely to get in
trouble in the future. Supply reduction, by contrast, is
understood to be primarily "punitive," and seeks to bring stern
sanctions to bear against those who grow, refine, smuggle, or
distribute illegal drugs.
This division of anti-drug strategy into two rigidly
independent -- even opposed -- tactical camps may do a good job
of mirroring conflicting public sentiment about the need to be
hard-hearted or tender-minded. But it makes a poor guide to
policymaking and funding decisions about the drug problem,
because -- as the preceding pages should already have suggested -
- it does not do a good job of reflecting either the complicated
reality of the drug market, or the actual effect specific anti-
drug initiatives can and do have on that market.
Granted, overseas and border activities against drugs work
primarily to reduce supply. But they can have an important,
DRAFT
25
public awareness, and community prevention campaigns; our
international policies and activities; and our efforts to
interdict smuggled drugs before they cross our borders. Chapters
VII and VIII discuss a research and intelligence agenda designed
to support and sustain this overall strategy. And Appendix A
offers a series of quantified goals and measures of success --
each of which this strategy, if fully implemented, can reasonably
be expected to achieve.
No attempt should be made to disguise the fact that
significant new resources will be required to pay for the many
proposals advanced in this report. And no attempt is made here
to deny that the Federal government has a major role to play in
providing them. Last February, this Administration requested
$625 million in new drug budget authority for Fiscal Year 1990.
Now, after six months of careful study, we have identified an
immediate need for almost [$1.3 billion] more. With this report,
the Administration is requesting FY 1990 drug budget authority
totaling [$7.5 billion] -- the largest single-year increse in
history. A detailed Federal implementation plan -- and the
budget tables to accompany it -- are included in Appendix B.
No attempt should be made to disguise the fact that
significant new resources will be required to pay for the many
proposals advanced in this report. And no attempt is made here
to deny that the Federal government has a major role to play in
providing them. This Administration has already requested nearly
$1.3 billion in new drug budget authority for Fiscal Year 1990.
DRAFT
27
August 11, 1989*
CRIMINAL JUSTICE RECOMMENDATIONS
Increase Federal funding to States and localities for
street-level law enforcement.
Provide Federal funding to States for planning,
developing, and implementing alternative sentencing
programs for non-violent drug offenders, including house
arrest and boot camps.
Increase Federal funding for Federal law enforcement
activities, including courts, prisons, prosecutors,
and law enforcement officers. Additional resources will be
targeted on Federal money laundering investigations.
Encourage States to vigorously prosecute and increase the
fines for all misdemeanor drug offenses.
Expand programs to eradicate the domestic
marijuana crop.
To receive full Federal highway funds, States must
adopt policies to revoke the drivers' licenses of those
convicted of a drug offense.
To receive Federal criminal justice funds, States must
adopt drug-testing programs for arrestees, prisoners,
parolees, those out on bail, and throughout their criminal
justice systems.
Provide funding through the Department of Housing and Urban
Development to establish security systems for public housing
projects, including tenant identification cards, guards, and
security fences.
Better coordination of efforts of Federal supply reduction
efforts will be achieved through constitution of a
Supply Reduction Working Group, chaired by ONDCP.
This group will coordinate policy and oversee its
implementation. To further interagency cooperation,
agencies will revise their personnel evaluation systems,
where appropriate, to add a criterion for career
advancement and reward that emphasizes cooperation among
employees within the same agency and between employees
of different Federal agencies.
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29
means that every drug transaction involves both a supplier and a
consumer. Effective drug enforcement is aimed at the market as a
whole, and tries to disrupt it so that both selling and buying
drugs become burdensome and precarious activities. When law
enforcement officials successfully and repeatedly obstruct the
market, drugs become harder to get and drug use invariably
diminishes. In this way, the criminal justice system serves as
one of the most powerful forms of drug prevention.
To prevent people from using drugs, drug enforcement
activities must make it increasingly difficult to engage in any
drug activity with impunity. That deterrent, however, will only
remain credible so long as pressure is brought to bear on the
entire drug market, dealers and users alike. That's why we need
a national law enforcement strategy that casts a wide net and
seeks to ensure that all drug use -- whatever its scale -- faces
the risk of criminal sanction.
Such a strategy has often been derided as either uncaring or
unrealistic. Punishment, some have argued, is not the way to
treat people in need of help. Others have suggested that the
criminal justice system is so overloaded it should not even try
to guarantee punishment to every guilty drug offender. Following
that logic, some states have treated drug use as merely a minor
infraction -- the equivalent of a traffic violation. This view
of enforcement can only undermine our attempts to reduce illicit
drug use. It assumes erroneously that those who use drugs
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31
are, the front line of law enforcement in the Nation's battle
against drugs. The recommendations offered in this Strategy
place new demands on State and local authorities who, if they are
to face the problem squarely, must expand the resources they
devote to drug enforcement and criminal justice. They will also
require and deserve new Federal funds, support, and guidance.
Further success in the war on drugs will be achieved only through
truly national criminal justice reform and expansion, which
requires the support of public officials at all levels of
government.
Making Neighborhoods Safe
The first challenge facing our criminal justice system is to
help reclaim neighborhoods that have been rendered unsafe by
drugs. For it is in neighborhoods that drugs pose an immediate
threat to local residents and the quality of their lives. Drug
dealers harass, intimidate, and assault pedestrians. They entice
and coerce children to join their ranks. Crack houses accelerate
the deterioration of already rundown residential blocks. Parks
and public spaces become havens for illicit activity. In such
neighborhoods, drugs are sold freely and openly and buyers fear
no criminal sanction. Residents are left alone with the task of
protecting their lives and property, while trying to keep their
children away from a life of drug abuse.
That is too heavy a burden to leave on those whose lives are
often already taxed by poverty and broken homes, but who still
DRAFT
33
These stories are a source of constant frustration to our
law enforcement officers. But they have nevertheless tried a
number of possible policing techniques designed to keep the
dealers off the street. Many cities have in recent years
concentrated their enforcement resources on operations aimed at
indicting drug "kingpins" who control regional drug distribution.
Occasionally efforts against the most powerful dealers meet with
spectacular success. The recent conviction of the Chambers
brothers organization in Detroit effectively ended the career of
drug dealers who, at their peak, were selling more than $3
million worth of crack a day.
But experience teaches us that a good long-term drug
reduction strategy cannot rely on these big busts alone. As in
any organized criminal monopoly, there are always plenty of
competitors waiting to take control when one ringleader has been
caught. Arresting big dealers may temporarily shut down drug
markets, but in many cases the markets are quickly reopened under
new management. Today, many scholars and professionals are
convinced that we cannot hope to eradicate drugs in any city
through one large bust, or even a series of large busts.
Obviously, it must remain a major goal of U.S. drug control
policy to immobilize drug trafficking organizations by
apprehending and prosecuting their leaders, and forfeiting their
illegally gained wealth. Our continued ability to break up
domestic and international drug networks serves a number of
DRAFT
35
difficult to sell drugs and inconvenient to buy them. Local
police, it is true, have only a negligible effect on the street
price of drugs -- especially when crack sells for as little as $3
a vial. But they can drastically increase what has been called
the "search time" for drugs: the amount of time and effort
required to make contact with a dealer and safely make a
purchase.
