Battle Strategies

Each of America's successive wars on drugs has brought a shift of tactical emphasis and new sets of priorities for deploying resources. Richard Nixon, for example, targeted sites abroad, putting pressure on foreign countries like Turkey and Mexico to stop cultivating the seeds of poison. The new emphasis is on the war within. President Reagan is urging that employees take urine tests and that educational programs be initiated to discourage demand. Cities like New York, Boston and Miami are launching highly visible law-enforcement efforts. Here is a look at the prospects and difficulties faced on five different fronts in the war:

BORDER INTERDICTION

Boats Against the Tide

The 38-ft. craft speeding through the August night north of Key Largo, Fla., looked like the kind favored by drug smugglers. It tried to run from a U.S. Customs patrol boat and stopped only when Agents Patrick Olive and Robert Rutt drew close enough to play their searchlight over its cockpit. One of the four men on board had a record of three narcotics arrests. But a thorough search turned up nothing, so Olive and Rutt could only wave goodbye. Perhaps the boat had been on a successful reconnaissance mission. As Olive explained, "The dope people have their own intelligence and counterintelligence corps. They monitor our communications and use decoy boats to watch our reaction. If we go after the decoy, they run a load north or south of us. Sometimes we get frustrated."

So do other federal agents trying to police the 8,426 miles of deeply indented Florida coastline, through which most drugs sneaked into the U.S. come, and the 2,067-mile border with Mexico, gateway for much of the rest. The smugglers they are up against have almost unlimited funds. "They can afford to lease an entire ranch for one drop," says Marion Hambrick of the Drug Enforcement Administration in Houston. They can also buy the best equipment: advanced fiber boats that elude radar, scuba-diving gear, "voice privacy" scrambler radios and single-sideband transmitters, which are hard to intercept, and light planes that are often faster and have better radar than Customs' planes. Firearms too: gun battles between feds and smugglers have erupted all along the Mexican border.

The federal interdiction forces -- divided between Customs, DEA and the Immigration and Naturalization Service -- are also improving their capability. Those in Florida have acquired souped-up boats with catamaran racing hulls, called stingers, and radar operating out of tethered balloons to keep watch on low-flying planes. The feds along the Mexican land border have long felt neglected, but that is supposed to change under Operation Alliance, an ambitious interdiction plan announced in mid-August by Vice President George Bush. The Customs forces along the border are to be strengthened by 350 new officers, a 30% increase, and INS will get new equipment such as vehicles that carry a 30-ft. tower housing an infrared nightscope. Some 60 additional prosecutors will be sent south to relieve a shortage that has hindered trials of arrested smugglers.

Lawmen on the border have high hopes for Alliance. "We will take the battle to the smuggler," pledges William Logan, Customs commissioner in the area. But others voice skepticism as to how soon they will get the promised men and gear. Some wonder whether much can be accomplished without a stronger crackdown on the largely unregulated casas de cambio that exchange dollars for pesos and are thought to often launder drug money along the Mexican border. Sixty or so have sprouted on the main street of San Ysidro, Calif., alone.

The biggest obstacle to interdiction, of course, is the simple length of the coastline and border. Both are so honeycombed with hiding places that searching for incoming drugs will always be a needle-in-a-haystack operation. Though seizures are way up, that is probably an index to the greater volume of smuggling rather than the efficiency of interception. The Government, says Lee Dogoloff, once drug adviser to President Jimmy Carter, "has been interdicting the same 10% since Harry Anslinger," who was appointed U.S. Narcotics Commissioner in 1930. Operation Alliance may increase the percentage, but the greatest optimists have no hope of ever intercepting even half the marijuana, heroin and cocaine slipping into the U.S.

nation: drug enforcement (church)

LAW ENFORCEMENT

Police Crack Down

More arrests, more convictions, longer sentences, more seizures of drug dealers' assets. It is possible to string together statistics suggesting that the war on narcotics on the streets of U.S. cities shows promise of being won. What is not possible is to get a single law-enforcement officer to believe it. Instead, all over the country, lawmen wail that their best efforts are being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of drug traffic. "You can't say anything is working," admits Jim Goudy, commander of the Houston police narcotics division. In Boston, Deputy Superintendent William Celester concedes that raids on crack dens by newly organized police "impact teams" have accomplished little more than pushing the sites from one location to another. Los Angeles Narcotics Detective Kenneth Wilkinson expressed the point with classic simplicity at a meeting of 80 residents who demanded to know how crack dens were going to be wiped out. Said Wilkinson: "It's not going to happen. There are too many of them and not enough of us."

The failure of law enforcement to make any measurable dent in drug use has not resulted from a lack of effort. New laws have helped. A crime act passed by Congress in 1984 made it easier to seize the assets of drug dealers before | conviction. Federal agents last year relieved them of about $360 million. Local police are trying some innovative approaches. In Boston, New York City and Miami, they have begun confiscating the cars of well-off suburbanites who drive into the cities and get arrested while buying crack. The haul in New York since late July: 107 cars, including several BMWs and at least one Mercedes-Benz. And everywhere arrest totals are rising. Police in Florida nabbed 4,573 suspected cocaine sellers last year, more than double the number in 1983.

