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Through the Past Darkly: The Politics and Policies of America's Drug War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2011

John C. McWilliams
John C. McWilliams
Affiliation:
The Pennsylvania State University—DuBois Campus
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Drug wars. Few topics generate more ccontroversy or provoke more debate. Few topics conjure up more futile and dismal images among the American population. Few topics are more synonymous with defeat. Never has our government been mired in a conflict so enduring or fought against an enemy so utterly impossible to conquer. For seventy-five years—nearly four times longer than both World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam combined—the federal government has been waging an endless war against seemingly impossible odds.

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Articles
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Journal of Policy History , Volume 3 , Issue 4: Drug Control Policy. Essays in Historical and Comparative Perspective , October 1991 , pp. 5 - 41
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Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 0000

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References

Notes

1. The term “drugs” includes not only the illicit drugs marijuana, cocaine, and heroin but also alcohol and tobacco, legal drugs that are even more abused and are responsible for forty times the number of cocaine and heroin deaths combined. Political cartoonist Tony Auth illustrated how alcohol causes approximately 90,000 deaths per year; tobacco 390,000, cocaine 8,000, and heroin 6,000. There are few reports of marijuana-related fatalities. About 57 tobacco-related deaths occur every 79 minutes each year, more than the number of American lives lost during World War II. Auth cartoon, 4 May 1990; Marsha Rosenbaum, “Just Say What? An Alternative View on Solving America's Drug Problem,” National Council on Crime and Delinquency, June 1990, 5–6; Matthew Purdy, “The Other Drug-Use Problem,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 17 December 1989; and Barbara Ehrenreich, “Drug Frenzy,” Ms., November 1988, 20.

Not only do alcohol and tobacco cause more deaths than cocaine, heroin, or marijuana, they are also the most highly addictive. In a survey ranking addiction on a scale of 1 to 100, with the latter being the most addictive, a panel of medical experts rated nicotine at 100 and alcohol at 80. Heroin was rated at 79, cocaine 70, and marijuana 20. Franklin, Deborah, “Hooked: Why Isn't Everyone an Addict?” In Health, November-December 1990, 39–52.Google Scholar

2. Eisenach, Jeffrey A., “How to Win the War on Drugs: Forget the User,” USA Today, January 1989, 46–48Google Scholar; and Lang, John S., “America on Drugs,” U.S. News & World Report, 28 July 1986, 48Google Scholar.

3. Reese, Thomas, “Drugs and Crime,” America, 11 June 1983, 458;Google Scholar and Mills, James interview, U.S. News & World Report, 25 August 1986, 19.Google Scholar For statistics on drug-related crimes, see “Profile of State Prison Inmates, 1986”; and “Drug Law Violators, 1980–86,” in Bureau of justice Statistics Special Report (Washington, D.C., 1988);Google Scholar and Nadelmann, Ethan, “U.S. Drug Policy: A Bad Export,” Foreign Policy, no. 0 (Spring 1988): 99.Google Scholar

4. Fazlollah, Mark, “2 Latin Nations Stymie Drug War,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 19 December 1990;Google Scholar Editorial, Philadelphia Inquirer, 28 December 1990;Google Scholar and Morales, Edmundo, Cocaine: White Gold Rush (Tucson, 1989).Google Scholar

5. Contreras, Joseph, “Anarchy in Colombia,” Time, 11 September 1989, 30–32Google Scholar.

6. Buckley, William F., “Enlisting Military to Fight Drugs,” syndicated column, 19 May 1988.Google Scholar

7. Even in North Dakota, border patrol agents have reported the increased smuggling of illegal drugs arms and European immigrants who pay from $1,500 to $5,000 to get into the United States by way of Montreal and Winnipeg, Canada. McCormick, John, “We Can't Catch What's Coming,” Newsweek, 20 August 1990, 45.Google Scholar

8. Cited in Blachman, Morris J. and Sharpe, Kenneth E., “The War on Drugs: American Democracy Under Assault,” World Policy Journal 7 (Spring 1990): 138.Google Scholar

9. Ibid.

10. “Bennett to ‘Shake Things Up’ If Confirmed,” Centre Daily Times, State College, Pa., 2 March 1989; and Hanson, Merrill, “Bush Starts Anti-Drug Drive,” Associated Press, Centre Daily Times, 3 March 1989.Google Scholar

11. National Drug Control Strategy, September 1989 (Washington, D.C., 1989), 9.Google Scholar See Omnibus Drug Initiative Act of 1988, H.R. 5210, 21 October 1988, Congressional Record, 100th Cong., 2d sess., 134:11108–271.

