Drug Czar Details Efforts to Halt Flow of Narcotics

WASHINGTON — Federal drug czar Barry McCaffrey released a new analysis of American drug trafficking Wednesday, revealing the details of law enforcement strategies tailor-made in recent years for Southern California and 21 other narcotics hot spots nationwide.

In Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, officials have identified 158 “known narcotics trafficking” organizations, and say they “dismantled or disrupted” 122 groups last year, seizing $18.9 million and 27.7 tons of drugs while arresting 639 people.

The report says 70% of all illegal narcotics in the United States come across the nation’s long border with Mexico and asserts that in some Southern California neighborhoods, 90% of traffickers are illegal immigrants.

The Southern California anti-drug program links nine federal, four state and 57 local law enforcement agencies and plans six major initiatives for next year, including a long-term intelligence-gathering operation, a 24-hour “war room” with state-of-the-art data management systems, and round-the-clock prosecutors available to authorize search warrants and wiretaps, the report says.

“You can’t understand a national drug problem--there is no such thing. There’s a series of regional drug epidemics,” McCaffrey told more than 200 law enforcement professionals in Washington for a three-day conference. “What is the drug threat? It’s massive. . . . It is not static.”

In a broad policy address, the retired Army general said the number of cocaine users has dropped nationwide from 6 million to 1.7 million, but he warned of the resurgence of heroin and a range of new “boutique” drugs.

The federal High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program has expanded from $25 million for five drug “gateway” regions--including Los Angeles and the Southwest border--at its founding in 1990 to $162 million in 22 locales now.

The Los Angeles region--which includes Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties--is getting $10.7 million this year, while a border program focusing on San Diego and Imperial counties gets $7.8 million and efforts in the San Francisco Bay Area receive $1 million.

Even as McCaffrey spotlighted the program, some anti-drug activists and policy experts complained that it has done little to help communities devastated by drugs.

“Anyone who knows the first thing about the drug business knows that as soon as you arrest one pusher or ring, two or three rivals will come forward,” said Joseph McNamara, former chief of police in San Jose and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank.

“Have things gotten better? That’s the key question,” said Mathea Falco of the Washington-based group Drug Strategies. “There’s a historical tendency to think about this in terms of body counts. . . . Presumably, those things should be making life safer in our neighborhoods and helping our children stay off drugs. I’m not sure that’s happening.”

Indeed, McCaffrey said Wednesday: “If you can’t walk down the street at 9 o’clock at night, a mother with children, you haven’t succeeded. Don’t tell me how many pounds seized, how many people you’ve arrested--you’re measuring the wrong thing.”

Nevertheless, the report is filled with just such numbers.

The report said the Los Angeles region has 49 methamphetamine manufacturing organizations, at least 105 groups that traffic in cocaine, 28 organizations smuggling drugs by sea and 145 rings moving narcotics along the three interstate highways linking Southern California with Mexico.

The Los Angeles-area program claims credit for seizing 100 tons of drugs and $75.8 million, as well as making 2,294 arrests, in the last three years, the report says.

“These numbers are just meaningless. You have nothing against which to calibrate them,” said University of Maryland professor Peter Reuter, a drug policy expert. “One of the problems with [the program] is just how undefined it is. You have no idea what it is, so it’s very hard to say what it should be accomplishing.”

Experts such as Reuter said tonnage is misleading because of the range of weights of drugs. A pound of heroin weighs differently in pure form from what it weighs in diluted form on the street.

“It’s law enforcement dog and pony show 101,” said Eric Sterling, president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, a nonprofit organization in Washington, adding that “disruption” is a camouflage catch-all term because virtually any law enforcement action disrupts a drug organization.

“It’s good they’re reporting data--it’s not good that they’re reporting data that’s not helpful,” he said.

McCaffrey said the key number remains what percentage of Americans abuse drugs. It is now estimated at 6%, and the Clinton administration has promised to slash that to 3% over the next decade.

“You can’t do drug treatment and prevention if you don’t have effective law enforcement. And you can’t run that law enforcement out of Washington,” he said, touting the program’s regional approach.