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CNN Novak, Hunt & Shields

Asa Hutchinson Discusses U.S. Drug Policy

Aired August 25, 2001 - 17:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANNOUNCER: From Washington: EVANS, NOVAK, HUNT & SHIELDS.

Now, Robert Novak and Al Hunt.

ROBERT NOVAK, CO-HOST: I'm Robert Novak. Al Hunt and I will question the new chief federal drug enforcer.

AL HUNT, CO-HOST: He is Asa Hutchinson, director of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(voice-over): Asa Hutchinson, one of the Republican managers in the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton, resigned from Congress to accept President Bush's nomination as head of the DEA. He began his new job this week. That puts him on the front line of a 30- year war on drugs that has seen few victories.

A graduate of Bob Jones University, Director Hutchinson, in 1981 at age 30 was named by President Reagan to be U.S. attorney for Arkansas, making him the nation's youngest U.S. attorney. In 1986 and 1990 he lost statewide elections. But after serving five years as chairman of the Arkansas Republican Party, he was elected to Congress in 1996, taking the House seat of his older brother, Tim, who was elected to the United States Senate.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HUNT: Mr. Director, there increasingly is a view in America that we imprison too many people for mere possession; that those prison sentences are too long and they unjustly penalize African-Americans. Fundamentally, do you share those concerns?

ASA HUTCHINSON, DEA ADMINISTRATOR: Well, I think we ought to always be looking at our criminal justice system to make sure it's fair and that it's going after the right targets.

When you look at imprisonment for mere possession in the federal system and federal prison, only 5 percent are for possession, of the drug cases. The rest are for trafficking. And many times they'll plea bargain down to possession. In the state system, it's more like 27 percent that is possession. And I think that it's fair to look at that and to see the reasons for that. But what we've done in terms of our drug enforcement policy, we've had some successes. When you look at cocaine, the fact that we've reduced it by 75 percent, use of cocaine, over the last 15 years. That's a success.

HUNT: But after you -- two or three years from now, after you've been DEA director for three years, would you hope that we will have more or fewer people in prison because of mere possession, as a percentage of those who...

HUTCHINSON: Well, I would hope that it would be fewer, first because there's less drug usage. But secondly, I think that whenever we look at actions like drug courts, I'm a strong proponent of drug courts that balance the treatment side of it with the accountability -- puts a penalty over their head that goes through the criminal justice system. They have drug testing. And they don't go to jail if they're non-violent first-time users. And I think that's an appropriate direction to go if we can concentrate on the treatment for those type of offenders.

But I think the fact is that in our prison system we are primarily going after the drug dealers.

HUNT: One final question, on this trend, you this week said that California Prop 36, which does not legalize drugs certainly but it does mainly -- it really does decriminalize possession, that that could be a model for the country if you made some adjustments for drug testing and more rehab centers.

Is that really the model you would like to take the Bush administration, the direction to really decriminalize possession?

HUTCHINSON: No, absolutely. I don't think we should decriminalize our drug offenses in this country. I don't think that Proposition 36 decriminalizes. What it does, it operates in limited fashion, as the drug courts do, which is to, rather than send them to prison, a user, they concentrate on the rehabilitation side and the treatment side.

I don't think they're effective as drug courts because you don't have the drug-testing component, you don't have the accountability. And I think that they're subject to misuse. But I think that they certainly do not decriminalize. I think drug courts work better, and that's the model that I would prefer.

NOVAK: Mr. Hutchinson, in the war on drugs, you would think that all of the lickings that your side has taken, you ought to be suing for peace right now. You have been losing the war on drugs, haven't you?

HUTCHINSON: Well, I think you've got to define what winning and what losing is. I think that we have a tendency, Bob, in this country, to judge our entire anti-drug effort different than how we judge other social problems.

If you look at teen violence -- if you're not reducing the statistics, should you throw in the towel and say we're not going to engage in this social problem anymore? Or if you have an increase in child abuse, do you say we're losing that and you don't want to remedy that problem?

When it comes to drug use in this country, you win by reducing the dependency on drugs, helping young people to make the right decisions, reducing the addiction and the availability of it. That's winning, and I think that we have made progress and we can make some more.

NOVAK: Several years ago, a few years ago, there was a seminar of all of the former DEA directors, in fact, even before it was called the DEA. And they agreed on one thing, that there never really has been a war on drugs. There never have been enough resources devoted to that war.

