|
New York Times
Tough Conservative Picked for Drug Czar, Officials Say
President Bush will name John P. Walters, 49, as the new drug czar, administration officials said this week. Walters, a law-and-order conservative known to be highly critical of the Clinton administration's anti-drug efforts, was top deputy to William J. Bennett, drug czar during the previous Bush administration. Walters shares that administration's emphasis on publicly stigmatizing drug use at home while mobilizing resources-including the American military-against drug trafficking abroad. In 1996 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Walters criticized President Clinton's "ineffectual policy-the latest manifestation of the liberals' commitment to a 'therapeutic state' in which government serves as the agent of personal rehabilitation." Walters stressed that the United States should step up the battle against drugs in Latin America, give the military a lead role in interdiction efforts, stiffen marijuana penalties and not offer needle exchange programs to reduce the spread of AIDS. If confirmed by the Senate, Walters will succeed Barry R. McCaffrey, a retired general who sought to de-escalate confrontation with drug-exporting nations and emphasized drug treatment as a part of domestic drug use strategy. As chief of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, Walters will oversee a budget amounting to nearly a half-billion dollars. McCaffrey complained that Walters had voiced a concern "that there is too much treatment capacity in the United States, which I found shocking. ... Some of his positions in my own view need to be carefully considered by the confirmation committee," McCaffrey said. In a book that he authored with Bennett and John J. Dilulio-
President Bush's appointee to head the White House initiative on
religious-based and community initiatives-Walters wrote that the United
States should be concerned about young
criminals who are "superpredators" and suffer from "moral
poverty." They should face stiff and certain punishment, he said.
Walters is president of the Philanthropy Roundtable and past president
of the New Citizenship Project, which promotes the increasing role of
religion in public life.
|