As long as drugs can be bought with confidence on a familiar
street or in the entrance to a well-known apartment building,
there is little risk in seeking out drugs -- and local residents
will be hard pressed to avoid them. But if local drug
enforcement can succeed in pushing drug dealers underground -- or
at least further out of reach -- some buyers will be deterred
from spending the time and incurring the risk necessary to find
them. Indeed, when neighborhood police increase the number of
drug arrests in the area, when they put pressure on local drug
transactions through surveillance and undercover work, and when
they force dealers to take refuge in less conspicuous places, the
drug markets that menace neighborhoods cease to flourish. At the
very least, young people and new users are denied easy access to
drugs.
We know that street-level drug enforcement can work because
it has enjoyed some success in the past. Every locality has
learned some lesson about how drugs can be fought on a small and
local level. The knowledge they have gained should form the
DRAFT
37
figures to local residents, school officials, and merchants.
Soon an atmosphere of trust and cooperation prevails: residents
make frequent reports to the police about suspected drug
activity; parents help patrol school grounds; community groups
and tenant associations meet with police to describe drug
problems authorities may not be aware of -- these efforts provide
the necessary conditions for safe neighborhoods.
The Kansas City Ad Hoc Group Against Crime is a vivid
example of how a well-coordinated community can take on the
threat posed by neighborhood drug activity. Working closely with
local police, citizens in Kansas City, Missouri, established
police hotlines to report the location of suspected drug
transactions, organized marches on local crack houses, and
assisted landlords in evicting tenants who sold drugs on their
property. Community initiatives like these may not solve the
drug problem on their own. But they prove that communities need
not be vulnerable to drugs.
When success does occur, other cities and towns should
emulate it. In New York City, Operation Pressure Point
demonstrated how an area virtually overrun by drug traffic and
use could be reclaimed by a persistent and well-coordinated
police effort. In 1984, police began saturating the Lower East
Side section of the city where drugs were sold openly and
violence seemed to erupt spontaneously. Through the constant
presence of undercover operations, information gathering units,
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39
public housing projects; razing abandoned buildings that could be
used as safe houses; stepping up traffic and parking violation
enforcement to discourage buyers from driving into areas where
drugs can be purchased; enforcing loitering laws to keep drug
dealers away from school yards and playgrounds; and so on.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) can
and will assist local police efforts to keep drug dealers out of
public housing projects. HUD has already taken measures to
expedite eviction proceedings against known drug dealers living
in public housing, and law-abiding residents have welcomed and
encouraged the help. HUD can further help local authorities
obstruct drug activity by assisting public housing projects in
providing security systems, including tenant ID cards, 24-hour
guards, and security fences. The tenants of these buildings
deserve the same type of protection from drug-related crime as
that found in the most secure private apartment complexes.
Operation Clean Sweep in Chicago showed that public housing
tenants need not be victimized by drugs in their own homes.
Through a combination of building renovation, expanded
residential security, and drug dealer eviction, authorities were
able to bring a sense of security to a housing complex once
terrorized by the drug trade.
No crime-fighting tactic is absolutely foolproof. Yet the
variety of successful street-level drug enforcement techniques
employed in recent years belies the claim that law enforcement
DRAFT
41
If State and local officials wish to expand their capacity
to prosecute and sentence drug offenders they must broaden their
notions of what constitutes punishment. In many jurisdictions,
the choice of criminal sanctions is between prison or nothing at
all. Dealers involved in large-scale drug traffic and violent
predatory crime are obvious candidates for prison sentences that
will both take them off the streets for significant periods of
time and deter other potential offenders. Such sentences put a
strain on the system, but the demands of justice and domestic
security require them.
Other types of offenders, however, can be dealt with in more
efficient and often less expensive ways that have only begun to
be explored. Military-style boot camps, with their rigorous
regimes and austere conditions, bring a sense of order and
discipline to the lives of first-time offenders, and perhaps
serve as a deterrent against future crimes. Halfway houses and
strictly supervised addiction recovery programs can meet the
demands of offenders who require treatment. A number of states
have successfully experimented with various house arrest programs
that keep an offender incapacitated at his own expense. "Casual"
users who maintain a job and a steady income should face stiff
fines -- much stiffer than they do now -- and, where appropriate,
property forfeiture. The 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Act further
broadens the array of penalties a judge has at his disposal by
providing courts with the power to deny or withhold certain
Federal benefits from convicted drug offenders. The
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43
eligibility, and extends to weekends of "community service" that
involve arduous and unenviable public chores.
There are still other areas of State criminal justice
systems in need of reform. Our probation systems provide a vivid
example of the need for more accountability. In many
jurisdictions, the probation system is so overcrowded and so
loosely managed that it can barely be said to exist in any
meaningful sense. Offenders who violate the conditions of
probation often go unpunished, remaining at liberty until they
are arrested again for yet another drug offense. Probation, like
parole, court-supervised treatment, and some release programs,
should be tied to a regular and rigorous program of frequent drug
testing in order to coerce offenders to abstain from drugs while
integrating them back into the community. Such programs make
prison space available for those drug offenders we cannot safely
return to the streets. But unless they rigidly enforce drug
abstinence under the threat of incarceration, these efforts lose
their teeth. Drug tests should be a part of every stage of the
criminal justice process -- at the time of arrest and throughout
the period of probation or incarceration, and parole -- because
they are the most effective way of keeping offenders off drugs
both in and out of detention.
The many suggested alternatives to incarceration should not
lead us to conclude that States and localities don't need more
prisons and jails. They do. And they need them immediately and
DRAFT
45
of drug offenders that is swifter, more certain, and carefully
linked to drug treatment and testing.
Federal Responsibilities
Nothing in the preceding argument should be understood to
minimize the drug-enforcement responsibilities of the Federal
government. State and local authorities possess a familiarity
with communities and neighborhoods that is essential in
establishing and maintaining successful street-level enforcement.
But State and local efforts rely on effective Federal enforcement
activities for cooperative assistance and support. Federal law
enforcement officials also have been and must continue to be an
important source of training and technical assistance for State
and local drug enforcement. And because they have wider
jurisdiction and an ability to trace drug distribution on a
national and international scale, Federal authorities will remain
a pivotal part of any comprehensive drug control strategy.
Currently, there are more than a dozen Federal agencies
combatting drug trafficking. These include not only the
organizations traditionally responsible for drug enforcement such
as the Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI, the Customs
Service, and the U.S. Coast Guard, but also agencies such as the
Internal Revenue Service, the Immigration and Naturalization
Service, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, which
can often advance investigations of drug trafficking by focusing
on other criminal activity associated with it. Each of these
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49
regional task forces, the OCDETF program also provides one of the
crucial links between Federal and State authorities, enhancing
the exchange of information and enforcement strategies. These
programs should serve as a model of interagency coordination, and
be a priority for future expansion in Federal drug enforcement.
A principal target area for such expansion should be money
laundering schemes that keep the cash-only illegal drug industry
afloat. While money laundering has always been a tool of
organized criminal activity, the highly profitable drug trade has
made it an even larger and more widespread practice both
domestically and, as will be explained in Chapter IV,
internationally. Our ability to attack these sophisticated money
laundering operations, however, is limited. And, as with drug
enforcement generally, investigations of money laundering are
often carried out independently by agencies, even where
cooperation would be more effective. Since tracing the movement
of large sums of cash remains among the best methods for
identifying drug transactions, more Federal resources need to be
targeted on the expansion and coordination of money laundering
investigations.