12. Brecher, Edward M., Licit and Illicit Drugs (Boston, 1972), 3Google Scholar, 403; and Musto, David F., The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control (New York, 1973), 1–8Google Scholar. For a more comprehensive account of drug use in the nineteenth century, see Morgan, H. Wayne, Drugs in America: A Social History, 1800–1980 (Syracuse, 1981), 1–87.Google Scholar

13. Brecher, Licit and Illicit Drugs, 3. Probably the most abused drug in nineteenthcentury America was not an opiate like morphine or cocaine but alcohol. See, for example, Rorabaugh, William J., The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition (New York, 1979);Google Scholar and Tyrell, Ian R., Sobering Up: From Temperance to Prohibition in Antebellum America, 1800–1860 (Westport, Conn., 1979).Google Scholar

14. Inciardi, James A., The War on Drugs: Heroin Cocaine, Crime, and Public Policy (Palo Alto, Calif., 1986), 6.Google Scholar Additional needles could be purchased for 250 each or $2.75 for a dozen.

15. Brecher, Licit and Illicit Drugs, 270; Inciardi, The War on Drugs, 7–8; and Musto, The American Disease, 3.

16. Morgan, Drugs in America, 88–93; and Inciardi, The War on Drugs, 16.

17. Morgan, Drugs in America, 106; Courtwright, David T., Dark Paradise: Opiate Addiction in America Before 1940 (Cambridge, Mass., 1982), 103–4;Google Scholar and Musto, David F., “The History of Legislative Control Over Opium, Cocaine, and Their Derivatives,” in Hamowy, Ronald, ed., Dealing With Drugs: Consequences of Government Control (San Francisco, 1987), 54.Google Scholar

18. Kagan, Daniel, “How America Lost Its First Drug War,” Insight, 20 November 1989, 13;Google Scholar Courtwright, Dark Paradise, 103–4; and Musto, The American Disease, 54–56.

19. Musto, “American Legislative Control,” 55.

20. King, Rufus, “‘The American System3: Legal Sanctions to Repress Drug Abuse,” 2 1 - 22, in Inciardi, James A., Drugs and the Criminal Justice System (Beverly Hills, 1974);Google Scholar and Morgan, Drugs in America, 109.

21. “Message from the President of the United States,” Congressional Record, 13 January 1914, 63d Cong., 2d sess., 50:1559. Unfortunately, because he antagonized Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, Dr. Wright's influence began to wane. It was an incredible irony that Wright was dismissed from the State Department when, at Bryan's insistence, Wright refused to take a pledge of abstinence when the secretary smelled liquor on his breath during the Third Hague Conference. Musto, The American Disease, 61.

22. Morgan, Drugs in America, 108; and Abel, Ernest, Marihuana: The First Twelve ThousandYears (New York, 1980), 196.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23. Officially, the Harrison Act was “to provide for the registration of, with collectors of internal revenue, and to impose a special tax upon all persons who produce, import, manufacture, compound, deal in, dispense, sell, distribute, or give away opium or coca leaves, their salts, derivatives, or preparations, and for other purposes.” Brecher, Licit and Illicit Drugs, 49; and Representative Francis B. Harrison introducing H.R. 6282, 23 June 1913, Congressional Record, 63d Cong., 1st sess., 50:2143–44. Abel also points out that the Harrison Act was not intended to eradicate narcotics but was “merely a save-face piece of legislation … passed to honor American pledges given at The Hague convention,” and that “it was never meant to stand in the way of any addict who wanted to continue using drugs.” Marihuana: The First Twelve Thousand Years (New York, 1980), 196–99.Google Scholar

24. Courtwright, Dark Paradise, 106; King, The Drug Hang-Up, Brecher, Licit and Illicit Drugs, 49–55; Inciardi, War on Drugs, 21; and King, , “The Narcotics Bureau and the Harrison Act: Jailing the Healers and the Sick,” Yale Law Journal 62 (April 1953): 736–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25. In the first case involving a Harrison violation, United States v. Jin Fuey Moy, 241 U.S. 394 (1916), the Supreme Court wrote in a 7–2 decision that the defendant, who prescribed morphine for an addict, could not be criminally prosecuted under a revenue act. In three subsequent cases, United States v. Doremus, 249 U.S. 86 (1919), Webb v. United States, 249 U.S. 96 (1919), and United States v. Behrman, 258 U.S. 280 (1920), the Court reversed the Jin Fuey Moy ruling and permitted stricter enforcement. See Morgan, Drugs in America, 110–11; Courtwright, Dark Paradise, 106–7; Musto The American Disease, 121- 35; and King, “The Narcotics Bureau and the Harrison Act,” 113–31.

