Back Room Deals Undercut the Drug War

I’ve been watching a bunch of good people in South Los Angeles try to drive drug dealers off the streets.

Last month, the bad guys won a major victory. Not that the drug dealers had anything to do with it. But when word gets to the crooks, they’ll probably cheer the news that the Community Coalition for Substance Abuse has lost $700,000 in federal funding, most of its $1.1-million budget.

This near fatal blow came just a few days after President Clinton’s drug czar, retired Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, met with the coalition’s executive director, Karen Bass, and came away impressed.

You can imagine her outrage then, when she received the cutoff letter. “Regretfully, I must now inform you we will be unable to continue funding your project,� said Dr. Elaine M. Johnson, director of the federal Center for Substance Abuse Prevention.

Since the center is also part of the Clinton administration, it sounded to me like a case of one Washington hand not knowing what the other was doing. But, as I found out, there was much more to it.

*

For there are people in Washington determined to sabotage the coalition and others like it around the country.

The coalition seeks to control or eliminate businesses where drug dealers hang out. These can include liquor stores, prostitution motels and recycling centers, where addicts trade their just-earned bucks for drugs from the dealers who gather outside.

The coalition teaches neighborhood leaders in predominantly African American and Latino South L.A. how to pressure City Hall and the Police Department to crack down on such businesses.

In a revolutionary move several years ago, the federal government decided to add this unusual drug-fighting approach to its conventional arsenal of enforcement, treatment and education. It awarded the South L.A. coalition a grant.

Enter the booze lobby, a powerful influence in government since the repeal of Prohibition. We Californians should know that better than anyone. Beer lobbyist Artie Samish, in fact, had so much power in the state capital a half-century ago that he was called “the secret boss of California.�

The current generation of beverage industry lobbyists doesn’t like the federal government paying for classes in how to demonstrate against liquor stores.

“We don’t believe tax dollars or taxpayer subsidies should be used to try to put the licensed beverage industry out of business,� Gary B. Galanis, public affairs director of the National Beer Wholesalers Assn., told me.

The industry went after the community programs in budget deliberations. After persuading a congressional subcommittee to reduce and restrict the programs last year, one brewer sent two cases of beer to supportive House staffers, and beer wholesalers distributed six-packs on Capitol Hill, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Proprietors of beer, wine and liquor stores chimed in with campaign contributions and mail to their representatives.

But the effort to torpedo the funding of the neighborhood coalitions might have failed except for the most important factor of all, Washington’s deficit-reduction politics.

All through the year, the Republican Congress and the Democratic Clinton administration raced each other to cut spending. The efforts reached deep into the administration--down, even, to the agency that supported the tiny L.A. coalition.

*

Since the funding was cut, Los Angeles Democratic politicians, such as Councilwoman Rita Walters and Rep. Julian Dixon, have been trying to recoup the coalition’s money, although they don’t have much influence in a Republican Congress.

Another ally is the Clinton administration’s drug czar, Gen. McCaffrey. “This is a perfect example,� McCaffrey said, “of the damage nationally that these cuts may have on the progress we were seeing from community coalition drug programs. We will work hard to convince Congress to restore this program.�

I hope he succeeds. In the past three years, the coalition has taught residents they don’t have to cower in the face of drug dealers. It would be ironic if the residents’ fight was lost, not in the dealers’ grimy haunts, but in the dignified hallways of Washington.