Another target of intensified Federal action should be
reversing the intolerable boom in domestically grown marijuana,
which now accounts for 25 percent of the amount available for
consumption in the United States. Domestic cultivation of what
is often extremely potent marijuana takes place indoors and on
DRAF
49
fighting drugs are, without exception, competitive, independent,
and proud organizations. The individuals who work for them,
especially agents in the field, are dedicated and mission-
oriented. Those qualities are assets in the war on drugs. And
any attempt to limit further the mandate of these drug
enforcement agencies would inevitably diminish the spirit and
energy that distinguish them.
Nonetheless, when law enforcement agencies are driven to
spend time protecting their turf from perceived "rivals," they
invariably spend less time fighting drugs. And where poor
coordination is a product of internal administrative imperatives
in our drug enforcement agencies, those imperatives will have to
change.
What is required is some serious reconsideration of how we
evaluate the relative success of drug enforcement activities.
Most Federal agencies that deal with drug traffic assess their
own performance and that of their employees through a kind of
"body count": number of arrests made, kilos of cocaine seized,
size of drug rings broken, and so on. These numbers will remain
necessary so long as Congress and other Executive branch agencies
insist on using them as a measure of effectiveness. But
ultimately, such an evaluation system may actually encourage
interagency conflict because, in the battle for Federal funds,
whichever agency can produce the best numbers can claim to be the
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51
paralyzes the best efforts of law enforcement officials. The
Department of Justice needs more Criminal Division and U.S.
Attorneys in order to prepare and prosecute the thousands of drug
cases that currently swamp the system. And that expansion needs
to be matched with a parallel growth in both the Federal
judiciary and the U.S. Marshals Service, which can greatly
enhance our ability to transport and supervise unsentenced
prisoners and pre-trial detainees. To this end, the
Comprehensive Crime Control Act, proposed in May of this year,
contributes directly to drug enforcement by expanding criminal
justice resources on several fronts. Many of the proposals of
the Act are incorporated into this Strategy.
Unfortunately, no amount of growth and efficiency in the
Federal prosecutorial system will help put drug dealers out of
business if there is no place to put them. Prisons are often
described as the "back end" of the criminal justice system, but
they must be at the forefront of any Federal plan designed to
deal with drug offenders. Today, the Federal prison system has a
rated capacity of approximately 31,000 beds. That capacity must
be expanded -- and will be by as much as 77 percent under the
recommendations of this Strategy -- if current and future demands
for prison space are to be met. Reaching that goal is a
necessary step in rejuvenating a system currently overrun by our
national drug epidemic.
DRAFT
53
these that reduce drug use and curb its destructive consequences
should be identified and expanded. Those that fail to make drug
use accountable should be required to reform or have their
funding closely reviewed -- and possibly withdrawn.
Accountability for results can be no less thorough at the
Federal level. Federal arrestees should be drug-tested and
complete abstinence from drugs must be the condition for release
on bond, probation, or parole. No program that allows those who
fail drug tests while in custody to participate in release
programs deserves funding. The American people will be prepared
to spend money on a bigger criminal justice system only if that
system is held fully accountable for its performance.
The criminal justice system must expand to accommodate more
people at every point. In some jurisdictions that might mean
more prison beds; in others, more prosecutors and probation
officers. But no single expansion effort will solve the problem.
All these changes must be made in the context of reforming a
system that can keep drug offenders in check at every step of the
process: from arrest through prosecution through release and
final supervision. There will always be those who
enthusiastically endorse plans for more parole officers but balk
when it comes to planning new prisons. This is precisely the
type of unsystematic policy that our national criminal justice
system has suffered under for too long. It is time to stop
fighting drugs in a piecemeal fashion. Extensive and successful
55
August 11, 1989*
DRUG TREATMENT RECOMMENDATIONS
Increase Federal funds for treatment in order to expand the
number of treatment slots and the range of treatment methods
available.
Hold treatment programs receiving Federal funds accountable
for their effectiveness.
Improve the coordination among local treatment facilities so
that treatment resources and availability match community
needs, and drug users are referred to the most appropriate
treatment provider.
Encourage treatment facilities to improve their coordination
with social, health, and employment agencies in order to
better assist those drug-dependent persons who need services
in addition to treatment. Where necessary, assist
facilities to develop their own programs in these areas.
Increase funding of outreach programs and early treatment
for expectant mothers who use drugs.
Encourage the States and private insurance companies to
cover outpatient and other less intensive forms of treatment
for drug use. Conduct a thorough review of Federal policy
to determine whether changes in Federal coverage are
necessary.
Explore ways to increase the use of civil commitment as a
means of bringing more drug dependent persons into the
treatment system.
Expand and improve Federal information collection and
research. Give priority to describing our current treatment
capacities and needs, evaluating treatment effectiveness for
specific populations, and developing methods of treatment
for cocaine and crack dependency, cocaine in combination
with other substances, and for individuals with both
psychiatric and drug problems.
DRAFT
57
The drug treatment world is diverse, reflecting the
variation in the types and severity of drug use and the range of
strategies used to treat it. Most of the Nation's 5,000 drug
treatment programs fall under one of five broad categories:
detoxification programs, usually inpatient, which have the short
range goal of ending users' physical addiction to drugs;
chemical dependency units, mainly private inpatient or
residential three- to four-week programs; outpatient clinics,
which offer counseling and support for those who want to quit
using drugs while they continue to function in the community;
methadone maintenance programs, which treat heroin addicts by
coupling counseling with the administration of methadone, a
prescription medication that "blocks" the craving for heroin
while eliminating the usual pain of withdrawal; and residential
therapeutic communities, where users spend up to 18 months in a
highly structured program to end their drug addiction.
In addition, there are support groups such as Narcotics
Anonymous, which can be effective as either a substitute for or
an extension of other approaches. The vast majority of people
treated (85 percent) are in outpatient programs. Relatively
minor percentages are in residential programs or in hospitals on
an inpatient basis. Private nonprofit facilities enroll about 60
percent of those in treatment, and State and local government-run
facilities enroll 25 percent. Eleven percent are in programs
operated for profit, and three percent are in Federal facilities,
mainly Veterans Administration and military hospitals.
DRAFT
59
Cocaine addiction is especially difficult to treat;
currently there are no proven successful treatment strategies
comparable to those for heroin addiction. Cocaine resists
treatment for a number of reasons: the lack of a pharmacological
"blocker" that negates cocaine's extraordinarily pleasurable
effects; the severe depression that follows a cocaine high; and
the rapidly addicting properties of crack. Some residential
treatment programs, such as Phoenix House and Daytop Village,
have had some success using a highly structured treatment program
consisting of intensive counseling and monitoring. Certain
outpatient programs that use combinations of medication and
relapse prevention methods also have shown promise, but further
research is needed. Several new medications to decrease cocaine
craving and relapse are currently being investigated and may yet
prove to be useful.
Today's drug addicts are more challenging to treat than
those of a decade ago. Mental illness or psychological disorders
are common, as is the practice of using a variety of illegal
drugs, not just one. A typical drug treatment patient may, for
example, have a history of heroin, cocaine, and marijuana use,
along with excessive use of alcohol, taken separately or in
combinations.
