Until a few days ago, it was impossible for the U.S. Customs Service to hire new drug-busting inspectors because a federal court had ruled that the service`s own drug-testing program is illegal.
The Navy finally will turn over two of its E2C surveillance planes to Customs and the Coast Guard this Thursday, but it still refuses to part with a special 360-degree radar to enhance other drug enforcement aircraft.
Last November, Education Secretary William Bennett said he would parcel out $200 million for drug education so quickly that there was no time to write new guidelines. At that time, few understood that ”quickly” meant at least four months after the money was available. The target date for distribution now is March 1, maybe.
Congress passed the nation`s most sweeping antidrug legislation last October and, with grand fanfare, it was signed into law by President Reagan on Oct. 27. The effort to control the flow of narcotics into the U.S., however, is off to a rather bumpy start.
Bureaucratic jealousy and infighting have delayed projects, and there is confusion in Congress over exactly what was approved and who should oversee it.
”There are turf battles all over the place,” Rep. Glenn English (D., Okla.) complained last week, ”and that has done as much to take away from the war on drugs as any smugglers or drug traffickers.”
It has been a full six months since Reagan and his wife, Nancy, went on prime-time television to declare a new ”national crusade” against illegal drugs.
Now some members of Congress, emboldened perhaps by the President`s problems in the Iran-contra affair, are questioning how committed the administration and the nation are to some of that hastily passed legislation. Despite only perfunctory hearings, a Congress filled with pre-election enthusiasm approved all but the most divisive issues on the antidrug agenda. The reality of the new drug law is settling in now, however, and the effort is not quite as clear-cut as it once seemed.
The case of the E2C surveillance planes is an example, said Robert Mills, a staff member of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
The legislation originally called for Customs and the Coast Guard each to get two planes. Then the agencies started lobbying. Next thing, the Coast Guard was going to get all four, Mills said. Customs counterattacked and soon it was to receive all four. Finally a compromise was reached, with the original two-and-two formula.
Then the Navy became reluctant to part with the planes.
Now, a Defense Department spokesman, Lt. Col. Pete Wyro, says two E2C planes will be delivered this week and the other two will be turned over in February.
There also are complaints on Capitol Hill that the administration`s Drug Enforcement Policy Board, headed by Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese, is favoring the FBI and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration. Both agencies are part of the Justice Department, which also is headed by Meese.
Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D., Ariz.) and others met with agency heads two weeks ago to push forward many of the drug programs, including the stalled $60 million Control, Command and Intelligence Centers authorized by the drug law. Senate staffers familiar with the budget said reductions are planned for the Coast Guard and for the State Department`s program aimed at international drug production and processing.
It is not all politics, however: The labyrinth of technology and bureaucracy is partly responsible for slowing the pace of the federal assault on drugs.
Last fall, for example, Congress authorized $99.5 million for seven aerostats, large tethered balloons with look-down radar to spot low-flying planes used by drug smugglers.
Money was appropriated for just five of the aerostats, however, and there still is a question of whether they work.
The ones already in place work well while beaming down on the flat Florida coastline, but they have not been tried on hilly terrain common to the border with Mexico. ”We don`t really know if they work until we put them up,” said a federal worker familiar with the technology. ”We believe we`ve got the right radar for them, but there isn`t any quicker way to find out.”
In the area of bureaucracy, 60 new assistant U.S. attorneys were authorized by Congress. They are to be divided evenly among the five U.S. attorneys` offices along the Mexican border. None has been hired yet, though the number of drug cases is increasing along that border, because the money has yet to be allocated by the Justice Department.
There also are legal snafus: Several hundred new agents authorized for the Customs Service have not been hired. Last November a federal judge ruled that the urinalysis drug-screening program that applicants would have to undergo violates the 4th Amendment`s protection against illegal search and seizure. This put the hirings on hold until last Wednesday, when the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the lower court`s ruling and said Customs cannot test employees for drugs while it is appealing the case.
Friday, the Reagan administration announced that it would not require drug testing for agents and investigators hired by the Customs Service, which the same day resumed hiring without testing. But the agency said it would persist in its appeal of the latest ruling.
So three months after being told to beef up its drug-enforcement staff, Customs now is going ahead with plans to hire new inspectors without testing them to determine whether they have used drugs.
Simple turf battles also are underway. The order to convert two C-130 aircraft for the Coast Guard by installing radar is ”on hold,” said a Defense Department spokesman. The problem is similar to getting advanced radar on four P-3 planes that already belong to the Customs Service.
The Navy is resisting doling out the special equipment to other departments, even though the new drug law specifically requires it to do so.
”A final decision on that has not been made,” a Navy spokesman said Friday.
”Competition in most areas provides terrific results, but competition in law enforcement can be very debilitating,” Associate Atty. Gen. Stephen Trott, the No. 3 official in the Justice Department, said not long ago. Trott said the goal of the Drug Policy Board is ”to get everybody working off the same sheet of music.”
That obviously is not always easy, even with examples from on high.
Reagan, Vice President George Bush and more than 60 others in the White House voluntarily underwent a urinalysis drug test last August as an example to the nation. The rest of those in government, however, are not so eager to line up with jar in hand.
The Department of Health and Human Services has yet to issue guidelines for testing federal employees, though they are expected in about two weeks. Each department then must submit its own plan to HHS and to the Justice Department for approval before a single employee will be tested.
”This might be a program for our grandchildren,” said an employee at the Office of Personnel Management, with a hopeful lilt in his voice.
Criticism by Democrats and Republicans in Congress has been aimed at the President`s new budget proposals.
The House Select Committee on Narcotics calculated that Reagan`s proposals eliminate $225 million authorized for state and local narcotics law enforcement, cut money for drug abuse treatment in half by spreading it over two years and freeze spending on drug abuse and mental health grants.
”We have been hearing a new chorus of negative criticism from those who are more interested in politics than progress,” Meese said Thursday night during a speech in Pittsburgh. He charged that critics were ”distorting the budget figures” and ”mistakenly or deliberately misrepresenting the facts.” Though Meese did not name them, New York Reps. Charles Rangel, a Democrat, and Benjamin Gilman, a Republican, are two who challenged the administration`s budget proposals. ”You see that behind all the glitz, there`s no substance,” Rangel declared at a recent news conference.