Do you think you can get in this, with a tight budget, more resources devoted to that war?

HUTCHINSON: Well, I think that there will be more resources in the education arena to help people make the right decisions, as well as in the treatment, which is important.

There will be more resources in the law enforcement arena. Everyone in law enforcement knows that it's important to enforce the drug laws of our country and it sends the right signal. But that, ultimately, we're not going to make the biggest difference in society on that side. We keep the finger in the dike; we keep the floods from coming in. But we've go to teach our folks to make the right decisions, have stronger character and to reduce their dependency on it.

I think you've got to put this in perspective. You can have success, and I think we have success, but it's not going to be something that we're going to set a timeline of five years. And there's not going to be absolutely a new drug that comes on scene that we've got to wrestle with.

NOVAK: As far as providing more resources, sir, we received a missive from the Democratic National Committee just before we went on the air. And it said, "Hutchinson repeatedly voted against anti-drug efforts, tried to cut 900 DEA agents as a member of the House of Representative."

Asa Hutchinson voted to cut 900 agents from the DEA, true?

HUTCHINSON: I don't think that's accurate. I certainly don't remember any votes like that because I've been very engaged on the speaker's task force, Drug-Free America.

And what I was concerned about is that the DEA agents have been reduced somewhat in the early '90s before I came to Congress. And what we've done is to reengage in that effort, both from the enforcement side but also by putting more money into the community coalitions that bring communities together and helps them to develop a strategy to reduce drug use in the community both in law enforcement and from an education standpoint.

So what I try to do in Congress is to approach from all arenas and work with the speaker and my colleagues on this .

HUNT: Mr. Director, we've had this incredible effort to affect the drug supply, the interdiction efforts, and yet the price of heroine and cocaine, which should be rising if that's the case, instead is falling. The purity of heroine, I'm told, is doubled. That really is a failure, isn't it?

HUTCHINSON: Well, it's a problem and it's a concern. And I'm not standing here saying that we've got all of the answers. But I know that whenever you reduce cocaine and heroine coming into this country that you're ultimately saving lives. And that it's a mistake to say that a consistent, long-term approach to this does not make a difference.

And whenever you look at the number of heroine addicts that we have out there today, the harm-reduction side of it, the legalization side is not the right direction to go. We do have -- we've had great success in reducing heroine, but there is an upsurge.

HUNT: But you have to make tradeoffs with limited resources. And basically, would you like to see a greater emphasis on the question of supply and punishment or on demand and treatment? I mean, you have to make some choices. Which direction do you want to move more in?

HUTCHINSON: Well, I don't think that you can separate those two.

For example, Robert Downey, Jr., in California, is going through, under Proposition 36, a rehab program. But why is he going to a treatment program? It's because of an arrest. And so, law enforcement ties into education. Law enforcement ties into the rehabilitation side. That's what, put in the criminal justice system, makes the drug courts work.

And so, I think it's a mistake to get into the battle of supply side versus demand debates. Invest money where it works. The president's talked about a parent corps -- enlisting parents and encourage them to engage in this issue with the young people. The community coalitions, which brings in the law enforcement community and the treatment side.

I just came back from a Club Drug (ph) conference in Chicago, and I asked them to raise their hands who are here. And you had treatment people, you had law enforcement people, you had education folks there all together working on this issue. And that's the right approach.

NOVAK: Mr. Hutchinson, Senator McCain and many other Republicans and a good part of the conservative movement wants to have more freedom in the export of encryption devices by the United States in the world. In the previous administration, the DEA and the FBI was opposed to that on the grounds that this helped the drug barons. Whose side are you on on this?

HUTCHINSON: Well, I'm for making sure that we have a technological advantage over the drug traffickers. Whenever they encrypt their communications, it makes it very difficult to get the intelligence that we need.

NOVAK: So you'd put controls on the export of encryption devices.

HUTCHINSON: Well, I think that you have to have sufficient controls that allows law enforcement to do their work. So you want to be competitive with other countries in our technology. And what is my recollection is that Congress did allow increased availability of encryption.

NOVAK: Limited, limited, yes.

HUTCHINSON: Law enforcement, you know, shouldn't be necessarily saying that's a bad idea. We've got to keep up with it. We've got to keep that advantage.

