D.C. Downers.

• Author: Lynch, Michael W.
• Position: Drug czar Barry McCaffrey

In which our man in Washington listens to the drug czar babble and learns why we can't afford tax cuts.

Subj: The general's will

Date: 12/19/2000

From: mwLynch@reason.com

Spent a morning last Tuesday at the Heritage Foundation, listening to the outgoing drug czar, Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey. Heritage billed the speech as, "Is Our Balanced Approach to the War on Drugs Working?" McCaffrey, who prefers assertions to questions, made the title declarative: "Our Balanced Strategy Against Drugs Is Working."

Let me admit a bias of my own: Long before I spent time in Santa Fe talking with New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson about how much fun, if arguably counterproductive, it is to get stoned, I felt the drug war's insistence on jailing people for sensory enhancement is a waste of human effort (see "America's Most Dangerous Politician," January). Still, I was surprised to find just what an idiot McCaffrey is in person.

Like drug dealers, McCaffrey targets America's youth. "The whole notion of prevention and education, aimed at getting American adolescents from the 6th grade through 12th grade, where they are reduced exposure to gateway drug taking behavior," he said in a moment of what passes for clarity. "That's the heart and soul of our national drug taking strategy."

As you can see, McCaffrey expresses his concern for youth via a strange bureaucratic speech pattern that exhibits a Bushian inability to form coherent sentences. Hence, 8th graders end up "encountering drugs in our society" and getting "wrapped up and end up in a statistically enhanced probability of being engaged in compulsive drug taking activities as young adults." Still, some of what he said reassured me. "You are statistically not going to get to age 30 and develop a cocaine habit, or start experimenting with heroin," said McCaffrey, which means I'm out of the most dangerous neck of the woods.

More worrisome was his larger world view, a perspective that is neither unique to McCaffrey nor likely to change with the new administration. The general's favorite refrain is "We're moving in the right direction," which I think he really believes. We're moving in that direction because after years of increases, drug consumption by youths appears to have leveled off. More important, to achieve this we are increasingly giving the state tremendous powers and resources. "We have billions of dollars flowing into these programs, McCaffrey said, adding without irony: "Some of them kind of creative."

It's...