For a physician's firsthand recollections of the impact the Harrison Act had on ambulatory treatment and maintenance programs, see an interview with Dr. Willis Butler of Shreveport, Louisiana, who operated an addiction treatment from 1919 until he was forced to close in 1925, in David Courtwright, Herman Joseph, and Don Des Jarlais, Addicts Who Survived: An Oral History of Narcotic Use in America, 1923–1965 (Knoxville, Term., 1989), 279–89.Google Scholar

26. Both the Treasury Department report and Courtwright's assessment of the addict population are discussed in Kagan's “How America Lost Its First Drug War,” 14.

27. This legislation is also known as the Jones-Miller Act. See James A. Inciardi, The War on Drugs, 17. The Jones-Miller Act also established the Federal Narcotics Board, composed of the Secretaries of State, Treasury, and Commerce. Musto, The American Disease, 197.

28. Cited in Brecher, Licit and Illicit Drugs, 50.

29. Editorial, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 17 December 1934, in the Harry J. Anslinger Papers, Box 5, Scrapbook 4-B, 1934–39. The Anslinger collection is held by the Labor Archives and Historical Collections Department of Pattee Library at The Pennsylvania State University, University Park. Hereafter referred to as HJAP.

30. Musto, The American Disease, 183–84.

31. Musto, The American Disease, 189; U.S. Congress, House, Establishment of Two Federal Narcotics Farms, Hearings before the Committee on the Judiciary on H.R. 12781, 70th Cong., 1st sess, 26–28 April 1928, 12; King, “The Narcotics Bureau and the Harrison Act,” 736; and McWilliams, John C., The Protectors: Harry J. Anslinger and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (Newark, Del., 1990), 35.Google Scholar

32. Cited in Musto, The American Disease, 195–96.

33. A Grand Jury investigation revealed that Nutt's son-in-law was doing some accounting work for Arnold Rothstein, a powerful gangster who was involved in narcotics, prostitution, and bootlegging in the 1920s. Musto, The American Disease, 208–9; McWilliams, The Protectors, 39–42; and Bonnie, Richard J. and Whitebread, Charles H. II, The Marihuana Conviction: A History of Marihuana Prohibition in the United States (Charlottesville, Va., 1974), 66.Google Scholar

34. McWilliams, The Protectors, 28–33.

35. Morgan, Drugs in America, 119–22.

36. Several scholars and journalists have evaluated Anslinger's role as Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. See Morgan, Drugs in America, 118–48; Musto, The American Disease, 206–28; King, The Drug Hang-up, 78–228; Bonnie and Whitebread, The Marihuana Conviction, 53–221; and Sloman, Larry, Reefer Madness: Marijuana in America (New York, 1979).Google Scholar

37. McWilliams, The Protectors, 87–88.

38. Fossier, A. E., “The Marihuana Menace,” New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal 84 (May 1931): 247–52;Google Scholar and Stanley, Eugene, “Marihuana as a Developer of Criminals,” American Journal of Police Science 2 (May—June 1931): 256.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The government's response to the marijuana situation in the early 1930s is discussed in Bonnie and Whitebread, The Marihuana Conviction, 55–77; Himmelstein, The Strange Career of Marihuana, 49–71; Morgan, Drugs in America, 118–32. For the connection between Mexicans and marijuana, see Helmer, John, Drugs and Minority Oppression (New York, 1975), 54–79.Google Scholar

39. McWilliams, The Protectors, 49.

40. Himmelstein, The Strange Career of Marihuana, 54–57; Bonnie and Whitebread, The Marihuana Conviction, 79–91.

41. U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Appropriations, Treasury Department Appropriations Bill for 1938. Hearings before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Appropriations, 75th Cong., 1st sess., 19 December 1936, 184.

42. Anslinger, Harry J. and Cooper, Courtney Riley, “Marihuana: Assassin of Youth,” American Magazine, July 1937, 18–19, 150–53.Google Scholar

43. Taylor, Wooster, “Economy Cut Ties Hands of ‘Dope’ Agents,” Washington Herald, 7 November 1933Google Scholar, Box 1, File, “Articles on Narcotics 1930–1937,” HJAP.