Drug users also come to treatment varying considerably in
their social and vocational skills. Some are successful
DRAFT
61
people can fill a single treatment slot over the course of a
year). There is little doubt that if we continue to treat only
one in seven heavy drug users, treatment will not make a very
large dent in the Nation's drug problem. Although the data is
inadequate, we have a fairly good idea why so few addicts are
being treated.
Lack of Capacity
Part of the answer is a lack of treatment capacity. Many
publicly funded programs, especially in urban areas, have long
waiting lists. When an addict knows that his local drug
treatment facility has a waiting list of weeks or even months, he
may be discouraged from even applying (of course, self-help
groups such as Narcotics Anonymous are generally available). On
the other hand, we also know that many private programs have
vacant treatment slots and, on a national basis, the treatment
system at any point in time is about 80 percent filled to
capacity. Nonetheless, there is little question that many
programs simply do not have the space or the funds to meet the
local demand for drug treatment.
Despite the new Federal Waiting List Reduction program, it
is clear that further expansion in the treatment system is
necessary, and that expansion will only come as a result of more
Federal spending. Increased capacity is particularly important
in light of the greater numbers of drug users who will seek
DRACT
63
others have waiting lists. New treatment programs are difficult
to start, partly because of funding but also because of frequent
community resistance to proposed sites. Drug treatment programs
vary greatly in quality and treatment methods and, because our
knowledge of what works is far from adequate -- especially for
cocaine addiction -- many programs are doubtless using approaches
inappropriate to particular users' problems or are unable to
provide the range of services needed. The Medicaid program,
which is financed by the States and the Federal government and
which benefits certain of the poor, also keeps some users from
seeking treatment because not all States opt for outpatient drug
treatment coverage. Shortages of trained people to staff
treatment centers, often inadequate salaries, and limited
opportunities for current staff to learn about new advances in
treatment methods impede the ability of the system to expand.
Frequently treatment facilities fail to cooperate or to
coordinate their programs. Research shows that, when no effort
is made to match the treatment strategy to the user's particular
psychological and drug dependency problems, only about one in
five drug users benefits. But when users are matched to specific
treatments, results improve dramatically. For some users,
medical detoxification and outpatient counseling may be
sufficient; for others, a traditional therapeutic community may
be most effective; and, for another group, a spiritually-based
rehabilitation program may provide the pathway to a drug-free
life.
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67
Expanding the capacity of the treatment system will not,
in and of itself, cause those users who now resist treatment to
change their minds. For that, we need to expand and intensify
measures which persuade, encourage, and, if necessary, require
addicts to seek treatment. Holding users accountable through a
range of sanctions, including fines, publishing names in the
newspaper, community service, and prison substitutes, will
persuade many to seek treatment rather than face the
alternatives.
The States should consider expanding the use of "civil
commitment," whereby addicts convicted of criminal offenses are
sent by the courts to treatment facilities, in lieu of or in
addition to incarceration. Upon their release, they are required
to participate in carefully monitored outpatient programs. One
such program that has shown good results is the California Civil
Addict Program. This program's effectiveness seems to be a
result of close monitoring, including frequent urine testing
after release, with the policy of re-incarceration following a
positive test and intensive supervision by well-trained
specialists. Civil commitment holds promise as a means of
getting more addicts into treatment. In many States, however,
the judicial procedures necessary for civil commitment are
exceedingly cumbersome. The Federal government will conduct a
thorough study of the use of civil commitment by the States,
including the obstacles to wider use, leading to the drafting of
a model State civil commitment law.
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69
Better Information
There are many gaps in our knowledge of the treatment
system. Better information is needed about who enrolls in
treatment programs -- the types of drugs they are using, their
treatment history, their rate of recidivism. We also need better
information about the programs themselves -- their methods,
success rates, and clientele. We need to better understand what
treatment methods work for different types of addicts and
different drug dependencies. We especially need to develop and
test a variety of new models of treatment for cocaine and crack,
including but not limited to the development of medications that
block the craving for and effects of cocaine. The Federal
government has had the lead responsibility for setting and
adequately funding the research agenda in this area, and funding
will be increased. But we should also encourage more private
sector involvement in research comparable to that done by the
Diabetes Foundation, the Kidney Foundation, the American Cancer
Society, and the March of Dimes in other health areas.
A Special Concern: Drug-Impaired Pregnancies
Young women are one of the fastest growing groups to use
crack cocaine. Increasingly, many become pregnant while
continuing to use the drug, endangering not only themselves but,
more tragically, their unborn children, who may be born
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71
August 11, 1989*
EDUCATION, COMMUNITY ACTION, AND THE WORKPLACE: RECOMMENDATIONS
Require schools, colleges, and universities to implement
firm drug prevention programs and policies as a condition of
eligibility to receive Federal funds.
Promote the development of model alternative schools for
youths with drug problems in current Federal assistance to
local education agencies.
Provide Federal support to enable community-wide drug
prevention efforts.
Provide Federal support to develop anti-drug media outreach
activities that deal with the dangers of crack and drug-
impaired pregnancies.
Create a national program to mobilize volunteer efforts to
prevent the use of illegal drugs.
Ensure a drug-free Federal workforce through the
implementation of Executive Order 12564.
Promote drug-free workplace policies in the private sector
and in State and local government that include clear
penalties for use and drug-testing where appropriate.
Establish a top-level interagency committee to coordinate
Federal demand-reduction efforts.
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73
reduction. In reality, both reduce demand, and both are
essential to an effective strategy.
We've recently begun to learn what works in preventing young
people from using drugs. Much of our previous efforts, we now
know, were not successful. The passive approach -- presenting
young people with information on the harmful effects of drugs,
often in a context devoid of moral judgment, did little to curb
demand. In fact, it may have even fueled it by stimulating young
people's curiosity about drugs.
What does work is a more confrontational approach in which
every facet of society communicates clearly that drug use is
unacceptable. Schools have a major role to play in prevention,
not only by presenting accurate information about drugs, but also
by developing and enforcing firm, consistent policies that
discourage the use and sale of drugs. But there are other major
influences in a young person's life, and they too should be heard
from without equivocation. Families -- parents and siblings --
must make it clear that drugs are unacceptable, and intervene at
the first sign of their use. Neighborhoods and communities must
confront drug use, potential and actual, at every turn.
Businesses and employers must make it clear that drug use and
employment are incompatible. In short, young people and adults
alike must be confronted by every facet of our society with the
same message: drugs are wrong, they are harmful, and their use
will bring certain consequences.
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75
families with only one parent can be extremely difficult.
Regardless of the circumstances, however, parents can set a good
example for their children by never using illegal drugs. They
can monitor their children's activities, know their friends, and
establish standards of behavior. Parents can take the time to
learn about legal and illegal drugs -- what they look like, what
the behavior symptoms of drug use are -- and intervene at the
first sign of their use. The earlier intervention occurs, the
better the prospects for stopping drug use.
Schools
After parents, school is probably the most powerful
influence in the lives of children. As far as drugs are
concerned, it can be either a positive or a negative one. School
is where most children spend the majority of their daylight
hours. It is where they meet their friends and form peer groups.
It is where adults have the best opportunity for structured,
sustained interaction with children. And, for many young people,
it is where they first learn about and, in some cases, obtain,
drugs. Half of all teens in a recent national survey said that
drugs were being used in their schools, and four in ten said that
they were being sold.
