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Eric E. Sterling, President
The Criminal Justice Policy Foundation
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John Walters’ nomination to be “drug czar,” long stalled in the Senate, is likely to come to the floor soon. Compared to all previous nominees, he has more direct experience with national drug control policy. However, Mr. Walters has consistently used drug policy for partisan political purposes in a manner wholly unsuited to the office. He lacks sensitivity to some serious problems of drug policy and his approach to policy give-and-take is attack — inappropriate to building the collaboration necessary to address a sensitive national problem. These patterns raise the most serious reservations about his fitness for this office.

First, Mr. Walters has treated the office, and questions about drug policy, in an ardently partisan manner. At every opportunity, for the past eight years, Mr. Walters has only attacked the anti-drug activities of President Clinton, and uncritically lauded the anti-drug activities of Presidents Reagan and Bush.

Second, in an article published in the Weekly Standard, March 5, 2001, while he was lobbying the Administration for the drug czar job, Mr. Walters wrote that three very serious problems of the American anti-drug effort were merely “urban myths,” namely that (1) “we are imprisoning too many people for merely possessing illegal drugs,” (2) “drug...sentences were too long and harsh” and (3) “the criminal justice system is unjustly punishing young black men.” These are not urban myths.

And third, Mr. Walters insinuates that the reform of harsh policies he supports, such as the reforming of the crack cocaine/powder cocaine sentencing disparity, is “a change in the law to be one that ... went as far as to normalize the drug trade as an acceptable activity...” (Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing, October 10, 2001, Transcript, p. 51). In his Senate confirmation hearing, Walters was signaling that he is willing to attack those who disagree with him as drug legalizers. Yet proponents of ending this problem in cocaine sentencing include Chief Justice William Rehnquist, most of the Federal Judiciary, and the American Bar Association – not a crowd out to “normalize the drug trade.” Mr. Walters’ extreme views have generated opposition to his nomination from the NAACP, the American Public Health Association, and the Betty Ford Clinic.

Regarding the “urban myths,” the data in Mr. Walters' article reveals that over 100,000 persons are imprisoned for simply possessing illegal drugs. That is, in fact, a very large number, greater than the entire prison population of any state but California or Texas. At an average cost of $20,000 per prisoner per year, the $2 billion annual cost for this imprisonment is a waste of precious funds that could be effectively spent on drug treatment, something a drug czar ought to be eager to fund. (Federal drug treatment spending amounted to only $3.5 billion in FY 2000).

Are drug sentences too long? Obviously that is a matter of opinion. Should Federal drug sentences be longer, 80 months on average, than the average sentence for any other crime but murder, rape and robbery? The average Federal sentence in a crack cocaine case is 119.5 months, equal to the average for rape (120 months) and greater than the average 101 months for robbery. The fact that Federal judges have resigned and scores of senior judges have refused to try drug cases because they find the sentences to be excessive doesn’t suggest this is merely an “urban myth.”

Is the criminal justice system unjustly punishing young black men? Fifty-four percent of blacks convicted of a drug offense are sentenced to prison, but only 34 percent of whites convicted are sentenced to prison. This is a tragedy, if not a scandal, but certainly not an “urban myth.” It is a fact that last year 84 percent of Federal crack cocaine convicts were black. It is a fact that last year 30 percent of all Federal drug convicts were black.

Is a nominee who so cavalierly dismisses these realities the right person to head the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy? Is a nominee who demonstrated unvarnished partisanship in evaluating the record of our anti-drug efforts the right person? Is a nominee, who on the occasion of his most careful choosing of words – a Senate confirmation hearing – implies that those who want to fix the problem with cocaine sentencing are out to “normalize the drug trade,” the right person for this job?

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