An Overview of Nixon Administration Drug Policies

1. An Overview of Nixon Administration Drug Policies William Hynes 24 November 2008 Rothermere American Institute, Oxford

2. Motivation • Important area of public policy – lessons from the Nixon era largely neglected • Part of a broader thesis investigating rising crime during the 1960s and 70s • Based on archival research, interviews and empirical analysis

3. Law and Order • Nixon stressed the desire to bring down the nation’s crime rate • In 1969 Gallup started polling on drugs issues – 48% of Americans felt drug use was a serious problem in their communities • 1969-early 1971, aimed to disrupt drug markets through interdiction efforts and more Customs checks • Nixon open to new approaches

4. ‘Crime Laboratory’ • You campaigned on this city being the “crime capitol of the nation”. Now that it is your city you better do something to fix it • Egil Krogh was White House Liaison to the District and responsible for Administration crime programmes • Nixon was far less interested in the politics of the people involved than finding ideas and people who could begin to solve the big problem, that they had won the election with, serious crime in the capital

5. ‘Crime Laboratory’ • DuPont, a psychiatrist, conducted urinalysis of everyone entering the Washington D.C. jail system in August 1969 • He found that 44% tested positive for heroin • DuPont convinced the city's Mayor Walter Washington to allow him to provide methadone to heroin addicts • “drug rehabilitation is a virgin yet fertile area for social and political gain” (Donfeld 1970). DuPont given White House Support – establishes National Treatment Administration

6. Heroin and Crime • DuPont in his survey of prisoners in Washington correlated the rising rates of the initiation of heroin use to the rising rate of crime • “Heroin use started up in the late 1960s. It gathered strength over time, so that each year it was greater and greater through 1969. Looking at that graph, anyone could see the engine driving the rising crime rate. The study defined the modern heroin epidemic and its relationship to crime” • DuPont was able to demonstrate a decline in crime due to drug treatment

7. Vietnam • It was an allegation of the left, that a large percentage of American soldiers were returning to America as trained killers, addicted to heroin • Congressmen Steele (R-Conn) and Murphy (D-Illinois) found that 10-15% of GIs were taking heroin • Use of heroin had “reached crisis proportions, threatening to disrupt the Administration’s Vietnamisation policy” • New procedures for testing returning soldiers from Vietnam, and mandatory 30 day treatment programme quickly eliminated the problem. Treatment becomes a credible instrument

8. Spread of Heroin Epidemics

9. Drugs as a Public Health Problem • The drug problem was conceptualised as a public health issue. In 1969 (from Baum (1996)): • 1,601 individuals died from drug abuse • 2,641 choked to death on food, 1,824 died after falling down stairs • 29,866 died from cirrhosis of the liver (due to alcoholism) • and more than400,000 died from the effects of cigarette smoking. • For the majority of Americansdrug abuse was, and to a large extent still is, more of a political, legal, economic, and moral issue than a health problem (Bourne 2009)

10. Methadone Maintenance • Methadone would not have the spikes that heroin would produce; it kept addicts on an even keel, making it more likely they could hold down a job, and have a stable family life. • “In 1972, citizens will be looking at crime statistics across the nation in order to see whether expectations raised in 1968 have been met. The Federal Government has only one economical and effective technique for reducing crime in the streets – methadone maintenance.”

11. Drug Treatment • “You couldn’t find any Republican who believed in treatment” Bud Krogh • Against the Democratic philosophy of the root causes of crime • Black community opposed to methadone – perceived it as a way of subjugating African Americans, suspicious of data collection on addicts • Substituting one form of addiction for another • Bureaucratic barriers and NIMH

12. The War on Drugs • June 1971: War on Drugs declared • $155m in new funds, $105m for treating addicts • Richard Nixon, the apostle of law and order, was going to make treatment his principal weapon in a multidimensional approach to the drugs problem • “As his general, he was enlisting a young Jewish Democratic psychiatrist with no experience in national politics – Jerome Jaffe” Massing (1998)