44. Representative Robert L. Doughton introducing H.R. 6385, 14 April 1937, CongressionalRecord, 75th Cong., 1st sess., 81:6.

45. U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Ways and Means, Taxation of Marihuana, Hearings, on H.R. 6385, 75th Cong., 1st sess., 27–30 April and 4 May 1937, 20.

46. For the floor discussion in the House of Representatives on the Marihuana Tax Act, see Occupational Excise Tax on Marihuana, H.R. 6906, 10 June 1937, Congressional Record, 75th Cong., 1st sess., 81:5575.

47. Walker, William O. III, Drug Contral in the Americas (Albuquerque, 1981), 106Google Scholar; Sloman, Reefer Madness, 75–79; and Bonnie and Whitebread, The Marihuana Conviction, 164–72.

48. Sloman, Reefer Madness, 61–63. Anslinger's gore stories are in Box 9, File, “Marihuana and Crime (1930–1937),” HJAP.

49. Licata suffered from dementia praecox for at least a year prior to murdering his family. Institutionalized at the Florida State Mental Hospital, he hanged himself on 4 December 1950. See Kaplan, John, Marijuana.- The New Prohibition (New York, 1970), 94–97.Google Scholar

50. “Federal Control,” 21, statement, Box 3, File 9, HJAP.

51. “Marihuana: New Federal Tax Hits Dealings in Potent Weed,” Newsweek, 14 August 1937, 22–23; and “Signs Bill to Curb Marijuana,” New York Times, 3 August 1937. For an interpretative study of the marihuana legislation, see Galliher, John F. and Walker, Allyn, “The Puzzle of the Social Origins of the Marihuana Act of 193 7,” Journal of Social Problems 24 (February 1977): 367–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

52. There was at least one notable exception. Congressman John M. Coffee (D-WA) was highly critical of enforcement of the Harrison Act and of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, calling it “the costliest bureau or government department in the world.” In April 1938 Coffee introduced an unsuccessful House Joint Resolution 642 to investigate the FBN. McWilliams, The Protectors, 92–95; and King, The Drug Hang-up, 59–68.

53. Musto, The American Disease, 231. In the 1950s Anslinger was nearly as fervent an anticommunist as his counterpart, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. The commissioner made repeated charges privately and publicly that the Communists were planning to invade the United States with a “Fifth Column” of heroin addiction. See “Soviet Retorts on Heroin,” 3 May 1952, and “Anslinger Replies to Zakusov Charges,” 6 May 1952, both in the New York Times; Anslinger's testimony in U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, Communist China and Illicit Narcotic Traffic, Hearings, before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws, 84th Cong., 1st sess., 8 March-13 May 1955, 14–17; and Letter from H. J. Anslinger to William T. McCarthy, 6 December 1956, Box 3, File “Correspondence William T. Mc-Carthy, 1937–1963,” HJAP.

Anslinger was also the only federal law enforcement official at the time who supported the theory of a Mafia. During the Kefauver Committee hearings in 1950–51, several FBN agents throughout the country testified about Mafia organization and activities. Two FBN senior agents, Charles Siragusa and George H. White, were committee investigators. See Kefauver, Estes, Crime in America (Garden City, N.Y., 1951), 1–34;Google Scholar and McWilliams, The Protectors, 140–41.

54. Bonnie and Whitebread, The Marihuana Conviction, 209.

55. Sloman, Reefer Madness, 187–88; and the Congressional Record, 1951–56.

56. For studies of Anslinger mixing drug enforcement with communism, the Mafia, and foreign policy in general, see Kinder, Douglas Clark, “Bureaucratic Cold Warrior: Harry J. Anslinger and Illicit Narcotics Traffic,” Pacific Historical Review 50 (May 1981): 169–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kinder, and Walker, William O. III, “Stable Force in a Storm: Harry J. Anslinger and the United States Narcotic Foreign Policy, 1930–1962,” Journal of American History 72 (March 1986): 908–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jonathan Marshall, “Drugs and United States Foreign Policy,” 137–79, in Hamowy, Dealing With Drugs; Moore, William Howard, The Kefauver Committee and the Politics of Crime (Columbia, Mo., 1974)Google Scholar; and Block, Alan A. and McWilliams, John C., “On the Origins of Counterintelligence: Building a Clandestine Network,” journal of Policy History 1, no. 4 (1989): 353–72;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Fox, Stephen, Blood and Power: Organized Crime in Twentieth-Century America (New York, 1989), 139–46.Google Scholar

57. Congressman Hale Boggs introducing H.R. 3490, 3 April 1951, Congressional Record, 82d Cong., lstsess., 97:3306.

58. Bonnie and Whitebread, The Marihuana Conviction, 210.

59. Ibid., 210–11.

60. Ibid., 217.

61. U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, Illicit Narcotics Traffic, Hearings, before the Subcommittee on Improvements in the Federal Criminal Code of the Committee of the Judiciary, on S. Res. 67, 84th Cong., 1st sess., Part I, 2 June-15 December 1955, 18.

