Dealing With Narcotics, Dealing Out the Poor : Slaying the Drug Dragon: First, Identify the Problem

In his first prime-time address to the nation Tuesday night, President George Bush outlined a strategy to deal with the middle-class problem of drug abuse. The catch is that drug abuse is becoming less and less a middle-class problem. It is becoming more and more a problem for the urban poor.

But the urban poor are not part of Bush’s constituency. The middle class is. “Turn on the evening news, or pick up the morning paper,” the President said, “and you’ll see what some Americans know just by stepping out their front door: Our most serious problem today is cocaine, and in particular, crack.” “You”--the American middle class--see it on TV. They--”some Americans”--experience it firsthand.

The middle-class problem isn’t drugs. It’s violence. The middle class wants security, low taxes and moral assurance. That’s what the President offered. The urban poor desperately need treatment, protection and hope. But we can’t afford too much of that.

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, who delivered the Democratic response, complained Bush’s plan was “not tough enough, bold enough or imaginative enough to meet the crisis at hand.” It is, however, just about right to meet the needs of his supporters.

Bush is a master of the politics of good intentions: We’d really like to help drug abusers. We’d also like to improve our educational system and clean up the environment and help Poland but, golly, you know, we just don’t have a lot of money. Bush gets credit for showing concern where Ronald Reagan was often oblivious: What education problem? What environmental crisis? God bless America! Heigh-ho!

First in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization crisis, then in the China crisis, the savings-and-loan crisis and now in the drug crisis, Bush’s policies have been reactive. He is an in-basket President. He doesn’t lead. He manages. Congress passed legislation requiring the President to name a “drug czar” and draft an anti-drug strategy. All Bush did was comply with a congressional initiative.

But Congress did not require the President to deliver a nationwide TV address. He did so, he said, because “all of us agree that the gravest domestic threat facing our nation is drugs.” According to the polls, the public now rates drugs as the most important issue. Bush’s speech was a reaction to those polls.

A President delivers a speech to rally the public behind a policy. What did Bush ask Americans to do? He asked us to “get involved” in the fight against drugs, just as Gerald R. Ford once asked us to wear WIN buttons. The problem is that, in U.S. cities, a thousand points of light means gunfire. And most Americans don’t want to get involved with that.

Specifically, Bush proposed spending almost $8 billion a year to combat drug abuse. That sounds like a lot. In fact, it is more than triple the amount spent on anti-drug programs just four years ago. But compare Bush’s $8 billion with a few other figures. Drug abuse now costs U.S. business about $60 billion a year. The federal government is spending $166 billion to bail out the nation’s S&Ls.; The cocaine trade alone is valued at $150 billion a year. As the special narcotics prosecutor for New York City put it, “A $150-billion-a-year dragon is not going to be slain by an $8-billion-a-year prince.”

“If folks are going to focus on the price tag, they are missing the boat,” said White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu. For Sununu, the most important thing is to “make sure the funds are well spent.” In his speech, Bush said what was needed was “coordinated, cooperative commitment.” What about cash? “Let’s face it,” Bush added, “we’ve all seen in the past that money alone won’t solve our toughest problems.” Yes, but you can’t solve them without money either.

Every President since Richard M. Nixon has waged a war on drugs. And drugs have won every time. Bush seems to be taking a big risk. What if his program doesn’t work?

Not to worry. The Administration has set extremely modest goals. It is committed to reducing the number of regular cocaine users by 5% a year over the next two years. But casual drug use has been declining sharply among the middle class. Federal surveys show cocaine use dropped by 48% between 1985 and 1988. In other words, the Administration aims to achieve less than we are already achieving without the anti-drug program.

Ford and Jimmy Carter declared war on inflation. They lost, and it destroyed their presidencies. Could drugs do the same thing to Bush?

Probably not. Inflation has a direct impact on every middle-class American. They experience it firsthand. Drug abuse threatens most middle-class people only indirectly. While people can’t control their own prices, they can control their own drug use. What they need government for is to control others’ drug use.

In the 1970s, as long as inflation was the nation’s No. 1 problem, nothing could displace it. People could see prices were out of control. But for most middle-class Americans, the drug problem is something they see on the news. All it takes to put the drug problem on the back burner is a shift in the national agenda.

The Reagan Administration’s war on drugs was a failure, but it didn’t seem to hurt Bush last year. Reagan’s anti-drug program--coordinated by Vice President Bush--aimed at cutting the supply of drugs through improved border interdiction. What we learned from that effort is that as long as there is a demand for drugs, there will be a supply.

So the Bush Administration is trying to do things differently. Reducing demand, rather than supply, is now top priority.

The debate is over how the Administration proposes to do this. It plans to spend about 70% of the funds for law enforcement and about 30% for treatment and prevention. Democrats claim that a 50-50 ratio would be more effective. They are rallying to the goal of “treatment on demand” for every drug addict.

A lot of middle-class people are bound to ask why their tax money should be used to treat other people’s problems--especially when those problems are a result of irresponsible behavior. The government should spend money on the social effects of drug abuse--crime and violence. The reason we are in a drug frenzy is that the crack epidemic has been accompanied by a wave of urban violence. Heroin was easier to deal with because it was controlled by organized crime. Crack is controlled by disorganized crime--youth gangs that fight gun battles over turf.

From the middle-class point of view, control of street crime, not treatment on demand, takes top priority. Drug Czar William J. Bennett argues that law enforcement reduces the demand for drugs. He has a point. Bush talked about Dooney Waters, a six-year old boy who lived in a crack house. Bennett said, “Think about Dooney and think about somebody saying, ‘What that child needs is good drug education.’ Dooney walks into a drug education class, he knows five times as much as any teacher who has been in a six-week seminar.” Bennett added, “That child does not need drug education. That child needs protection.”

The one thing we know about drug treatment is that a lot depends on the environment. The environment must be secure, but it must also be supportive. People with intact families, friends, jobs, skills and education have far greater success with drug treatment programs than people who go back to the streets. As a Yale University researcher put it, “If crack were a drug of the middle or upper classes, we would not be saying it is so impossible to treat.”

But no one is willing to invest the resources it would take to change the environment of the urban poor. The only thing we can do is try to control their behavior--through law enforcement. But this is a free country, and there are limits on how far we can go.

In his speech, Bush argued that attitude change can accomplish much. For the urban poor, however, it is not clear that attitudes control behavior. That is a peculiarly middle-class prejudice. In his speech, Bush effusively praised a businessman who will generate a million dollars worth of anti-drug advertising every day for the next three years. The problem is, people in desperate circumstances do not always respond to admonitions to “do the right thing.”

The Democrats are in something of a bind on the drug issue. They say Bush is declaring a war but not asking for any sacrifice. “Unless the President supports the tax increases that will be necessary to fight this war,” said House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.), “the drug dealers are going to win.”

Bush told the Democrats to stop “carping.” After all, they don’t have any money either. And they are not likely to initiate a tax increase. In the immortal words of Leona Helmsley: “Only the little people pay taxes.” And the Democrats claim to be the party of the little people.

Biden said Tuesday night, “What we need is another D-Day, not another Vietnam.” His analogy is not quite accurate. Americans were outraged by Vietnam because it took so many lives and cost so much money. Losing the drug war will not be so traumatic. Unlike Vietnam, this is a war the middle class is unwilling to pay for.