Word: antidrug
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When George Bush outlined his new antidrug strategy last week, he put the stress on bringing home the war on narcotics. Zeroing in on domestic drug consumption, the President's battle plan called for harsher penalties for users and stepped-up law enforcement. In Canton, Ohio, officials have already taken a step in that direction. Last month the city council passed a law making it a crime for anyone to be in any area, including the city's public parks, where drugs or drug paraphernalia are being sold. There was just one problem: people merely passing through a park where...
Though Bush added little that is new to the roster of antidrug strategies, some of the approaches he emphasized are likely to fuel further debate over whether constitutional guarantees will be a casualty of the war against drugs. A decade of stepped-up antidrug efforts has already left its mark on American law and life. Powerful state and federal forfeiture laws permit the confiscation before trial of virtually any kind of property remotely involved in or "intended for use" in drug transactions. Drug-sniffing dogs search hallways in Houston public schools. Public housing officials in some cities have evicted...
This permissive mind-set colors my instinctive response to current drug problems. The initial breathless media reports of the crack epidemic aroused all my journalistic skepticism, and I groused that the antidrug frenzy seemed like Reefer Madness revisited. On those infrequent occasions when friends and acquaintances still pass around a bootleg joint, my reaction remains benign tolerance. Just a few weeks ago, when marijuana made a furtive appearance at my wife's 20th high school reunion in upstate New York, I viewed this throwback gesture as a quaint affectation, almost as if the class of '69 had all shown...
...list, alas, is long. Begin with public officials who have exploited the issue for 20 years, advocating phony feel-good nostrums like the current fad for drug testing in the workplace, as if mid-level bureaucrats were society's prime offenders. Joining the politicians in the dock are those antidrug crusaders who have either squandered credibility with exaggerated scare talk or strained credulity with prissy pronouncements. The media are culpable as well, for sensationalized coverage that has often served to glamourize the menace they are decrying. Then there are the social-policy conservatives who purport to see no connection between...
Though the U.S. has a big stake in the battle in Colombia, it cannot do much besides send materiel and cheer for Barco. Washington's antidrug policy is moving away from interdiction of supply to cutting down demand at home. Bush's program will propose shifting funds to expanded drug-education and -treatment programs, and stiffer penalties for casual users. Such an emphasis on curtailing the U.S. appetite for cocaine and other drugs is fine by the Colombians. As President Barco told TIME, "Every time a North American youngster pays for his vice in the streets of New York, Miami...