62. Bonnie and Whitebread, The Marihuana Conviction, 217–19; and King, The Drug Hang-up, 142–50.

63. For a discussion of how drug policy relates to drug users and culture, see Joseph R. Gusfield, “The (F)Utility of Knowledge?: The Relation of Social Science to Public Policy toward Drugs,” American Academy of Political and Social Science 417 (January 1975): 1–15.

64. Musto, The American Disease, 254. The number of arrests for marijuana possession increased from 18,000 in 1965 to 188,000 in 1970. LSD, or d-lysergic acid diethylamide, was accidentally discovered in April 1943 by Dr. Albert Hofmann in Basel, Switzerland. Marks, John, The CIA and Mind Control: The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate” (New York, 1980), 3–5.Google Scholar For a more comprehensive account of the discovery and experimentation of LSD, see Brecher, Licit and Illicit Drugs, 346–93.

65. Epstein, Edward Jay, “The Incredible War Against the Poppies,” Esquire, December 1974, 148.Google Scholar

66. In 1968 the Federal Bureau of Narcotics was reorganized as the Bureau of Narcotics and Other Dangerous Drugs and transferred from the Treasury Department to the Department of Justice.

67. “The No-Knock Drug Bill,” Time, 9 February 1970, 11;Google Scholar“Moving Forward: Drug Abuse Bill,” U.S. News & World Report, 9 February 1970, 4;Google Scholar“Narcotics: New Look,” Newsweek, 9 February 1970, 24;Google Scholar and Buckley, William F., Jr., “No Knock?” National Review, 24 February 1970, 220Google Scholar. Though the bill contained tough enforcement measures, it also reduced the penalty for marijuana possession from a felony to a misdemeanor.

68. Inverview with John E. Ingersoll, U. S. News & World Report, 25 May 1970, 38; and Epstein, Edward Jay, Agency of Fear: Opiates and Political Power in America (New York, 1977), 165–72.Google Scholar

69. King, The Drug Hang-up, 331.

70. Musto, The American Disease, 255–56.

71. “Drive to Curb Hard Drugs Gets A No. 1 Priority,” U.S. News & World Report, 3 April 1972, 36;Google Scholar Epstein, “The Incredible War Against the Poppies,” 148; Gross, Nelson, “The Collective International Effort Against Drug Abuse, Department of State Bulletin, 9 October 1972, 407–8Google Scholar; King, The Drug Hang-up, 338–39; and Musto, The American Disease, 256–57. The best account of drug production and exportation in the Golden Triangle is McCoy, Alfred W., The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade (Brooklyn, NY, 1991)Google Scholar

72. Epstein, Agency of Fear, 173. The Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention, created by Executive Order on 17 June 1971, consolidated thirteen government agencies and was to operate only for a period of three years, to be extended for two years at presidential discretion. “President Calls for Comprehensive Drug Control Program,” Department of State Bulletin, 12 July 1971, 59–60Google Scholar; “Drive to Curb Hard Drugs Gets A No. 1 Priority,” U.S. News & World Report, 3 April 1972, 36; and Myles Ambrose, “The War Against Drugs: Can It Be Won?” Vital Speeches of the Day, 1 October 1972, 738–40.

73. Kruger, Henrik, The Great Heroin Coup: Drugs, Intelligence, and International Fascism (Boston, 1980), 159, 171.Google Scholar

74. Ibid., 159–60; and McCoy, The Politics of Heroin 249–51. Colorful and outspoken Lucien Conein began his career in intelligence with the Office of Strategic Services during World War II and continued with the Central Intelligence Agency until he retired in 1968. Most of that time he was stationed in Indochina, where he worked closely with General Edward Lansdale and was acquainted with all the Vietnamese generals. In the early 1970s Conein was doing intelligence work for the BNDD and its successor agency, the Drug Enforcement Administration, when E. Howard Hunt brought him into the White House. Although it is difficult to know exactly what Conein's role was in the Nixon war on drugs, some of his activities required the approval of Henry Kissinger's 40 Committee. Author's interview with Lucien Conein, 10 May 1990; George Crile, “The Colonel's Secret Drug War,” Washington Post, 13 June 1976; and Taylor Branch, “Raising a Glass to ‘Beau Geste,’ ” Esquire, August 1976, 30–34.

