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Let's Organize to Fight Drugs
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16792 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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9 / 1989 |
1,971 Words |
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Lynn Martin
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A car screeches to a stop on a back street in Washington. From inside comes the staccato of gunfire. A teenage drug runner lies in a spreading pool of his own blood.
On another day, another street, the body on the ground is not that of a dope dealer killed in a turf battle but a 16-year-old girl caught in the crossfire.
Their deaths are grim statistics contributing to the image of the nation's capital as our murder capital, their gravestones a terrible monument to an uncivil war we are losing on all fronts: the war on drugs.
But Washington, stunned by its unwanted reputation for drug crimes and violence, is not so terribly different from New York or Chicago. Nor is the problem confined to major metropolitan areas. The fight extends to nearly every village and hamlet. In fact, per capita drug abuse is higher in towns of 10,000 to 25,000 people than in our largest cities.
Drugs are devastating every corner of our society: our workplaces, schools, neighborhoods, even our homes. As members of Congress, my colleagues and I realize we must find more effective ways to combat this scourge.
It is obvious that we must destroy the root causes of drug use. If we eradicate the demand, pushers will be pushed out of business. We must eliminate the poverty-driven sense of hopelessness that creates a market among those for whom the American dream has been just a dream. We must give lie to the belief that dealing dope is an acceptable alternative to hard work and one of their few avenues to wealth and success.
But perfecting an imperfect world takes time. We cannot wait.
To win this war, we must not only attack poverty but must launch a simultaneous assault on the streets, where drug-related violence has become a way of life--and death.
The way we organize the legislative and executive branches of government to combat the drug problem is not, by itself, a solution. But organization can contribute a great deal to our efforts to fashion a comprehensive, sensible, effective set of solutions.
Congress recognized the need for cohesiveness at the executive level in the 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Act when it created the Office of National Drug Control Policy. We placed it in the executive office of the president and gave cabinet rank to its director, currently William J. Bennett. The chief mission of the new drug czar, as he has come to be called, is to coordinate and oversee the antidrug activities of more than 30 federal agencies, devise a national drug-control strategy, and develop a national drug-control program budget. That strategy is expected to be unveiled in early September.
What have we done in the legislative branch to better organize for the war against drugs? Sadly, almost nothing. According to a Congressional Research Service report, there are 53 House committees and subcommittees and 21 Senate committees and subcommittees that appear to have authorizing jurisdiction over one aspect or another of national drug-abuse policy. The total does
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