For schools located in the inner city or other neighborhoods
where there is chronic poverty, fighting drugs requires more than
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77
In light of the growing consensus that merely providing
young people with information about drugs doesn't work, a number
of schools adopted a different approach. On the premise that
youths turned to drugs because of a lack of self esteem and a
poor self-image, many schools began to work to generally improve
students' sense of self-worth, but without specific reference to
drugs. Although the jury is still out on the effectiveness of
this approach, many educators believe that, without other
measures, it too will fail to deter drug use.
Since about 1980, a new approach to preventing student drug
use has shown promise. Often called "refusal skills training" or
"resistance training," this strategy grew out of previous and
apparently successful efforts to teach adolescents how to say
"no" to smoking. This approach seems to work because it
recognizes rightly the enormous role of peer group pressure in
influencing the decision to try drugs (by age 16, one in three
teens has been approached to use or buy drugs), and gives young
people the practical social skills they need to resist this
pressure. And, unlike some of the previous school-based
approaches, resistance training takes a firm moral stand that
using drugs is wrong and should be resisted.
School-based prevention programs should be reinforced by
tough but fair school policies on the use, possession, and
distribution of drugs. Absent such policies, we are sending our
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79
will choose to alter their behavior rather than risk expulsion.
Also, concerns about dropouts can be addressed by establishing
alternative schools and educational programs for students who are
suspended or expelled. At Flowing Wells High School in Tucson,
Arizona, for example, students with drug problems and others who
have trouble functioning in a regular school setting can attend
either of two alternative programs. The Reentry Program is
intended primarily to help dropouts resume their education.
Inscape is an off-campus program that offers counseling and other
personalized assistance. Both programs have been highly
successful with problem students.
In the current fiscal year, the Federal government will
spend over $350 million to support school-based drug education
programs. In the next fiscal year, the Administration is also
seeking $25 million for emergency drug education grants, intended
for urban areas with major drug problems. Federal policy should
do more than just provide funding, however; it also should
require a commitment from educational institutions to firm anti-
drug programs. The Federal government will insist on tough,
firm, fair policies on student drug use as a condition for
receipt of any Federal funds -- as well as on the presence of a
comprehensive drug education curriculum for elementary and
secondary grades.
Moreover, the Federal government will put greater
resources into research that will help us to identify the most
effective means of involving schools in preventing student drug
DRAFT
81
education. We cannot give our students one message while they
are in elementary or high school and another when they enroll in
a college or university. The thirteen million students at our
institutions of higher learning should know, just as all other
students should know, that society will not tolerate the use of
drugs. But too many colleges and universities have remained
diffident when it comes to drugs. Most colleges pay lip service
to the need to fight drugs, but only a handful have instituted
policies comparable to Anne Arundel County's. Rarely has a
college president sent letters to all incoming freshmen saying
"Drugs will not be tolerated on this campus." An example of an
institution that has taken a firm stand is the University of
North Carolina system, whose policy states with ringing clarity:
"Drug abuse will not be tolerated by the University and
those
who persist in such unacceptable conduct will be punished."
Under the 1986 Higher Education Act Amendments, colleges
and universities must have a drug prevention program in order to
participate in Federal student financial aid programs. Until
now, this requirement has been met by providing a routine
assurance to the Department of Education that such a program
existed. This is not sufficient. In the future, the Department
of Education will require institutions to develop and make
available for review detailed descriptions of drug prevention
programs and policies. These plans should clearly address the
consequences to faculty, staff, and students of using drugs on
campus. And the plans will be required as a condition of
DRAFT
83
departments, to develop programs for fighting crack in the city's
housing projects. In Toledo, Ohio, CARES -- Chemical Abuse
Reduced through Education Services -- is a county-wide coalition
composed of school districts, both public and parochial, law
enforcement agencies, drug and alcohol agencies, media,
businesses, churches, family groups, and the juvenile court
system, that is working to prevent the use of illegal drugs. The
key to their approach is involving and empowering parents. And
we know that many more communities stand ready to take on illegal
drugs. When the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation recently
announced a program of grants for community drug prevention
efforts, over 450 towns and cities responded.
This is a winning strategy. And we need more communities
taking the initiative and declaring that they will no longer
tolerate drugs in their midst. Because drug use is, at its
heart, a moral problem, we must hear much more from the churches.
In some cities the churches are beginning to get involved. One
minister of an inner city church in Washington, D.C, for example,
recently led 100 members of his congregation on a march to a
drug-infested public housing project. There are other ways the
churches can contribute, such as~by offering the use of their
facilities to Narcotics Anonymous and other self-help groups.
These programs work, and this is a low-cost way for the churches
to aid their communities in the prevention effort.
DRAFT
85
Intensive, well-conceived, sustained media campaigns can
help to shape the opinions and the attitudes of the population
about drugs. Many people believe that the anti-smoking campaign
of the 1970s had a great deal to do with the reduction in teen
smoking during the past decade. Recently, the same kind of
attention has been directed to drugs. One laudable example is
the Partnership for a Drug-Free America's campaign to encourage
negative attitudes toward drugs and to label drug users as
unpopular losers. Another is the Federal government's "Be Smart
Don't Start
Just Say No" campaign. Less useful -- and
probably even counterproductive -- are commercials where sports
and pop music stars who are reformed drug users tell young people
not to do as they have done. Such commercials can lack
credibility, and also carry an unintended message: that you can
do drugs and still be rich and successful.
There are indications that all of the negative attention
drugs have been getting in the media may be paying off.
According to the University of Michigan's survey of high school
seniors (admittedly an unrepresentative group of teenagers
because high school dropouts are excluded), from 1978 to 1988,
the percentage of seniors who perceived a "great risk" in smoking
marijuana rose from 35 to 77 percent. More recently, between
1986 and 1988, the percentage who disapproved of using cocaine
increased from 82 to 89 percent.
DRAFT
87
And we need to get the anti-drug parents' groups more
involved in our inner cities and with preventing young people
from using the more dangerous drugs, like cocaine and crack, as
well as gateway drugs such as marijuana.
The Workplace
Just as the schools are integral to preventing drug use
among the young, the workplace is the focus of prevention for
adults. The majority of illegal drug users in the United States
are 18 to 40 years old, and employed. Some experts believe that
as many as twenty percent of all American workers use illegal
drugs on the job. Compared to their co-workers, employees who
use drugs are far less productive; miss more workdays; and are
more likely to injure themselves or someone else. The financial
cost of illegal drug use on the job ranges from medical bills and
insurance premiums to productivity losses and business failures.
Drug use costs the Nation about $33 billion each year in lost
productivity. And more than just money is lost. In 1987, for
example, a Conrail employee who later tested positive for
marijuana was at the controls of a locomotive when it collided
with another train in Chase, Maryland. Sixteen people died and
174 were injured.
As early as the 1940's, corporations began to recognize the
effect of alcohol impairment on productivity and established
Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) to identify and arrange
DRA,
89
most common form. Other types include post-accident or for-cause
testing (used in cases where drug use is suspected); scheduled
testing (for example, during routine physical examinations)
random testing (often applied to job categories that affect
public safety or security); and testing as a follow-up to
treatment, in order to monitor the patient's success in staying
drug-free.
