While it is too early yet to tell the long range effects of these programs, it is an active response that recognizes the immense activity necessary to halt the street level trade, the life-force of the growing crack industry.
Law enforcement, however, is only part of the answer. We must understand that clinical and medical assistance must be provided to help addicts free themselves from the drug's influence. We need to have compassion for those suffering from a serious, though curable, illness.
We also need to attack this problem before it enters our society. It is time for government to place greater emphasis on patrolling our borders to combat the daily and illegal influx of drugs. Rollbacks in funding to the Coast Guard, like those that occured during Reagan's tenure, are no longer justifiable.
OF course, all of these programs and intensified efforts will require money. With a government and large portions of society antithetical to a raise in income taxes, it seems that we must for the moment look elsewhere.
Perhaps it is time that some of our leviathan military budget, huge portions of which are channeled into conventional forces in West Germany and $500 million individual aircraft, could be given to the professed war on drugs that rents the fabric of our own society.
This is not intended as a call to weaken our defenses in favor of social programs, but to understand that with greater fiscal responsibility in our overgrown military budget we can begin to attack this war going on already within our own borders.
During his presidential campaign, George Bush came to New York and held aloft the badge of Edward Byrne, and pledged himself to a war on drugs.
It was a symbolic effort, but we have had enough of symbolism and rhetoric.
If he wishes to do justice to the memory of a courageous youth, and to match his fervence for symbolism with action and understanding, it is time that Bush and other government officials begin in earnest the war on drugs. Because, in an all too true sense, the war has already begun.