American media preoccupied by war against drugs

Press, 6 September 1989, Page 18

American media preoccupied by war against drugs

By

MARTIN FREETH

NZPA- Washington “Goodnight, and thanks for getting involved in the war against drugs,” says the intense television frontman.

He has just delivered 30 minutes of news on police hunts for murder suspects, drug-addict rehabilitation, and the latest on Colombia’s fight with powerful cocaine cartels.

He is the anchorman for “City Under Siege,” a nightly chronicle on drugs and violence broadcast on a Washington TV channel.

On this occasion there have been photographs of suspects sought by police today in the capital’s south-east slums, an interview with a former professional footballer addicted to “speed” tablets before each match and a bottle of whisky after, and new footage of bomb devastation in Bogota. "City Under Siege” skims the surface of a daily outpouring of news about drug abuse and drug trafficking, plus the violence that goes with it in South America or on the streets of Washington or New York. Television and newspaper coverage of the crackdown on the Colombian cartels, of massive cocaine seizures in America and of soaring

drug-related murder rates graphically portray different aspects of a growing threat.

In mainstream America this summer, the “drug wars” are a mediaprojected backdrop to everyday life. And there is mounting public anxiety to match. A poll taken this month by the “Washington Post” and A.B.C. showed drug abuse was now the country’s biggest problem in the eyes of four out of every 10 Americans. Last January the ratio was just two out of 10.

Most troubled are blacks -— the group most overtly affected — with the new poll showing 70 per cent of them identifying drugs as the No. 1 problem.

The Bush Administration’s response thus far has focused mainly on the situation in Colombia, where President Virgilio Barco’s campaign of confiscations and arrests provoked declarations of “total war” from the cocaine barons. President Bush is expected to announce a multimillion-dojlar antinarcotics campaign, perhaps aimed at helping to cut back the economic dependency of South American peasants on coca growing. The President has al-

ready interrupted his summer holiday to approve a $65 million package of war material for Colombia’s Government.

Media speculation has it that the Administration gave consideration to direct American military intervention, ruled out largely because of the difficulties an outside force would have trying to flush the drug , bosses out of the Colombian jungle.

America seems content to leave the crackdown to Colombian authorities and their troops, much better equipped with American helicopters and guns. But the bad guys in Colombia make an relatively easy target as the American Administration, and the television networks, talk about a war against drugs.

It is more a war of words when it comes to drug abuse and violence at home. That is probably because the enemies in America are vastly more difficult to come to grips with.

The problems clearly manifest in some areas of American cities are entangled with deeper problems of black poverty and also with a national appetite, apparently spanning class and race barriers, for getting high.

The enemies in America’s drug war show up as the pre-teen-age

children, whose casual distribution of "crack" cocaine in a south-east Washington playground was secretly filmed for broadcast on “City Under Siege.” They also include the killer of Joseph “Pee Wee” Bowler, Jun., a 20-year-old black drug seller, shot dead reportedly over a $5OOO debt to another dealer.

That street death added to the capital’s soaring murder tally, which has seen 302 homicides in Washington’s central district so far this year and warnings from the police that their task is straining the limits of human endurance.

Off the streets, there is also a disturbing spectre of corruption, or at least complicity, with the drug trade by public officials. Hogging the dubious limelight on this score is Washington Mayor Marion Barry, dogged throughout this year by allegations of cocaine use and associations with dealers.

Pressure for Mr Barry, who has denied the allegations before a grand jury to be prosecuted for perjury, was increased after a convicted dealer gave new testimony against the mayor to federal authorities.

Looking for underlying causes to America’s drug problem, academics point

to the social conditions of the poor and talk of youths without a sense of the future and a sense of machismo in bloodshed.

The influx of drugs to America, particularly in the 1980 s, must reflect also a demand among its more affluent population. Cocaine — 80 per cent of it estimated to come from Colombia — has gained particular appeal.

There has been much disquiet this year for Washingtonians in the evidence of a trial of a trafficking ring alleged to have sold hundreds of pounds of coke in the capital’s most fashionable neighbourhoods over the last 10 years. Perhaps ironically, given the build-up of anxiety over drugs, recent national research findings suggest there is much less smoking, swallowing and injecting of illicit substances than four years ago.

After surveying households last year, the National Institute on Drug Abuse estimated the number of Americans using any illicit drug was 14.5 million, down from 23 million in 1985. Cocaine, however, stood out as a particular problem, with indications of an increasing proportion of addicts among its estimated 225,000 regular users.