NOVAK: We have to take a break. And when we come back, we'll ask the director of the Drug Enforcement Administration the difference between crack cocaine and powder cocaine.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HUNT: Mr. Director, in your confirmation hearings, you came out against racial profiling. And yet, a lot of drug trafficking really is associated with particular groups, Dominican or Mexican drug traffickers for instance. Doesn't the DEA, to be effective, have to do some racial profiling?

HUTCHINSON: I don't think so at all. And even if there was a little bit of an advantage to law enforcement if there was some type of profiling ultimately it undermines what law enforcement is trying to do and it's counter-productive.

Certainly, whenever you have a specific criminal activity being conducted and you've got a suspect, you would use race as an identifying characteristic to apprehend that suspect, and that's appropriate. But for a profile to say, these are the people that we need to look at real closely, and race being a part of that to determine a law enforcement procedure, that undermines what we're trying to do.

HUNT: You also said that you were for reducing the disparities between punishment for crack cocaine, which is punished more heavily and is used more by African-Americans, and powder cocaine, which is more of a white drug. Why reduce it? Why not just eliminate the disparity?

HUTCHINSON: The reason for that disparity originally, which really got out of proportion, that violence was associated with the crack cocaine usage, and so the mandatory minimums kicked in at a lower stage. I believe that that should be reduced.

You ask about why we just can't eliminate it completely, and I think that there was some rationality for it. That's not what the sentencing commission, I believe I'm correct in saying this, recommended. And I don't think we've achieved that. I think that you can reduce that disparity, and I think we need to work together to get that done. But I don't know that we'll be able to completely eliminate that disparity.

NOVAK: Mr. Hutchinson, President Bush has developed a warm relationship with the new president of Mexico, President Fox. But are you and your agents really comfortable right now with Mexico as being free of corruption between the government and the narcotics dealers?

HUTCHINSON: No, we're not comfortable that Mexico is free of corruption. I do believe that we have a great opportunity with President Vicente Fox and we have a growing confidence with the leadership there. But it takes a long time to change the foundation and the institutions in the country.

That's one of the reasons that Mexico's taken the steps to have some embedded units for their narcotics groups that we can work with closely. They are checked on in terms of polygraphs. That eliminates or reduces the potential for corruption. We're actually helping to train those through the DEA and our resources.

So I'm very optimistic about a growing cooperative relationship. And we need that when we're trying to put these projections together that cross the borders.

NOVAK: Just two years ago, Mr. Hutchinson, your predecessor, Thomas Constantine, sent a 20-page statement to the Senate in which he told of, quote, "unparalleled levels of corruption within Mexican law enforcement agencies," end quote. He said that the corrupt police protect Mexican criminal organizations that lead the world in distributing illegal drugs. That's two years ago. Can things really change that much in two years?

HUTCHINSON: Well, the attitude is changed by the administration. They have assisted in some extraditions. They've arrested the governor of one of their...

NOVAK: So those conditions don't prevail anymore?

HUTCHINSON: No, like I said, if you can't change that circumstance in two years. And so we don't go in their naively saying that we can work with all of the authorities, that corruption is not a problem, because it is. But it helps whenever the top of government sets the right standard. And I think Vicente Fox has made -- is making some progress in the drug problem a priority.

We hope that we can get this down and channel it so that we can have more cooperative efforts at the lower level of law enforcement in Mexico .

HUNT: Mr. Hutchinson, as you know, voters in a number of states, principally in the West, have noted to enable citizens to use marijuana, supposedly for medical purposes. The Supreme Court has said that federal rules, federal laws, however, trump that. But you're a great believer in devolution and states rights. Whatever you think of the use of marijuana for medical purposes, in that philosophical principal, don't you think people in those states should determine whether they want to use marijuana for medical purposes or not?

HUTCHINSON: Well, we have -- it's been consistently a violation of federal law. And I think that what's important ...

HUNT: I'm saying shouldn't state law trump federal law?

HUTCHINSON: No, I don't think -- that's not consistent with the supremacy clause of the Constitution. And so, no, I don't think that.

Obviously, we want to work and, you know, consider the direction and guidance of some of the prosecutors there in California. And no one wants to deny an elderly patient or someone with pain of having adequate pain medication. But the scientific and medical community that we've always listened to have not come to us and said you need to provide a medical use for marijuana. They say there's not legitimate medical use for marijuana. And so, that's the direction we have. And so, we're going to have to work through exactly the strategy in California how to deal with that issue.

It's important to remember, when you've got methamphetamines, you've got OxyContin problems, you've got heroin on the increase, we've got our hands full. And that's one just part of the problem.