But law enforcers unanimously grumble that drug dealers, even when convicted, are back on the streets peddling their poison in a few days. The lack of jail cells in which to lock them up is so severe that New York Deputy Police Chief Francis Hall contends that "we have to stop thinking of traditional prisons. We can house literally thousands in barracks-type facilities." Even if that were done, prosecutors complain that a drastic shortage of judges would still result in quick release of drug pushers. Under New York State law, a defendant charged with a misdemeanor, as most drug sellers are, must be brought to trial within 90 days of arrest. Consequently, drug dealers demand jury trials, knowing no judges will be available to conduct them within the permitted time. Overworked judges then let the dealers plead guilty and bargain over the length of their sentences. (The median misdemeanor term for selling crack in Manhattan: ten days.)

More prisons and more judges are urgently needed. But many authorities fear that the maximum conceivable increase would not do much good; without some reduction in drug demand, the problem will simply remain too big. Says Carlton Turner, drug adviser to Ronald Reagan: "If this initiative of the President's becomes (only) a law-enforcement initiative, it's dead."

DRUG TESTING

The New Inquisition

President Reagan had his urine tested in August for evidence of drug use. Students in Hawkins, Texas, who hope to participate in extracurricular activities this fall have begun to do the same. So will many college and professional athletes, policemen, stockbrokers, soldiers, power-company linemen and applicants for jobs ranging from executive to mill hand, keeping laboratories working day and night. With an enthusiasm that critics charge borders on hysteria, officials at all levels of government and private business are seizing on drug testing as one idea that offers real hope of containing the narcotics plague.

; The theory is simple: mass testing poses far more of a deterrent to drug use than the rather remote threat of going to jail. If people know they will have to pass a urine test in order to get or keep a good job -- or join a sports team or stay in school or whatever -- they are less likely to dabble with drugs. Employees who fail can be steered toward treatment programs, under an implied or explicit threat of being fired if they refuse. Look, for example, at what happened in the U.S. armed forces after they intensified random mass urine tests four years ago. In 1980, when tests were infrequent, 27% of some 20,000 military personnel surveyed admitted that they had used drugs during the previous 30 days; in a comparable confidential survey last year, the proportion dropped to 9%. Says Julian Barber, a Pentagon health official: "The word has gone out to the 2.2 million men and women in uniform. If you want to stay in, stop taking drugs."

But can testing produce similar results in civilian life? And is the deterrent worth the loss of privacy? The public seems to think so, thanks no doubt in large part to Reagan's advocacy. A whopping 72% of people questioned in a New York Times/CBS News poll published last week said they would be willing to be tested. But there is fierce opposition too, and not all of it from professional civil libertarians. The union representing 1,500 Boston policemen has filed suit to block a plan by Commissioner Francis Roache to begin unannounced random tests of all cops, on the grounds that the tests would violate the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable searches.

Constitutional qualms will probably impel the Administration, when it spells out a new policy for federal employees later this month, to make tests mandatory only for those in "sensitive" or "critical" jobs where drug use could damage public safety -- air-traffic controller, for instance. All other federal workers will most probably be asked to submit to "voluntary" tests. Critics argue that such a system would involve enough pressure so that the tests would not be truly voluntary or that they would be worthless because only those who are clean would sign up.

In private business, opponents of testing insist that mass urinalysis is an unwarranted invasion of the privacy of people who have done nothing wrong. To prevent switching or doctoring of urine samples, a supervisor must watch closely while the specimen is being passed. Even worse, it is widely estimated that some of the cheap tests now in use yield up to 20% "false positives," raising the threat that many people who do not use drugs will nonetheless be denied employment -- while drug users who manage to stay clean for a few days before a test beat the system. Advocates of testing counter that false positives can be diminished by subjecting all urine that shows signs of drug use to further, more sophisticated examination. But those retests can cost $100 each, and many employers may not want to pay the price. The cost of administering such tests to even a sampling of 10% of the total labor force would exceed $1 billion. Nonetheless, testing seems certain to continue its explosive growth for months and perhaps years to come, if only because so many people are stumped for any other way to check drug abuse.

DRUG TREATMENT

Long and Costly

Drug addicts are sick people who need treatment. With that statement there is hardly any quarrel. But what kind of treatment, and who will provide it? The answer to the second question, at least, is only too clear: nobody is providing enough treatment to come near meeting the demand, let alone the need.

True, treatment programs are expanding. Narcotics Anonymous, a self-help group modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous, had only four members in Dade County, which encompasses Miami, in 1979; today up to 80 people meet nightly in each of 44 groups throughout the county. Private hospital programs have grown so fast in the 1980s that some experts guess they have become a $3 billion-to-$4 billion-a-year business. But their cost, often $300 to $500 per bed per day, puts them beyond the reach of the innumerable addicts who do not have employers or insurance companies willing to pay. Clinics and residential programs that depend on a mix of private donations and government funding are jammed to overflowing; tales of three-month waiting lists to get in are common. Last year Washington counted a mere 269,711 people in treatment programs that receive government assistance, and federal funding for treatment has actually been reduced in the past four years.