75. Epstein, Agency of Fear, 18–20, 208–15; Kruger, The Great Heroin Coup, 162–63.

76. Kruger, The Great Heroin Coup, 161; and Epstein, Agency of Fear, 218–19.

77. Epstein, Agency of Fear, 143–44.

78. Reorganization Plan Number Two dismantled the five-year-old BNDD in 1973 and restructured it as the Drug Enforcement Administration as it still exists in 1990. Ibid., 230.

79. The DEA's Special Operations Group also had connections with Mitch WerBell, a soldier of fortune and specialist in assassinations. WerBell was an old war buddy of Hunt and Conein from OSS days. Two of WerBell's associates included Frank Sturgis, one of the Watergate Plumbers, and Robert Vesco, financier and drug trafficker. Interview with Lucien Conein, Kruger, The Great Heroin Coup, 164; Crile, “The Colonel's Secret Drug War.” For a more detailed account of Conein's intricate DEA/SOG plot, see Jim Hougan, Spooks: The Haunting of America—The Private Use of Secret Agents (New York, 1978), 138–51.Google Scholar

80. Peter Dale Scott, cited in Kruger, The Great Heroin Coup, 163.

81. Cited in Musto, The American Disease, 263–64.

82. Musto, The American Disease, 266.

83. Anslinger died in November 1975, in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania.

84. “Can Crack Addicts Be Treated? Yes, but …,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 19 November 1989Google Scholar; and Kleber, Herbert K., “No Quick Fixes for Drug Addicts,” New York Times, 26 January 1990.Google Scholar

85. Antidrug legislation was included in the Comprehensive Control Act of 1984.

86. Duffy, Brian, “Drugs Now Prime Time,” U. S. News & World Report, 11 August 1986, 16.Google Scholar

87. “Omnibus Drug Legislation,” Congressional Digest, November 1986, 259Google Scholar, 263, 288. The Senate passed its version of the Omnibus Drug bill, 97–92, but removed the deathpenalty provision, preferring a mandatory life sentence without parole for drug-related murder cases.

88. Greenhouse, Linda, “Compromise Plan for Anti-Drug Bill,” 17 October 1986;Google Scholar Greenhouse, “Congress Approves Anti-Drug Bill as Senate Bars a Death Provision, 18 October 1986; Joel Brinkley, “Anti-Drug Law: Words, Deeds, Political Expediency, 27 October 1986; and Gerald M. Boyd, “Reagan Signs Anti-Drug Measure: Hopes for ‘Drug-Free Generation,’ “ 28 October 1986, all in New York Times.

89. Morgenthau, Tom, “Drug Fever in Washington,” Newsweek, 22 September 1986, 39Google Scholar. “High on Hot Air,” 6 October 1986, 7; “Lining Up to Join the War Against Drugs,” 22 September 1986, 6;Google Scholar and Brian Duffy, “War on Drugs: More Than a ‘Short-term High,’ “ 29 September 1986, 28–29, all in U.S. News & World Report.

90. Greenhouse, “Congress Approves Anti-Drug Bill as Senate Bars a Death Provision.”

91. Greenhouse, “Compromise Plan for Anti-Drug Bill”; and Brinkley, “Anti-Drug Law.”

92. Ruffin, Paul, “Critics Say No to Reagan's Policy,” Black Enterprise, August 1988, 29;Google Scholar and Mohr, Charles, “Drug Bill Passes, Finishing Business of 100th Congress,” New York Times, 23 October 1988. For a complete account of the House and Senate votes and the major provisions, see “In Its Last Act, Congress Clears Anti-Drug Bill,” Congressional Quarterly, 29 October 1988, 3145–51.Google Scholar

93. Not only was there a lack of evidence to support a drug frenzy, but “reliable data show[ed] some forms of drug use declining.” Duffy, “War on Drugs,” 28; and Kerr, Peter, “Anatomy of the Drug Issue: How, After Years, It Erupted,” New York Times, 17 November 1986.Google Scholar

94. Other drug-related bills introduced in 1988 included the War on Drug Smuggling Act, the Drug-Free America Act, the National Narcotic Leadership Act, the Serious Drug Offender Death Penalty Act, and the Anti-Toy Gun Threat Act, which would increase penalties for using a toy gun in a drug-related crime. Republican Congressman Richard F. Schulze of Pennsylvania also sponsored the Bounty Hunter Act, which would offer incentives to anyone informing on a drug user. Another provision of the act was to call in all $100 bills in circulation since that was thought to be the denomination drug dealers used for making buys. See Viveca Novak, “The War on Drugs Gets Serious,” Common Cause, July-August, 1988, 34.

