The most brilliant part of the ten year plan is that no Drug Czar has ever held office for anywhere near that long, so he will not be around to have to answer for its failure.

"Drugs are wrong, drugs are dangerous, and drugs can kill you,'' Clinton said. Clinton’s plan includes expanded prevention education, employment of an additional 1,000 Border Patrol officers and 100 Drug Enforcement Administration agents, completion of the hiring of 100,000 new community police officers and expanded drug testing and treatment among prisoners and parolees.

The administration's drug-fighting plan is to be funded through a $17.1 billion drug-control budget request for next year, a 6.8 percent increase.

About $195 million of the initiative is earmarked for an anti-drug media campaign aimed at children. An additional $146 million would go for programs to curb underage smoking, while $50 million would be set aside to pay for 1,300 counselors at middle schools.

Other proposed spending includes:

85 million for the prison drug treatment programs.

A $75.4 million increase in the Defense Department's budget for drug-fighting in the Caribbean, Mexico and South America.

49 million for the National Institutes of Health to expand research on drug and underage alcohol use.

24.5 million to hire the new Drug Enforcement Administration special agents, who would target methamphetamine sales and production.

(The '1998 National Drug Control Strategy' is online at: http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/policy/98ndcs/contents.html)

Gingrich attacked the plan and said he will press a resolution in the House urging Clinton and McCaffrey to withdraw the plan, which he described as ``the definition of failure.''

He said the Republican-run Congress would pass legislation that includes giving parents anti-drug information and establishing a national clearinghouse for anti-drug information.

Presumably this means intensifying the multi-billion dollar per year prohibitionist propaganda campaign. More significant are his calls for "helping communities build anti-drug coalitions" and "providing market incentives so businesses will create drug-free workplaces."

The former presumably means more government funding for "community" prohibitionist propaganda organizations like CADCA (see www.cadca.org) that use government money to lobby for more prohibitionist propaganda and power. Marijuananews.com will be devoting considerable coverage to this subversion of the democratic process.

The reference to a "drug-free workplaces" simply means intensified random "drug" testing to hunt down casual marijuana users whose job performance would not justify "for cause" testing.

At the political level, Gingrich’s attack was truly an exercise in cynicism. Speaking in the GOP's weekly radio address, he accused Clinton of neglecting the issue for five years, and as a consequence allowing drug use among teen-agers to rise by 70 percent over that period.  Gingrich said World War II was won four years after the United States joined the Allied cause, and yet Clinton's new drug-fighting schedule prescribes more than twice that long.

``This president would have us believe that with all of the resources, ingenuity, dedication and passion of the American people, we can't even get halfway to victory in the war on drugs until the year 2007 - nine full years from now,'' the speaker said. ``That is not success. That is the definition of failure. ... We cannot accept this administration's proposed timetable for defeat.''

This ignores the fact that marijuana arrests under Clinton are at an all time high and the reported increase in marijuana use began before Clinton took office. Also, the so-called War on Drugs was begun under Nixon thirty years ago, and the crack cocaine epidemic occurred during the Reagan and Bush years.

At the more philosophical level, Gingreich’s statements demonstrate the profoundly anti-conservative nature of marijuana prohibition. We have had a war on poverty since Lyndon Johnson, but the poor are still with us. We have had a war on cancer since Nixon, and cancer is still with us. We have had a war on crime forever, and crime is still with us.

The point is that complex problems cannot be solved by either force or rhetoric or even spending countless billions of dollars. The recognition of this fact is the very heart of the conservative political philosophy. That so many conservative leaders would accept this sort of statement by a leader demonstrates the degree to which conservatism in America has become as intellectually bankrupt as "liberalism." HHS Secretary Shalala, Senator Joe Biden, Rep. Charles Rangel, and so many other liberals are as ardent in their support of prohibition as is Gingrich.