NOVAK: Just briefly before we take a break, Mr. Hutchinson, Plan Columbia is putting a lot of American money and a lot of American effort into Columbia to stop the narco-terrorists, the guerrillas supported by the drug dealers. Can you look me in the eye and say that any of this has succeeded in stemming the flow of drugs from Columbia?

HUTCHINSON: I can look you in the eye and say we need to give this a chance to work.

NOVAK: It isn't working now, though.

HUTCHINSON: Well, I think it is working to stop reducing the money that the narco-traffickers gain. And I think it's starting to work to build and strengthen a very old democracy in South America.

The intent and justification for our initiative should not be to stop the flow of drugs coming to our country. I hope that's a side benefit, but that's not the justification in my view for the Plan Colombia. We've got to strengthen that democracy and their dependence to the narco-traffickers of the drug money is what we're trying to reduce, hopefully as a side benefit to America here.

NOVAK: Well, we'll take another break. And when we come back, we'll have "The Big Question" for Asa Hutchinson.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NOVAK: "The Big Question" for Asa Hutchinson, director of the DEA:

Mr. Hutchinson, officials of the Clinton administration contended that the beginning of addiction was found through tobacco smoking, cigarette smoking. So it was very important for the anti-drug efforts to concentrate on tobacco. Do you agree with that?

HUTCHINSON: I think we should separate the anti-drug messages. I don't think you should mix tobacco or alcohol that are legal substances out there, although regulated...

NOVAK: You don't think it leads to illegal addiction?

HUTCHINSON: I didn't say that. I said I don't think you should mix the messages. I think it's a separate message for cocaine, for marijuana, for drugs that don't have the beneficial purposes or that are legal in some context. They're totally illegal. They are extraordinarily harmful compared to those other legal substances. Even those, you know, those are harmful as well. So you should separate the messages, in my judgment. I think it's important.

HUNT: Sir, a quick question, you just left the House of Representatives. You were an impeachment manager in the Bill Clinton impeachment trial. From what you've seen, do you think that Gary Condit is fit to serve as a member of the United States Congress?

HUTCHINSON: Well, you know, Al, I left the political arena and came over to the enforcement arena, and I'm not going to commit on Gary Condit. I think that all of America wishes that would go away and certainly that we'd be able to find Chandra Levy. But beyond that, I'm concentrating on my job in the drug enforcement arena.

HUNT: I'm not going to get a Gary Condit answer out of you.

HUTCHINSON: No, I think that what we're doing is extraordinarily important. And we talk about the policy. I want to think about the lives that it impacts, and I think it's important.

HUNT: I want to thank you in your first week for being with us.

My partner, Robert Novak, and I will be back in a moment with a comment or two.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HUNT: Bob, Asa Hutchinson offered a very balanced approach to the drug war today; very effective, as a matter of fact. I think down the road there's going to be some warfare between Asa Hutchinson and John Waters, the drug czar in the Bush administration, who really is a lock-'em-all-up-and-throw-away-the-keys.

NOVAK: Now, I was fascinated that he said the approach of the Bush administration and Plan Columbia was to save Colombian democracy and in the process cut down on the drugs coming out of there. The Clinton proposal project was entirely different. It was to keep the drugs out of Colombia and in the process, if possible, save Colombian democracy -- just the opposite. HUNT: This is a conservative Republican who was impeachment manager, who was endorsed in his confirmation hearings by all of the House Judiciary Committee Democrats. This is going to be a real star, Bob.

NOVAK: Very different than the DEA director for most of the Clinton administration, Tom Constantine, a cop's cop, a professional policeman, law and order guy. Not a politician, very blunt. He would say that the Mexicans were corrupt. He didn't care what the State Department said. It's going to be very interesting, isn't it? Asa Hutchinson, a very sophisticated politician, whether he says the same.

I'm Robert Novak.

HUNT: And I'm Al Hunt.

Coming up in one-half hour on "RELIABLE SOURCES," did the press pin down Congressman Condit or get used in his PR full-court press? Plus, a conversation with Amy Wallace of Los Angeles Magazine about the investigation that took down a Hollywood heavyweight, Variety's Peter Bart.

And at 7:00 p.m., the "CAPITAL GANG" on the shrinking surplus, the last term of a conservative icon and Gary Condit's primetime debut. Plus, an introduction to George McGovern, war hero.

NOVAK: That's all for now. Thanks for joining us.

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