Despite broad public support for drug testing, the practice
remains controversial. The chief criticisms are that testing is
an invasion of privacy, that the results may not be confidential,
and that it is not sufficiently accurate. Federal guidelines
published in 1988 address these concerns, providing significant
protection of employees, both in terms of privacy and
confidentiality as well as accuracy. By clearly specifying the
steps to be followed from the time of specimen collection to the
reporting back of results, confidentiality is maintained. If
laboratories engaged in drug testing met standards equivalent to
those prescribed for the Federal drug-testing program, the
chances of an individual being wrongfully accused of using
illegal drugs would be virtually eliminated. These procedures
have been followed for several years by the American military
where, through testing, drug use has been cut by 83 percent since
1981.
In the business world, IBM's employee assistance program is
recognized as a model. IBM tests all job applicants for drugs.
DRAFT
9
drugs, including drug testing where appropriate. The Federal
government will also move quickly to implement and strengthen the
regulations for the Drug-Free Workplace Act of 1988, which
requires Federal contractors and grantees to have drug-free
workplace plans in effect.
Within the Federal government, all agencies will proceed
with their implementation of Executive Order 12564, which
requires Federal drug-free workplace plans. These plans also
will be comprehensive, and they will provide for drug testing of
appropriate categories of employees as required by the Executive
Order and in accord with recent court decisions.
Finally, to further interagency cooperation among Federal
agencies involved in the reduction of demand for drugs, a Demand
Reduction Working Group, chaired by ONDCP, will be established.
The principal role of this group will be to coordinate policy and
oversee its implementation.
DRAFT
International Recommendations (cont'd. )
o
Motivate other countries against the drug threat.
Ratify United Nations Convention against Illicit
Traffic 11 Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances
and pending mutual legal assistance treaties.
Employ certification process more effectively
Elevate the drug issue as a foreign policy
concern.
Work with foreign nations to disrupt money-laundering
activities.
DRAFT
A cornerstone of our international counternarcotics policy must
be to work with and motivate other countries to engage their own
resources and efforts to defeat narcotics trafficking. Only
through broad, cooperative international effort can WE achieve
the objectives of reducing the foreign drug supply to our
country. while helping the international community to both work
with us to reduce the drug menace substantially drug-free.
The Trafficking Organizations
For the most part, drugs are not brought into the country by
consumers -- individuals who smuggle in enough for the personal
use of themselves and their friends. The overwhelming volume of
drugs, the most dangerous in particular, are grown, processed,
and shipped or carried into the United States under the control
of foreign organizations. These organizations, and their
principal lieutenants, must be seen as an integral and active
part of the drug threat. A principal focus of our international
counternarcotics effort must therefore be on the groups and
persons that organize and direct the trafficking of dangerous
drugs into the United States and to other nations. Every element
of these organizations, including their production, processing,
transportation, distribution, and financial networks, must be
attacked in our counterdrug strategies. We must act in a manner,
consistent with our own laws and those of other nations, to
disrupt, dismantle, and, where we can do so, put trafficking
organizations out of business. To the extent possible, we must
DRAFT
one without also addressing the others 1S unlikely to achieve the
goal of a reduced cocaine supply. The chalgenge LS to motivate
the governments of the cocaine producer countries = cooperate
with us in significantly damaging the cocaine industry, and to
proceed with active and effective counternarcotits programs c :
their OWN. A comprenensive and sustained multi-year effort.
involving economic. military and law enforcement support. will be
implemented to achieve these goals. The objectives of this
effort must be: the isolation of major coca-growing areas of
Peru and Bolivia; the blocking within these countries of the
delivery of chemicals used for cocaine processing; the
destruction of cocaine hydrochloride processing facilities; and
the use of proven herbicides to destroy the coca crop when
eradication can be made an effective strategy. We -- and the
governments of the countries involved -- can and must accomplish
these objectives with a minimum of direct involvement by U.S.
personnel. This 1S a cardinal point. The countries of the area
must carry the principal burden themselves.
To strengthen regional support for strategy objectives, we
must begin planning with the governments of the coca-producing
countries. This could involve the convening of an Andean Drug
Summit within the coming year. Our participation in such an
Andean Summit would permit a full exchange of views on the
problem, allow us to fully explain our supply and demand-related
strategies, and obtain the Andean countries' agreement to our
principal goals and strategies in the area. Our and their
DRAFT
country, although the absolute volume of Mexican cplum production
15 still very small.
As long as the United States has no compelling influence
within the principal opiun-producing areas of the world. nowever
approaches through regional and international organizations, and
the use of development assistance have little chance of
significantly reducing the opium crop. A strategy to curtail the
supply of heroin to the United States, therefore, must rest
principally on three pillars: first, convincing countries with
influence on the opium growers to exercise it directly; second,
effectively using U.S. influence on countries which are
processing and distribution centers -- for example. Malaysia,
Thailand, Hong Kong, and China; and finally, more effectively
applying interdiction measures at the border, especially at the
Ports of Entry. Better strategic and operational intelligence
(addressed in another chapter of this Strategy) 1S crucial to
realizing this goal.
Colombia 1S the major source of marijuana entering the U.S.
,
supplying roughly 40% of the U.S. market. Mexico 1S the second
largest supplier to the U.S. (25%) ; 10% comes from other
countries. The remainder of the U.S. market -- 25% -- 1S
supplied from domestic cultivation. To curtail the foreign
supply of marijuana we must conclude agreements with major
producing countries to strengthen foreign enforcement efforts
through training, and logistical and intelligence support, to
DRAFT
In addition = cocaine. colum, and marijuana. other
dangerous drugs and substances constitute meaningful threats to
the mation. The importation of precursor chemicals to produce
methamphetamine 11 domestic U.S. laboratories 1S a particular
problem 11. the Western and Southwestern U.S., where 10 is
exceeded only by track cocaine as a major drug problem. The
illegal importation of erporamine tartrate, which 1s used to
produce L3D, and the smuggling of MDMA ("ecstasy") and
amphetamines must also be targets of our overall effort.
In order to address this last set of problems we must attack
the ability of traffickers = move material in bulk across the
Nation's mostly unsupervised land border and at the air, land and
sea Ports of Entry. This requires expanding enforcement efforts
by the Border Patrol, increased conveyance and container
inspections and, in the case of imported chemicals, by broad
international controls and cooperative monitoring and enforcement
programs with other countries (below).
Supporting Strategies
U.S. efforts against the principal foreign drug threats must
include global foreign policy initiatives, stringent efforts to
stop money laundering and control the shipment of chemical
precursors used to process illegal drugs, interdiction,
DRAFT
In other areas of foreign policy concern, certain countries
and regions present special opportunities, both =0 international
drug traffickers and to the U.S interest in destroying the
international drug trade. These include Western Europe, where
the consumer market, especially in cocaine and hercin. continues
= grow and which increasingly regards drugs as a direct and
immediate threat: the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, where
WITHIN a few years Asian heroin and other drugs have penetrated
deeply into the social fabric, causing major concern to their
ruling establishments -- and leading in June of this year to the
first Eastern Bloc antinarcotics conference, in Tashkent; and
other countries, where limited, focused cooperation may provide
the U.S. with high rewards in combatting drug traffickers and
drug trafficking organizations.
U.S. initiatives must be tailored to the specific situation.