95. Hargan, John, “Ignorance in Action,” Scientific American, November 1988, 17.Google Scholar

96. Anti-Drug or Anti-People?” Time, 19 September 1988, 20;Google ScholarFram, Alan, “Drug Bill Adds Death Penalties, Centre Daily Times, 11 June 1988;Google Scholar and “House OK's Tough Bill on Drugs,” Associated Press, Philadelphia Inquirer, 26 September 1988.

97. “The Quack Epidemic,” New Republic, 14 November 1988, 8.Google Scholar

98. Hartson, Merrill, “Bush Starts Anti-Drug Drive,” Associated Press, Centre Daily Times, 10 March 1989.Google Scholar

99. Although as drug czar, Bennett would receive a salary of $99,500 a year, the same as a cabinet member, President Bush never supported his position at that level. Bennett had the authority to temporarily reassign personnel from approximately thirty federal agencies, but he could not dictate agency budgets. Essentially, his most important function was to formulate a national drug strategy. Charles Mohr, “Experts Question Drug Bill's Impact,” 30 October 1988, and Julie Johnson, “Reagan Signs Bill to Curb Drug Use,” 19 November 1988, both in New York Times.

100. “Cowboy in the Capitol: Drug Czar Bill Bennett, Rolling Stone, 2 November 1989, 41–42Google Scholar. Bennett once commented to a reporter that “I don't have any objection to beheading drug dealers. Kingpins who sell to pregnant women, people who kill children—its morally deserved.” He was not opposed to allowing the military to shoot down planes transporting drugs into the United States. See Podesta, Jane Sims, “William Bennett,” People's Weekly, 11 June 1990, 97;Google Scholar and “The Top Drug Warrior Talks Tough,” Fortune, 12 March 1990, 74.

101. Bennett, William J., “Moralism, and Realism in the Drug War,” New Perspectives Quarterly 6 (Summer 1989): 4–7.Google Scholar

102. Zaldivar, R. A., “Drug Czar Calls for Scare Tactics,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 4 May 1989;Google Scholar Fred Barnes, “General Bennett, The National Review, 18, 25 September 1989, 14; and “Mr. Bennett's War,” New Republic, 15 September 1989, 13.

103. Editorial, “5,300 and Counting,” 4 September 1990; Zucchino, David, “Bennett: No Gains in City's Drug War,” 8 September 1990;Google Scholar and Zucchino, , “Mixed Success Noted in Drug War,” 9 September 1990Google Scholar, all in Philadelphia Inquirer. Philadelphia was not atypical. All of Pennsylvania's prisons and most state prisons throughout the country experienced serious overcrowding. The Rockview State Correctional Institution in Pennsylvania, for example, has a capacity of 1,250 inmates. On 28 November 1990 its population was nearly double that number, at 2,034. Editorial, Centre Daily Times, 28 November 1990.

104. Shortly after Bennett resigned, President Bush appointed former Republican Florida Governor Bob Martinez as the new drug czar. In November 1990, Martinez's unsuccessful campaign for reelection was headed by Jeb Bush, the President's son. Martinez, like Bennett, emphasized tough law enforcement. While governor, he vigorously supported a death-penalty law for drug kingpins and doubled the number of beds in Florida's state prisons. He has demonstrated relatively little concern for the treatment of drug addicts. “The Man for the Job,” Time, 3 December 1990, 48Google Scholar; and Skorneck, Carolyn, “Martinez Likely to Be Drug Czar,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 19 November 1990.Google Scholar

105. Freeman, Shrona, “Retiring Drug Czar Bennett Calls for Tougher State Laws,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 10 November 1990;Google Scholar“The Czar's Resignation,” editorial, Washington Post, 12 November 1990;Google Scholar and “Remember the Drug War?” editorial, Philadelphia Inquirer, 14 November 1990.Google Scholar