Treatment at best is a long, complex and frequently frustrating process. There are disputes about the best methods. For example, some programs use chemicals in the first stage to ease the crash of a cocaine addict coming down and stimulate the production of natural brain chemicals depleted by the drug. Managers of other programs insist the goal should be to get abusers off % dependence on any kind of chemical right away.

Detoxification is only the first step: it must be supplemented by individual counseling, group therapy, vocational training and a range of activities to fill the void in a patient's life left by withdrawal. Phoenix House, one of the nation's largest community therapeutic programs, with facilities in New York and California, relies on rough-and-tumble group-encounter sessions that have proved effective in reshaping an addict's attitudes. Dr. Mitchell Rosenthal, president of Phoenix House, says lying and rationalizations are a big part of being a drug abuser, and "the encounter enables him to see himself as he really is." For the 20% who stay for the full two-year program, the success rate as measured five to seven years later is an impressive 76%.

Whatever the type of treatment they receive, recovering addicts need follow-up care and counseling, sometimes for as long as five years, to make sure they stay clean. A major treatment problem is to convince an addict that one resumption of drug use does not mean he will never shake his habit. Many recovering addicts do not stay in touch with follow-up programs, so no one knows whether or how long they stay off drugs. Thus the success of treatment programs is hard to measure. Though some claim success rates as high as 80%, Dr. Sidney Cohen, professor of psychiatry at UCLA, fears that nationwide only 40% of treated cocaine addicts are still clean a year after discharge.

EDUCATION

Learning to Say No

"What should you do if someone tells you to buy drugs on the bus and they have a knife?" That anonymous written question startled Police Officer Nicholas Wade, who was leading a drug-education class at a Los Angeles elementary school; he had not expected sixth-graders to be so intimately acquainted with such street savagery. After a moment's hesitation, Wade read the question aloud to the 20 students, whose answer came without any hesitation. "Tell someone!" they chorused.

A growing number of educators, parents and law-enforcement people are coming to believe that if only more children were led to give such answers, the war might someday be won. Education in the perils of narcotics and in the techniques of resisting peer pressure to "come on, try it" is one approach that offers some real hope of reducing drug use.

The notion may draw snickers from people subjected to the lurid lectures on the horrors of narcotics that generally passed for drug education in the '60s and '70s. "It only takes one kid in an auditorium who says, 'Hey, I know someone who did that drug and it didn't happen to him,' and your message is gone," says Richard Booze, assistant director of a Chicago-area training center for teachers. Many experts also doubt the effectiveness of Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" effort. That drive, focused on children 7 to 14, has prompted the organization of 10,000 clubs in which at least 200,000 youngsters have publicly pledged not to use drugs. Perhaps this will do some good, but often much more than a pledge is required.

Accordingly, school districts, foundations, law-enforcement authorities and parent groups are shaping more thorough programs. The National Institute on Drug Abuse figures 72% of the nation's estimated 45.3 million elementary- and secondary-school students are being offered some kind of drug education, but sometimes it may amount to only a paragraph in a health textbook. The U.S. Department of Education's funding for drug education has been so tiny that no one has kept track of it. The department, however, is now considering a $100 million program.

Authorities generally agree on the requirements for an effective program. It must start in the lower grades or kindergarten; two health educators at the state-funded Western Massachusetts Primary Prevention Center are even developing a program for preschoolers. It must be continuous, not a one-shot or one-week affair. It must go beyond drugs to teach children how to develop the self-esteem that those tempted by narcotics usually lack and how to deal with strains and tensions without turning to drugs. It must not only tell children to say no but train them to resist peer pressure. And it must be realistic: Booze, for example, candidly tells children that drugs produce a giddy high similar to riding a swing, but he goes on to detail what follows that high.

One of the more comprehensive programs is DARE, for Drug Abuse Resistance Education, begun in Los Angeles three years ago and since copied by 62 school districts around the country. Police officers meet for 45 minutes to an hour with teachers and classes in elementary and junior high schools for 17 lessons stretching through a semester. Many lessons have little to do directly with drugs; they concentrate on such ideas as ego and self-esteem. Though they might seem cloudy concepts for sixth-graders, the officers try to make them fun by using balloons and role-playing games.

; Other lessons deal with the illusory highs and long-term dangers of drug usage. One lesson is devoted specifically to "ways to say no"; suggestions range from "broken record" (saying "no thanks" over and over) to "cold shoulder" (simply ignoring the invitation). Late in the semester, officers bring in junior high and high school students who have resisted drug temptation to answer questions from sixth-graders like "Do you end up without friends if you don't use drugs?"

Whether such programs can fulfill the high hopes they are arousing will take years to determine. But educational programs must be central to any attack on drug abuse. As Tom Adams, national director of the Just Say No program, puts it, perhaps with some hyperbole, "The kids under ten in this country are the only group in which nonuse of drugs and alcohol and tobacco is the norm." The challenge is to keep them free of drugs as they enter the temptation-ridden teens.