13. Announcing the War on Drugs

14. SAODAP • Establish an office in the White House, coalescing into one agency all Federal drug abuse prevention, rehabilitation, education, treatment, training and research programmes • The Special Action Office on Drug Abuse Prevention (SAODAP) announced May 1971 • Donfeld recommended Jerome Jaffe to head the agency. He had considerable credibility among the medical profession • SAODAP was authorised in Congress without a dissenting vote

15. SAODAP • Drug treatment was a technical issue • Treatment had potential to ameliorate crime • Jaffe started building up a network of Federally funded facilities to treat heroin addicts • Jaffe worked with the psychiatry community, coming up with programmes that were acceptable • Within a year the Office was well on its way to providing a treatment place for any addict that wanted one

16. ODALE • Office of Drug Abuse Law Enforcement established in January 1972 • Organised Crime Strike Forces • ODALE supplemented the efforts of existing federal, state, and local drug law enforcement agencies • Myles Ambrose became the point man for the Administration • “I got the feeling that we’d had our bite of the apple” Jaffe. Ambrose was more in tune with the constituency that Nixon needed to appeal to for the election • In 18 months ODALE arrested over 6,000 people, and broke up the major Harlem underworld drugs operation

17. Foreign Policy • We will “put more emphasis on solving the problem, than on diplomatic niceties. We will not temporise anymore. All departments are to move vigorously now” • Treasury Secretary Connally: “We should not tolerate allies who will produce opium which leads to the destruction of American youth” (July 1971 Meeting) • “clearly the strongest anti-drug president that we had ever seen. Anybody who knows the drug issue will tell you Nixon was the first and probably the last who had the guts to stand up and place drugs above foreign policy.” Bob Stuttman, Special Agent, DEA '73-'90

18. Coherent Approach • Close cooperation between law enforcement and health care programmes, domestic agencies and foreign governments • As the supply of heroin was decreased, rising prices would motivate users to seek treatment rather than commit more crimes • The demand capacity was coordinated to expand to meet this demand

19. Government Drug Spending

20. Impact on Crime

21. Successes • Treatment was never a major perspective of either party, yet the Administration generated enormous political support for it • Large scale role out of treatment, and methadone maintenance programmes throughout the country • Heroin panic in 1972, due to weakened supply, and success in breaking up the French Connection, and ending illegal opium production in Turkey • Vietnam heroin addiction problem solved • Crime was falling in the major cities

22. Successes • New data on the problem, and a contribution to understanding on heroin epidemics and the crime-drugs nexus • Evidence based, informed policy-making based on medical expertise • Found a balance between Law Enforcement and Treatment and Education. Demand and Supply side policies worked in tandem with each other • Nixon knew he would not win votes because of it [drug treatment], but he did it anyway (Jerry Jaffe interview)

23. Failures • Balance became too skewed to law enforcement before there was time to see the impact of treatment alone (Krogh interview) • So much progress, soon undermined its own momentum. SAODAP launched amid a flurry of publicity but the media soon lost interest in it (Jaffe interview) • As progress was made on solving the problem, attention shifted elsewhere • Nixon accepted that while his Administration knew that treatment was necessary, “those people down there, they want those criminals off the street.”

24. Failures • Drugs politicised – 1972 polls indicated drug programme was not gaining the President much support. Administration talked up success of law enforcement. • Established the template for being ‘tough on drugs’ • 1973 – Governor Rockefeller claimed treatment was not working. Rockefeller Drug Laws signed. Nixon requested a new range of drug penalties • Seeds of a law enforcement orientation were in the policies of Nixon – established the DEA in 1973. • “created in the short span of 4 years, a “drug abuse industrial complex”. This complex has firmly established itself as a fixture of government and society.”Presidential Commission on Drug Abuse 1973 • Marijuana policy remained tough, diluted focus on heroin

25. Conclusions • Pragmatic, innovative and bi-partisan initiatives – drugs issue de-emotionalised • Balance between supply and demand side policies • Donfeld, Jaffe and Krogh disappointed by subsequent direction of drugs policy. • Reagan: ‘We’re taking down the surrender flag. . . . We’re running up the battle flag’