US drug czar calls for end to “war on drugs” rhetoric

06-12-2009 | REUTERS

US drug policy has been criticized for focusing too much on fighting supplies

Panama Star WASHINGTON. The Obama administration's top drug cop plans to spend more money treating addiction and scale down the "war on drugs" rhetoric as part of an overhaul of US counternarcotics strategy.

As head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, Gil Kerlikowske coordinates the efforts of 32 government agencies to limit illicit drug use.

He has been in office less than a month, but the Obama administration has already taken a less confrontational approach to the nation's 35 million illegal drug users.

The FBI is no longer raiding state-approved facilities that distribute marijuana for medical purposes, and the House has told Congress to eliminate the sentencing disparity between powder and crack cocaine.

Kerlikowske said he hopes to ditch the chest-thumping military rhetoric at the center of US policy since President Nixon first declared a "war on drugs" 40 years ago.

"We should stop using the metaphor about the war on drugs," said Kerlikowske, a career police officer who headed the Justice Department's community-policing initiative under President Clinton. "People look at it as a war on them, and frankly we're not at war with the people of this country."

US drug policy has been criticized for focusing too much on fighting supplies from Colombia and other countries in South America and not enough on curbing demand at home, the world's largest drug market. Kerlikowske said a more balanced approach was needed, with greater emphasis on treatment programs, especially in prisons.

"It's clear that if they go to prison and they have a drug problem and you don't treat it and they return.. to the same neighborhood from whence they came that you are going to have the same problem," he said. "Quite frankly people in neighborhoods, police officers, et cetera, are tired of recycling the problem. Let's try and fix it."