Subject: Hemp News # 17APn 10/14 1606 Drugs-Congress
Copyright, 1993. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
By CAROLYN SKORNECK Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Clinton administration's cutbacks in the Office of National Drug Control Policy were strongly criticized Thursday by one of the chief creators of the office.
"In the real world of Washington, what secretary in a turf war cares what the drug czar says if almost every committee in the Congress has a larger staff than he does?" House Government Operations Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., asked at a hearing on reauthorizing the office. "What are we doing to him?" Meanwhile, the Senate Finance Committee postponed action on the Custom Service's $1.47 billion budget for the new year after Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., the committee chairman, complained that the agency's drug-interdiction effort is a waste.
"Are we satisfied flying airplanes across the Mojave Desert with no effect?" Moynihan asked colleagues. "This is theatrics; it is not government." At the House hearing, the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative branch, delivered three reports critical of how the war on drugs is being handled.
One found the Defense Department's expensive aerial surveillance efforts are not paying off. Another said the impact of Colombia's anti-drug programs is uncertain. The third said the drug control office could be improved, in particular by forcing it to devise specific performance criteria to prove the success of anti-drug efforts.
Lee Brown, the office director, told reporters earlier this year that he protested to White House officials over reducing his office from the high of 146 people during the Bush administration to just 25 people. The cutback was part of President Clinton's vow in February to reduce White House staffing by 25 percent. The anti-drug office, which is part of the Executive Office of the President, was reduced by 83 percent.
Brown lost that battle and accepted the cuts. A spokeswoman said Clinton had promised to give Brown the support he needed to do the job.
In February, Conyers supported the office staff reduction, saying that if it were "offset by this real increase in power, the drug czar will in fact be able to do a far better job than previously." But Thursday, he called the cuts "unbelievable." "He's been put in the Cabinet, but his resources have been taken away," Conyers said, noting that his committee created the office and can eliminate it as well.
At the Senate Finance Committee, no one defended Customs' drug efforts, which cost $132.4 million last year and would cost more than $95 million during the budget year that began Oct. 1.
However, Sen. John Chafee, R-R.I., said the committee should hold hearings before deciding to eliminate the program.
Wayne Hamilton, a Customs budget officer, told the committee the agency has seven radar-equipped P-3 planes and four P-3s without radar, and borrows several other aircraft from the Defense Department.
"You have nothing to show for it," Moynihan said, calling the agency's drug-interdiction program "a flawed assignment."
