The Drug War Bogs Down

By Jacob V. Lamar Jr

It is lunchtime in New York City's Chelsea district, and Barry, a young drug dealer, is out on the streets hawking his wares. Business is good. "You want a splash?" he asks a customer, referring to a slim fold of waxed paper containing $20 worth of cocaine. Although he was arrested twice last winter, Barry was sprung both times within 24 hours. The first bust cost him a $400 fine, the second was dismissed on a technicality. "When the crack thing was in all the papers, the heat was pretty bad," Barry recalls. "The cops were coming around, sealing the street, searching people up against walls. But that didn't last. They only do it for so long, and then they leave you alone. Maybe they've given up."

Remember the drug crisis? Only a year ago everyone was obsessed with crack, the extremely addictive, smokable cocaine. A scant 18 months have passed since the shocking coke-related deaths of Athletes Len Bias and Don Rogers. In the wake of the stock-market crash and tensions in the Persian Gulf, it is hard to believe that in September 1986 some opinion polls showed drug abuse topping economic woes and the threat of war as America's No. 1 national concern.

Politicians were quick to respond to the electorate's anxiety. Ronald and Nancy Reagan gave a national television address supporting the antidrug crusade. Congress hastily drafted the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, appropriating $1.7 billion for law enforcement, drug treatment and education. In a critical election season, both houses of Congress eagerly passed the legislation, with only 18 lawmakers opposing it.

A year later, the drug war is being lost in the trenches. While arrests have surged, more cocaine is being smuggled into the U.S. than ever before, and the demand for coke has never been higher. Drug-abuse treatment centers around the nation remain overcrowded and underfinanced. Prospects are dim for renewed funding at last year's high level for enforcement, education and treatment.

Americans consumed 72 metric tons of coke in 1985, more than double the 1982 estimate. Moreover, because of depressed prices, competing dealers are selling cocaine in increasingly stronger doses. While street coke in 1983 was about 35% pure, today it has a purity of almost 65%. Tying to stanch the flow of narcotics into the U.S. has become a Sisyphean task. U.S. agencies seized a record 33.4 metric tons of coke and made an unprecedented 20,000 arrests in fiscal year 1987. With money from the 1986 drug bill, federal agencies have hired thousands of new investigators and contracted for improved interdiction hardware. The first of as many as seven radar balloons along the U.S.-Mexico border went into service this month over Fort Huachuca, Ariz.

Yet the more authorities interdict cocaine, the more it seems to get smuggled into the country. "If we want to talk about slowing down the flow of cocaine into the U.S., we should think more in terms of demand reduction," says DEA Chief John Lawn. "If the cartel in Colombia is shut down, other cartels in other source countries will merely pick up the customers."

The drug war has been no less vexing for big-city narcotics officers. Take Los Angeles, a city that has become a prominent cocaine pipeline in the past several years. In 1984 the police department seized 758 lbs. of coke. This year the department estimates it will take in a whopping 15,000 lbs. While Los Angeles has been promised $1.4 million from Washington, it has yet to receive very much of it. City officials blame the delay on the Federal Government's tangled distribution apparatus. "If it's left to the discretion of the bureaucratic process," says Michael Thompson, deputy director of the mayor's criminal justice planning office, "the money is going to go fluttering off to the four winds."

Red tape has also held up much of the $363 million Congress allotted for state drug-education and -treatment programs. The cocaine boom is producing a flood of drug casualties that has swamped urban rehabilitation centers; overcrowding has forced many centers to turn away all but the most severely addicted. Between 1981 and the passage of last year's antidrug legislation, the Reagan Administration slashed funds for narcotics treatment by 40%. Now the treatment centers fear that once they receive what is left of the 1986 bonanza, funds from Washington will dry up. "President Reagan had to know it was only a one-time thing, and he should have said so," says Bob Garner, chairman of the California Association of County Drug Program Administrators. "You can't start treatment projects that way. You've got to have a second year."

The hopes of the antidrug crusaders may have crashed with the stock market. Congress balked at the President's proposal calling for no new funds for law enforcement or drug treatment in the fiscal 1988 budget. The Senate decided to authorize $171 million for treatment, and both houses called for up to $250 million for education and $75 million for enforcement. But with the deficit in desperate need of trimming, those funds are suddenly vulnerable. "That money is surely needed if we're going to have a war on drugs," says Los Angeles Deputy Police Chief Glenn Levant, head of the city's narcotics unit. "If they take it away, there won't be a war."

With reporting by Elaine Shannon/Washington and James Willwerth/Los Angeles