Drug czar in search of a throne - William J. Bennett

Nearly everyone agrees our nation has a drug problem; the question is what to do about it.

Decriminalization? More education? Capital punishment for pusher ta. The new drug czar has the simplest most difficult solution.

HERE ON THE TOP FLOOR of an unassuming office block at 1825 Connecticut Avenue, America's new drug czar has set up shop. By the standards of imperial Washington it is hardly a throne: standard Government Services Administration-issue furniture, a few simple photos of his family, and today, in celebration of his just-born second son, Joseph, someone has tied a balloon to his chair. Sharing shelf space with the collected papers of everyone from Madison to Cardinal Newman are autographed footballs from the Kansas City Chiefs and Denver Broncos.

Welcome to the command center for the White House's declared war on drugs. In the hot seat is William John Bennett, the controversial Reagan Administration Secretary of Education, who was confirmed as the Bush Administration's director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy in March. A beefy former college lineman who long ago traded in his cleats for a doctorate in philosophy and a Harvard law degree, the 45-year-old Mr. Bennett is no less imposing in pinstripes. He needs to be. At a time when teenage dope dealers walk around with beepers and suppliers often have more firepower than the police, even well-wishers worry that the drug czar has been sent into battle with no arsenal. Before Mr. Bennett can launch his attacks on the streets he faces enormous bureaucratic hurdles. In addition to the squabbling between law-enforcement agencies and the executive branch that appointed him, the new czar is faced with 53 House committees and subcommittees and 21 Senate panels all cutting into his domain.

The difficulty is that beneath the almost universally shared conviction that America has a serious drug problem, there is no consensus about how to attack it. From some quarters comes the traditional cry for more spending on education. Law-and-order types point to the virtual impunity with which pushers as well as users operate. Libertarians make a case for legalization as a means of control. Mr. Bennett's willingness to consider any program that has demonstrated some success has only fanned the flames of this debate; today, for example, the front pages here are filled with his talk about "boot camps" for young drug offenders.

Although he will not be delivering his policy manifesto until September, Mr. Bennett is making it clear that his own priority is fundamental: the restoration of authority. Between now and the end of June the director will be making a number of speeches setting forth his principles on various aspects of drug policy, but the overriding emphasis on the restoration of the authority of parents, the communities, and, yes, the government was spelt out in a keynote address on May 3 to the Washington Hebrew Congregation. It is a particularly conservative message, in that the director is saying that however crucial his own role may be it is nonetheless a supplementary one.

"The most important part of this is not governmental," says Mr. Bennett, sitting before a basket of sugarless lollipops there to help him fight off the cigarette habit. "The most important part is the volunteer army of good people -parents, priests, rabbis, teachers, older siblings.

"It's more likely they can win the war without us than we can win it without them."

TO A NUMBER OF PEOPLE it might appear most likely of all that no one will win it. Although new studies are about to appear showing certain categories of drug use down, the advent of crack-a cocaine derivative that goes for about $5 a "rock"-has dramatically expanded the drug market by bringing the price within the reach of even the poorest American. The social costs are tremendous. The Research Triangle Institute estimated that these costs amounted to $59.7 billion in 1983, about a third of which was crime related. The arrival of crack has doubtless pushed this figure even higher, increasing violence and giving support to the argument that the best approach is to reduce the risk to innocent bystanders through decriminalization for adults.

"There are consequences of legalization that don't make me happy," says Doug Bandow, senior fellow at the Cato Institute and author of Beyond Good Intentions: A Biblical View of Politics. "On the other hand, I think the war on drugs has been lost. The Reagan Administration spent $20 billion on drug enforcement and cocaine supplies doubled. That should tell you something." Mr. Bandow argues that the current set-up has the effect of pulling kids into criminal circles early on.

But Mr. Bennett isn't buying. The ascendancy of crack, he says, has given the "knock-down" punch to legalization by altering the entire drug landscape. Dr. Mark Gold, director of research at Fair Oaks Hospital and founder of the National Cocaine Helpline (800-COCAINE), agrees. "Cocaine changed everything dramatically and crack changed cocaine," he says. "What crack has done is introduce a dose that previously was taken only by intravenous drug users." In contrast to drugs such as heroin, moreover, cocaine makes people irritable and violenceprone. With somewhere between 30 per cent and 50 per cent of inner-city babies born under the influence of drugs, adds Dr. Gold, even were cocaine eliminated today we would still have a "whole lifetime of consequences ahead of us."