With respect to Europe, for example, U.S. strategy will aim at
four principal objectives: first, assisting the European
Community to develop strong demand-reduction policies, strategies
and programs, with the goal of substantially undercutting the
European drug market, forcing down drug producer profits and
weakening the international trade; second, assisting the European
Community to strengthen its own supply-reduction mechanisms,
especially in the areas of enforcement programs and intelligence
and information exchange; third, engaging states of the European
Community in multilateral efforts with the United States to
control source country and transit country production, processing
DRAF™
needed; and law enforcement information exchange mechanisms WITH
foreign governments should be improved.
We should press for agreements with major drug-producing
countries to strengthen international Law enforcement
cooperation. Such agreements should include Mutual Legal
Assistance Treaties MLATS), to enable U.S. law enforcement
authorities to obtain evidence abroad :- a form admissible to
U.S. courts and to facilitate investigative and prosecutorial
assistance between the U.S. and Treaty partners; extradition
agreements; agreements to strengthen the conspiracy laws of other
countries; and strong assez seizure and financial targeting
measures. The MLATS that have been before the Senate for many
months need to be ratified.
We should also urge the participation of the developed
countries, including member states of the European Community,
Japan, Australia, and Canada, as well as other potential donors,
in the formation of a standing consultative group, to support
counternarcotics activities by drug producing countries.
While we must continue to work to assist countries in their
counternarcotics programs through existing international and
regional organizations -- including the United Nations -- our
support for these organizations must hold significant promise of
raising the international commitment to narcotics control. It
cannot substitute for the focus and influence afforded by
DRAFT
The threat of decertification can strain relations with
countries with which we have major foreign policy interests. If
properly used. however. :: can be an important tool in motivating
foreign governments to help attack the drug trade and the
organizations that control 10. In bilateral relationships with
illegal drug producing and transit countries, therefore. we must
emphasize the requirement for cooperation with our
counternarcotics efforts. and for effective independent actions
to suppress the drug trade. And we must be prepared to decertify
countries which willfully permit drug traffickers to continue
their operations within their national territory. To strengthen
the effectiveness of the certification process, we should also
seek to establish with each producing and transit country annual
and long-term performance goals.
A vigorous, coordinated public diplomacy program is also
essential if the United States intends to broaden support for its
international counterdrug objectives. The Nation's programs in
this area are overshadowed by the absence of importance given the
drug issue as a foreign policy concern: They remain
unconvincing. This situation 1S in urgent need of revision. A
broad, meaningful public diplomacy program must be developed and
articulated in a manner which will increase the level of
international intolerance for illicit drugs and motivate
international public and private sector actions to eliminate drug
production, trafficking, and consumption. It should help other
countries to reduce their demand for illicit drugs, and develop
DRAFT
measures are needed to stop the diversion of chemicals used in
the illicit manufacture of drugs within the United States. Both
of these strategies are supported by a legislative keystone, the
Chemical Diversion and Trafficking Act of 1988, which establishes
a system for identifying, menitoring. and controlling chemical
shipments which might be diverted into the illegal druc trade.
Finally. we must press for international cooperation agreements
which support strong chemical diversion controls -- such as the
U.N. Convention, mentioned above -- encourage the enactment of
foreign national laws similar to our own, and seek the
establishment of investigative and monitoring programs in other
countries in close cooperation with U.S. law enforcement
agencies.
Another critical area of concern 1S money laundering. The
magnitude of their drug-generated wealth gives foreign
traffickers the capability to penetrate -- and potentially
dominate -- both legitimate and illegitimate commercial markets,
corrupt U.S. and foreign officials, and destabilize foreign
governments. Defeating this problem needs priority attention at
the national level -- but the rewards to be gained by success in
this are potentially very large. In addition to our domestic
efforts -- which are discussed separately, we must bring other
nations' capabilities and resources into play to help identify,
trace, freeze, seize, and confiscate drug crime proceeds abroad.
We need to press for international cooperation agreements, such
as the United Nations Convention, which support strong measures
DRAFT
INTERDICTION RECOMMENDATIONS
Develop comprehensive agency-wide information-based approach
to air, maritime, land, and Port of Entry interdiction.
Upgrade intelligence support to interdiction,
through intensified interdiction-specific
investigations, undercover operations, etc.
Enhance ADP support to interdiction
-- Accelerate machine readable documentation
program; install document machine readers at
all POES;
-- Develop IBIS and other border ADP systems.
Create interagency/interdisciplinary teamss to analyze
and target smuggling modes, methods, routes,
etc.
Target high-value individuals and shipments
Review Rules of Engagement to raise risk to pilots.
Maintain and improve operations aimed at money couriers
and shipments.
Improve container inspections techniques and
intelligence.
Enhance border systems, operations, and activities
Dramatically reduce document fraud, especially
fraudulent use of U.S. birth certificates and
other "breeder documents";
Expand use of sniffer dogs, anti-vehicle
barriers, container inspections (with
DOD/National Guard resources);
Expand Border Patrol operations between POEs
at U.S.-Mexican land border;
Provide INS with automatic exclusion
authority; give INS/Border Patrol general
arrest authority;
DRAFT
CHAPTER / V
8/1
INTERDICTION
Intercepting illegal drug shipments and other resources is a
means of attacking the drug trade at home and abroad. Its
contribution to our overall anti-drug strategy depends upon how
effectively it can be directed to disrupt trafficking
organizations by attacking the transport of illegal drugs, other
chemicals and the money that fuels the drug trade. The most
direct means of improving the effectiveness interdiction efforts
is by expanding intelligence capabilities as addressed in another
chapter of this Strategy.
Drug interdiction can occur in any of three areas: foreign
interdiction, where activities by foreign governments, with or
without U.S. support, are aimed at stopping the flow of drugs
before they have been shipped out of the source country or while
they are being shipped through an intermediate transit country;
border and offshore interdiction, where activities in
international waters or airspace, or at the U.S. border, are
aimed at stopping the flow of illicit drugs to their U.S. markets
from their foreign sources of origin; and domestic interdiction,
where actions conducted by Federal, State, and local law
enforcement entities are directed at curtailing the trafficking
of drugs within the Nation's borders.
DRAFT
3
Smugglers and drugs can enter this country through many
avenues. Cocaine is transported to the U.S. by air and sea
through the Caribbean, by air and land across the Southwest
border with Mexico, and by sea in the Pacific. Forty-five
percent of the cocaine seized in 1988 was carried by private
aircraft, more than double the amount seized from private
vessels, the next most common conveyance. While the air corridor
from Colombia across the Caribbean and through the Bahamas into
the U.S. remains the single most favored route by air smugglers
of cocaine, transshipment through Mexico has become an equally
important smuggling route. Heroin is transported from Mexico
principally by land, and from Southeast and Southwest Asia and
some African countries by couriers flying by commercial air
services with the drug concealed on their body or in their
luggage; it is also sent through the international mail.
Increasing amounts are also being seized in airborne and seaborne
containers. Marijuana, drug precursor chemicals and other
dangerous drugs are principally brought into the country by
Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico routes; overland from Mexico; and in
the case of the latter, also by air carrier from Europe and East
Asia.
Interdiction aimed principally at the seizure of drugs
provides little impediment for smuggling organizations. Unless
the seizure rates are very high, the interdiction of drugs alone
merely adds slightly to the traffickers' cost of doing business.
