President Bush has nominated John Walters, to be our nation’s next drug czar. Unfortunately, John Walters is too divisive, too insensitive, and too extreme to be an effective drug czar. Walters is an ardent drug warrior who supports harsh sentences for non-violent drug offenders, opposes meaningful drug treatment programs, supports escalation of the Latin American drug war, and denies that racial disparities exist in the criminal justice system. At a time that public sentiment is rapidly shifting from a criminal justice approach to drug abuse towards a cheaper and more effective public health approach, Walters still believes we can arrest and spend our way out of the drug problem.

Who Opposes John Walters?

• A majority of Members of the Congressional Black Caucus oppose John Walters. They have recently issued a one and a half page statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The statement reads, in part:
  
  “At a time when policymakers at all levels of government are seeking to address racial disparities in the criminal justice system, John Walters denies that such disparities even exist. His extensive record is one of extreme insensitivity to the problems facing African Americans. We believe his views on race and crime make him unfit for a position that requires sensitivity to racial fairness…. We find that John Walters is both woefully ill informed on the facts of the day and insensitive to the needs of the African American community. We strongly urge you to vote against John Walters as Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.”
  
  Signers of the statement include Representative John Conyers - Congress’s most senior African American Member and the Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, the committee that has re-authorization authority over the drug czar’s office.
  
  
• Organizations opposing John Walters, include: AIDS Action, AIDS Foundation of Chicago, American College of Nurse-Midwives, California Legislative Council for Older Americans, Chicago Recovery Alliance, Colombia Action/CT, Colombia Human Rights Committee, Latino Voters League, Justice Policy Institute, National Association for Public Health Policy, National Black Police Association, National Center on Institutions and Alternatives, National Women’s Health Network, Pesticide Action Network, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, School of Americas Watch, and Witness for Peace.
  
  
• Over 20 newspapers have raised concerns about John Walters, including: New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Austin American-Statesman, Chicago Sun-Times, Albany Times Union, Tulsa World, and the Houston Chronicle.
  
  
• The Betty Ford Center has issued a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee stating, in part:
  
  “Mr. Walters may not have the confidence in the treatment and prevention strategies that we believe are necessary for the creation and implementation of a balanced and thoughtful approach to U.S. drug policy. Now, more than ever, with increased public criticism of U.S. drug policies that rely heavily on interdiction and criminal justice solutions to the drug problem, we need a director with an unshakable conviction in strategies to reduce the demand for drugs in this country.”

John Walters on the Issues:

Racial Disparities, Sentencing, Mandatory Minimums:

Just six months ago, in The Weekly Standard, Walters stated: “Neither is it true that the prison population is disproportionately made up of young black men. Crime, after all, is not evenly distributed throughout society. It is common knowledge that the suburbs are safer than the inner city, though we are not supposed to mention it."

In the same article, he stunned academics and researchers by stating that, "What really drives the battle against law enforcement and punishment, however, is not a commitment to treatment, but the widely held view that (1) we are imprisoning too many people for merely possessing illegal drugs, (2) drug and other criminal sentences are too long and harsh, and (3) the criminal justice system is unjustly punishing young black men. These are among the great urban myths of our time."

Even a cursory glance at the facts, however, proves that Walters is at odds with the truth:

• Of the 1,559,100 arrests for drug law violations in 1998, 78.8% were for possession of a controlled substance. In 1997, over 100,000 people were in state or federal prison for possession of an illegal drug. This does not even count those among the roughly two hundred thousand non-violent drug offenders in local jails.
• The average federal sentence for a drug offense in 1997 was 78 months, over twice the average sentence for manslaughter and almost four times the average sentence for auto theft. Possession of crack weighing the equivalent of two pennies requires five years in federal prison with no possibility of parole.
• Although whites and African Americans use drugs at equal rates, African American men are admitted to state prison for drug offenses at a rate that is 13.4 times greater than that of white men. In 15 states, African American men are admitted to state prison for drug charges at a rate that is 20 to 57 times the white male rate.

While both President Bush and DEA Administrator Asa Hutchinson have said they are willing to look at reforming mandatory minimums and concentrating more resources on a demand-side approach to drug abuse, John Walters has opposed these positions in the past. He has even actively opposed eliminating the crack/powder cocaine sentencing disparity.

The immediate past drug czar, General Barry McCaffrey, recognized that both sentence length and sentence time served present a problem for the U.S. criminal justice system, going so far as to remark, “We must have law enforcement authorities address the issue … but having said that, I also believe that we have created an American Gulag.” In response, Walters has said, “I am a strong supporter of enforcement. It is prevention. A moral lesson. And I am against the part of the discussion earlier that suggests that there are too many people in jail… And for the Director (McCaffrey) to say, ‘I am troubled by the number of people in jail,’ sends the wrong message, I think.”

Walters’ also holds radical ‘super-predator’ theories on juvenile crime that have been thoroughly discredited; yet he still supports them. Just six months ago he wrote, “Instead of retreating from punishment, we should be contemplating the limited demographic window before us: By 2010, the population between the ages of 15 and 17, just entering the most crime-prone years, will be 31 percent larger than it was in 1990.” In his book with Bill Bennett, “Body Count,” the authors suggest that Americans should be prepared to lock up as many as 150,000 children.

Latin America:

Walters believes that interdiction and eradication are the most important, if not the only, anti-drug strategy for the federal government to follow. His record suggests that he is willing to escalate our entanglement in the Latin American drug war at the expense of funding for drug treatment at home. In 1996 he stated, “that we need to do more in Latin America. Fighting drugs at the source makes sense. Federal authorities ought to be going after the beehive, not just the bees. Foreign programs are also cheap and effective.” He has even praised the very shoot-down policy that led to the tragic deaths of two missionaries in Peru earlier this year.

Walters was an early champion for the U.S. shootdown policy in Peru. In 1996, he told the Senate Judiciary Committee: “America's chronically underfunded program in Peru cost just $16 million to run in FY 1996. ... The Peruvians have managed to shoot down or disable 20 trafficker airplanes since March 1, 1995. Unfortunately Peruvian President Fujimori's aggressive line on drugs actually caused President Clinton to bar Peru from receiving radar-tracking data. That decision has badly damaged Peruvian-American relations …this is an opportunity to save American lives by helping the Peruvians press their attack on traffickers.” Under pressure from Walters and others, President Clinton resumed the shootdown program with new procedures established in a 1994 agreement between the two countries.

In April 2001, a Peruvian Air Force jet guided by a CIA surveillance plane killed an American missionary and her daughter. A U.S. report on the incident stated that, “Peru and the United States were undisciplined and ‘sloppy’ in the way they conducted a joint program to interdict airborne drug smugglers.” This incident occurred even after the protocols were established. Mr. Walters’ statement implying that the shootdown policy should have been implemented even without protocols is particularly troubling.

Treatment:

Walters has made some recent public statements that seem to indicate he has doubts about the disease theory of addiction. In the Weekly Standard article he wrote, “If it weren't for the ideology associated with treatment -- addiction is a disease, not a pattern of behavior for which people can be held responsible -- law enforcement and punishment would be natural partners of the treatment providers.”

Walters has referred to drug treatment as "this ineffectual policy - the latest manifestation of liberals' commitment to a 'therapeutic state' in which government serves as the agent of personal rehabilitation."

Even former drug czar Barry McCaffrey has expressed concern about Walters' priorities being heavily skewed against treatment and prevention, saying that Walters is "focused too much on interdiction" and "needs to educate himself on prevention and treatment." In McCaffrey's words, Walters' feels "that there is too much treatment capacity in the United States" -- a view the former drug czar found "shocking."