Clinton drug policy draws jeers from Gingrich
The president wants to hire more federal agents and local police officers.
Washington, D.C. (AP) - President
Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich sparred over drug policy in separate radio
addresses Saturday, the president laying out plans to reduce illegal drug use by 50
percent in the next decade, the speaker ridiculing the proposal as a "hodgepodge of
half-steps and half-truths."
Gingrich said he will press a resolution in the House urging Clinton
and White House drug policy chief Barry McCaffrey to withdraw the plan, which he described
as "the definition of failure."
"In the Civil War it took just four years to save the Union and
abolish slavery," Gingrich scoffed.
In his weekly radio address, the president said although the number of
Americans using drugs has fallen by 50 percent since 1979, it should be cut in half again
over the next decade.
But before outlining his proposal, Clinton stressed that the fight
against drugs "must be waged and won at kitchen tables all across America."
"Even the world's most thorough anti-drug strategy won't ever do
the job unless all of us pass on the same clear and simple message to our children: Drugs
are wrong, drugs are dangerous, and drugs can kill you," Clinton said.
His plan, portions of which already were disclosed by McCaffrey,
includes expanded prevention education, employment of an additional 1,000 Border Patrol
officers and 100 Drug Enforcement Administration agents, completion of the hiring of
100,000 new community police officers and expanded drug testing and treatment among
prisoners and parolees.
McCaffrey said the government alone cannot solve the national drug
problem. We look forward to working with the Congress, state and local government
and the private sector," McCaffrey said.
As he spoke, however, Gingrich, R-Ga., speaking in the GOP's weekly
radio address, accused the president of neglecting the narcotics issue for five years, and
as a consequence allowing drug use among teen-agers to rise by 70 percent over that
period.
He said World War II was won four years after the United States joined
the Allied cause, and yet Clinton's new drug-fighting schedule prescribes more than twice
that long.
"This president would have us believe that with all of the
resources, ingenuity, dedication and passion of the American people, we can't even get
halfway to victory in the war on drugs until the year 2007 - nine full years from
now," the speaker said. "That is not success. That is the definition
of failure. We cannot accept this administration's proposed timetable for
defeat."
"I insist that the president and his drug czar (McCaffrey)
withdraw their so-called drug plan and its hodgepodge of half-steps and half-truths and
bring us back a real plan to tackle the drug crisis," Gingrich said.
The Des Moines Register
Sunday, February 15, 1998, Page 8AA
letters@news.dmreg.com