DRAFT
5
Drug trafficking can be divided into three principal
sectors. At one end are the low-level carriers --
"mules"
in
the
demeaning terms of the trade -- who transport drugs on their
person or in their luggage. They perform menial tasks in the
smuggling chain, can easily be replaced, and are deliberately
kept in the dark about other elements of the smuggling
organization. What little information they possess is rarely of
value for furthering law enforcement purposes. Their
apprehension causes no damage or disruption to the trafficking
networks. At the other end of the spectrum are the major drug
traffickers -- the "kingpins" -- who head the organizations. The
latter are rarely at risk and can generally ensure their safety
where they live by political co-option, bribery, or intimidation.
Between these extremes are the key individuals who keep the
machinery of the organization running smoothly and who run
specialized operations. They may be pilots, money couriers, or
middle managers who perform functions critical to particular
smuggling activities. They often have broad knowledge of their
organizations' structure, membership and method of operation.
If we are to have an effective interdiction strategy, we
must be able to deter or immobilize the high-value individuals
who organize, help finance, or transport drugs, targeting first
high level personnel of major trafficking organizations who may
attempt to enter the U.S. The specialized operators such as
money couriers, who most often will be apprehended leaving the
DRAFT
7
Drug smuggling by sea differs from air smuggling in a number
of ways. The pilots of general aviation aircraft carrying
illegal drugs -- many of which fly circuitous routes off-airways
at low altitudes -- can be assumed to know the nature of their
cargoes. Few members of a ship's crew, however, including the
captain, may know of the shipment. Those who do are likely to be
no more than couriers, essentially ignorant of organization
structure, plans or operations. Their apprehension poses little
or no risk to the trafficking organizations, and the seizure of
drugs smuggled by vessel is likely to cause no more than minor
operational disruption, unless the shipment is very large.
Without prior intelligence about the nature and size of the
shipment, however, it is impossible to determine in advance what
its value may be. Our maritime interdiction strategy must
therefore continue to be to interdict vessels of all types
transporting illicit drugs towards the United States, by the
unilateral use of U.S. maritime assets and operations, or by the
use of joint maritime operations with source and transit
countries. This involves placing maritime detection and
apprehension assets in departure zones off drug source countries,
and in Caribbean "choke points"; and sorting maritime drug
smuggling vessels from legitimate maritime traffic en route to
the United States.
DRAFT
9
inspections, in cargo and container examinations, and in air
passenger processing. And we must put into place adequate
physical border controls, including barriers to prevent drug-
carrying vehicles from making high-speed runs into the country
across the Southwest border. Finally, we should expand the
operations of the Border Patrol between the Ports of Entry using,
as needed, Defense Department technical and intelligence support.
Special Problems and Opportunities: Document Fraud and Money
Couriers
Other, related areas of activity need close attention. The
ability of foreign nationals to enter the country using valid but
fraudulently acquired documentation continues to permit drug
traffickers the means to defeat any border control system. By
counterfeit, alteration, or imposture, aliens can acquire
"breeder documents," such as birth certificates. These documents
can then be used to obtain valid passports from the United States
or their own governments and ultimately, U.S. visas. Federal
agencies must work with State and local authorities to reduce the
potential for document fraud at all levels. Birth certificates
and delayed birth records, as well as passport fraud, need
particular attention. Federal agencies need to agree on
standard, minimum information required for birth certificates to
be acceptable for Federal purposes, and to the use of
DRAFT
11
discussed separately in this Strategy -- can provide important
support to Federal agency interdiction activities. In regard to
air interdiction, we must review the Rules of Engagement and
modify them in a manner which substantially raises the risk to
the drug smuggling pilot. We will complete the fixed and mobile
detection networks along our Southern border and in the Caribbean
as funds are available, and improve the effectiveness of our
national Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence
Centers, and the Defense Department's Detection, Monitoring and
Intelligence fusion centers. We will ensure that we make the
optimum use of interception/tracking and apprehension assets ---
principally fixed wing aircraft and helicopters -- to respond to
positively identified air target threats. We will give special
emphasis to establishing an international multi-industry effort
to counter the threat of container-borne drugs by developing and
implementing a container tracking system. We must ensure that
the operational security and operational deception procedures of
Federal law enforcement agencies are upgraded as funds are
available, and that an integrated and secure communications
network moves ahead as funding is available. Finally, the
buildup of drug trafficking through Mexico, equalling that
through the Caribbean and highlighted by growing indicators that
Colombian traffickers are taking control of the Mexican smuggling
networks, necessitates redirecting resources to the Southwest
border as an equal-status high-threat area. We intend to pursue
DRAFT
128
August 10, 1989*
CHAPTER VI
RESEARCH
America's drug epidemic is a complex and difficult problem
involving crime, public health, the economy, and, indeed, the
moral fabric of our Nation. In many areas we have much
information at our disposal to help us understand it and direct
policies and resources to attacking it. But our efforts to
combat that epidemic and to counter the supply of illegal drugs
more effectively require better policy coordination and priority
setting. We also need a more frequent and more flexible
information base in order to help us refine and target our
counterdrug efforts; we need to adapt and develop technology to
aid in law enforcement; and we need more medical research to
develop ways to treat and counteract the effects of illegal
drugs.
In some cases this requires additional resources; in others
it means revising priorities. In all cases it means having
effective policy oversight and coordination.
DRAFT
130
of certain subpopulations of users -- frequent users for example.
And the survey relies on self-reported drug use -- that is, what
a person will voluntarily report on a self-administered answer
sheet about his or her drug use. As society becomes less
tolerant of drug use, self-reporting may give a less reliable
picture of the extent to which people continue to use drugs.
In addition, the Federal government will work with States
and localities to develop suitable standardized reporting
procedures in order to assure that State and local concerns and
conditions are reflected in national survey instruments.
The Administration has committed to funding the National
Household Survey every two years. The Federal government will
also create a quick response capability to permit smaller,
narrowly targeted surveys of people and institutions that could
be undertaken several times a year. This would enable us to
focus on particular groups in the population -- "high risk"
youth, for example -- or on emerging drug trends. Streamlining
the Federal process for data collection can help reduce the lag
time between designing a research project and utilizing the data.
In the area of drug treatment, we need to continue and
enhance the National Drug and Alcoholism Treatment Unit Survey in
order to learn more about our current capacity (how many people
and what addictions we can treat with our present treatment
DRAFT
132
using drugs while others avoid them? Why are some people able,
on their own, to stop using drugs, while others continue until
their lives are ruined? Basic and clinical medical research can
offer us important insights to these questions.
Such research also offers hope that, as we develop and test
various treatment strategies for cocaine addiction, one
possibility is the development of new drugs to block the effects
of illegal drugs or reduce the craving for them (particularly
cocaine) as methadone substitutes for heroin and blocks its
effects in a controlled manner using a legally approved
substitute. Researchers are also exploring ways of chemically
preventing initial addiction. It is estimated that at the
current pace of our research effort, three or four years must
pass before we have developed effective new medical advances. We
must hasten that day by providing more support for that effort;
we can't wait the three or four years currently anticipated for
these breakthroughs. Providing training in scientific and
research skills is important in its own right, but a more
directed research assault on drugs is possible and necessary.
Technological Innovation
As our society benefits from technological advances, so too
do drug trafficking criminals. Government agencies are
constrained by cumbersome procurement practices and budget
DRAFT