106. Eisenach, “How to Win the War on Drugs,” 46.

107. Such hard-line policies can actually make a mockery of the criminal justice system when cities like Philadelphia, for example, are periodically compelled by a court order to alleviate overcrowding by releasing nonviolent offenders before they complete their sentences. For a broader discussion of drug politics and policy, see Andreas, Peter and Youngers, Coletta, “U.S. Drug Policy and the Andean Cocaine Industry, World Policy Journal 6 (Summer 1989): 529–62.Google Scholar

108. Purdy, Matthew, “No Place to Hold Drug War's Prisoners,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 9 October 1989.Google Scholar

109. On the connection between Noriega, drug traffickers, and American intelligence agencies, see Marshall, Jonathan, “The White House Death Squad,” Inquiry, 5 March 1979, 15–21;Google ScholarGugliotta, Guy and Leen, Jeff, Kings of Cocaine: Inside the Medellin Cartel—An Astonishing True Story of Murder, Money, and International Corruption (New York, 1989), 171–77;Google Scholar and Dinges, John, Our Man in Panama: Houi General Noriega Used the U.S.—and Made Millions in Drugs and Arms (New York, 1990).Google Scholar

110. For an evaluation of the tough-sentences approach, see Gerry Fitzgerald, “Dispatches from the Drug War,” Common Cause, January—February 1990, 13–19.Google Scholar

111. Cockburn, Alexander, “The War on Drugs,” The Nation, 27 October 1984, 406–7;Google Scholar“The Crackdown,” editorial, The Nation, 30 August 1986, 131–32Google Scholar; “The Lost Drug War,” editorial, National Review, 27 May 1988, 18–19Google Scholar; Eliot Marshall, “Flying Blind in the War on Drugs,” News & Comment, 17 June 1988Google Scholar, 1605–7; Morley, Jefferson, “The Great American High: Contradictions of Cocaine Capitalism,” The Nation, 2 October 1989, 341–47Google Scholar; and Trebach, , The Great Drug War: And Radical Proposals That Could Make America Safe Again (New York, 1987).Google Scholar

112. “Bush Takes ‘Drug War’ Too Literally,” Editorial, Centre Daily Times, 12 January 1990.Google Scholar

113. Shannon, Elaine, “A Losing Battle,” Time, 3 December 1990, 44–48Google Scholar; and Purdy, Matthew, “In ‘91 Washington Again U.S.'s Drug-Murder Capital,” Centre Daily Times, 2 January 1991.Google Scholar

114. Martin, DavidS., “U.S. Drug Report Draws Criticism,” Harrisburg News-Patriot, 20 December 1990;Google Scholar and Green, Charles, “U.S. Reports Sharp Drop in Casual Drug Use,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 20 December 1990.Google Scholar The reason for such a discrepancy between the NIDA 1990 Household Survey numbers and the Senate Judiciary Committee figures is that the NIDA only surveyed people living at home and did not include those in rehabilitation centers, treatment programs, prisons, or who live on the streets. The survey also assumed that respondents were honest in admitting or denying they use cocaine.

President Bush's “wonderful and welcome news” about the National Household Survey was not shared by personnel at the Philadelphia Diagnostic and Rehabilitation Center, where Irving Shander, the center's president, stated: “We still have a waiting list. We still have beds filled. We still have indications of a crisis.” Matthew Purdy, “Cocaine Still is a Crisis Experts Say,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 30 December 1990.

115. Like some who claimed that the government was not really interested in winning in Vietnam, there are critics who argue that the government is not sufficiently committed to winning a war against drugs. Former DEA agent Michael Levine, who spent twenty-five years working undercover, has commented that “[his] career was meaningless and had had absolutely no effect whatsoever in the so-called war on drugs. The war itself is a fraud.” Levine, Michael, Deep Cover: The Inside Story of How DEA Infighting, Incompetence, and Subterfuge Lost Us the Biggest Battle of the Drug War (New York, 1990), 9–10.Google Scholar

Other observers, though, not questioning the government's level of commitment, do dispute President Bush's and Drug Czar Bennett's assertions that the government has been effective in interdiction and law enforcement, and warn against the politicization of drugs. Editorial, Harrisburg News-Patriot, 9 November 1990.

116. The number of female high school students who smoked cigarettes daily dropped from 26 percent in 1975 to 19 percent in the period 1987–89; the number of male students who smoked dropped from 27 percent to 18 percent in the same period. Dribben, Melissa, “Teens and Smoking: They Know It's Bad for Them, But …,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 15 November 1990.Google Scholar

117. Elaine Shannon, “Why We're Losing.”