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From The Washington Post
July 7, 1997
The cover of The Washington Post has a picture of a pig-devil looking
creature shoving pills, syringes and spoonfuls of cocaine into it's
mouth.
From up above the creature is a $100 dollar bill with wings which looks
like an airplane. The "airplane" is on fire and is headed down into the
creature's mouth.
The cover page has a title in large letters which says:
                          THE DRUG WAR
                        Hooked On Dollars
                                            
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The Washington Post National Weekly Edition
July 7, 1997
Volume 14, No.36
Page 6
                         THE LONGEST WAR
           The costs of battling drugs keeps going up,
                      but victories are rare
                         By Glenn Frankel
                   Washington Post Staff Writer
    In an era of fight money and shrinking ambitions,, one part of the
federal budget continues to flourish. Call it Drug War Inc. Fiftyseven
federal departments and agencies now have a piece of what has become
America's longest war. Its annual budget has climbed from about $1
billion when President Ronald Reagan declared the latest version of the
war on drugs 15 years ago to more than $16 billion today. The overall
federal, state and local effort has cost nearly $290 billion, according
to Drug Strategies, a nonpartisan policy group in Washington, D.C.
    But while the drug war has thrived in the corridors of the nation's
capital, it has proven far less successful on the streets of American
cities, law enforcement officials and policy analysts say.
    Fewer Americans are using cocaine and other illegal drugs than a
decade ago, and federal agents have dismantled some of the world's most
powerful drug networks. Drug-related crime in some cities is
significantly down. At the same time, however, cocaine and heroin are
cheaper, more plentiful and purer than ever before, according to Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA) estimates. Worldwide production of the
two drugs has more than doubled, as has the number of drug-producing
countries. What's more, annual cocaine consumption remains unchanged,
suggesting that the number of heavy users is still growing, according to
a 1994 Rand Corp. study. The eradication of foreign-grown marijuana has
led inadvertently to a boom in domestic production. That in turn has
helped fuel a dramatic increase in teenage drug abuse, which has more
than doubled since 1990.
    "The drug war is the number one growth industry in federal funding,
but we've spent most of the money on a policy that basically doesn't
work," says Mathea Falco, former assistant secretary of State for
international narcotics matters in the Carter administration and now
president of Drug Strategies.
    Some agencies - the FBI and the Defense Department, for example -
were dragged into the drug war reluctantly by presidents who sought to
mobilize their firepower and reputation. Others, such as the Customs
Service during the 1980s, were enthusiastic volunteers that invoked the
war to justify their expanding budgets. And toward the end of the Cold
War, agencies such as the CIA and the State Department joined the fray,
searching for new missions.
    This proliferation has produced some notable successes. But it also
has produced monumental turf battles, duplication and waste. Each law
enforcement agency has established its own drug intelligence center and
database, much of which is off-limits to other agencies. Agencies as
diverse as the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and
the National Guard have all claimed an enforcement role in the war on
drugs.
    WHILE REPUBLICANS AND DEMOCRATS STILL compete to be the toughest
anti-drug warriors, funding has risen steadily during the past four
administrations and federal policy has remained fairly consistent.
    Roughly two-thirds of the drug budget, or $10.5 billion, has been
devoted to trying to reduce the supply through law enforcement,
interdiction and programs to eliminate production abroad. What's left
has gone for treatment and prevention. This remains the case despite a
growing consensus that treating cocaine users is a more cost-effective
way to reduce consumption than are law enforcement efforts to curtail
supply.
    The establishment in 1989 of the Office of National Drug Control
Policy has added yet another dimension to the politics and turf battles.
William J. Bennett, the first national drug policy director, left the
job after less than two years, and his ambitious goals - 50 percent
reductions in both the amounts of cocaine, heroin and marijuana entering
the United States and in adolescent drug use by the year 2000 - have
long ago fallen by the wayside.
    President Clinton appointed the current drug czar, retired Gen.
Barry R. McCaffrey, at the start of the 1996 election campaign. A
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